Lost Love Found

"My mate is going to kill me." Eraz thought as he rushed his way home from hunting. He stood a good 8 and a half feet tall. His bull head clashing with his lion mane, clashing with his human torso, in turn clashing with his bull legs and lion’s tail. He sat down for a moment to catch his breath. Laying down his prizes, three medium sized deer for him and his family, and that’s when he heard it.

It was soft, but felt like razors to his head. “Obey me…” It sounded like a hiss almost, as if a great snake whispered to him. Eraz looked around and saw, nothing. Only trees and hills. He quickly grabbed his deer and continued to walk back to his mate, their son, and his mate’s mother. He shuddered at his mother in law, he hated her. She was never satisfied with how much he brought back. He walked past a human house. “Must be a farmhouse.” he thought. Chuckling to himself. He preferred the ways of the Minotaur, the lifestyle of a hunter and nomad. To be one with Mother Gaea he thought was to live as closely to nature as possible.

He was within sight of his Mate, Andra waving at him. A smile danced across her face, showing off her sharp teeth. Even her mother, didn’t appear completely disappointed with what he brought back. His young son stampeded over to him, almost knocking Eraz over. “Daddy! How did you get THREE deer!?”

Eraz chuckled to himself. “I got lucky and was able to catch them when they got stuck in my pit, son. They must’ve been running from something for all three to fall in. Don’t forget to thank the gods either, before we eat.”

Andra walked over to him, and nuzzled his cheek with her nose. “These will make a great dinner, let me take these off your hands and prepare them. You relax, and go thank the gods.” She then grabbed the deer and began to skin them right there.

Eraz walked over to a golden apple tree, and kneeled and began to prey to Mother Gaea, and Artemis for the bounty of nature, and the success of the hunt, when again he heard it, louder, “Find the amulet, I want it.” The voice felt like it was unraveling his mind. He screamed, begging it to stop, but it repeated over and over. “Find the amulet, I want it.” Until his screams became so loud that Andra, ran to him, and when she found him, he was curled up into a ball, sobbing.

Andra kneeled next to her mate, holding his head in her lap, being careful not to scratch herself on his horns. She run her hands through his black mane, and sang softly to him. Songs of the changing seasons, and gentle winds. Eraz started to shake and eventually stopped crying, but when she looked into his eyes, it wasn’t her mate she saw, just the eyes of a wild animal, she backed up slowly, Eraz stood up, looked at her, and ran off wildly through the brush.

Andra sank to her knees and wailed. She after several hours of mourning for her lost husband, returned to her son and mother. She told them what happened. Her son, immediately ran off into the cave they had been living in for the last week or so, crying into his makeshift bed, while Andra and her mother tried to comfort the small child, Andra was aware of a presence in the cave. A wind spirit. She turned to the spirit and demanded to know what it wanted.

The spirit spoke to Andra and told her that the Minotaur was too dangerous, and he could never be healed, that it was beyond even Dionysus to heal him. The spirit told Andra that her mate would be hunted down like a wild beast, and be slain. It asked her if she wanted his body.

“Burn it, like he would’ve wanted it. He wanted to be burned so he could return to Mother Gaea.” She spoke through her tears. “What made my mate become a beast?” She asked

“We do not know, but it could’ve been anything, a disease, a curse, human, god, or something supernatural, we have no idea at the moment and Nyx won’t speak, but her brother is working on it.” The spirit told her.

“Well I hope that this ends here.” Andra spoke quietly.

“As do we all.” Her mother told her, as the spirit disappeared from the cave, leaving the three to pack up and move on, as all Minotaur do when one of their members die, and they left knowing they will never return.

Eraz ran through the woods, he had to find the amulet, he had to make the voice stop. Nothing would stand in his way. This is when his mind snapped and he had his last real thoughts. He trampled through the undergrowth his mind lost, and his body continuing towards what his last thought wanted.