Underestimate Me

Her feet were weary; they had traveled farther than the miles they meant to cross today, they had not rested since her run into the woods. Josselyn could still feel the way the soil gave way as her tired legs spurted away. The last strain that they could muster, she had used it all. In that one flight as the men in her memories took their hands off her, she had felt those fingertips sliding away from her arms; she felt as they disconnected with her after dragging her out into the muddy road. As a last act of dignity she had not collapsed but her legs had found it in them to do a last run from them. Her feet could not have foreseen the miles they yet had to travel. She was glad they had been as ignorant as herself, for she knew her feet would not have attempted that last sprint if they had known the road would be so far and harsh. Just as the road laying ahead of her now would be long and harsh.

Josselyn had averted her eyes from the beauty outside. The forest was as beautiful as it was treacherous. She had peered through the diminishing trails left by the fireflies and wondered what had made her Goddess so brutal. How such a delicate world could be filled with such horrors? She wondered if Balor might be a true God after all, and maybe he had been the working force that had conjured Maa. A cruelty to match his own. She wanted to ask what it was that conjured the animal fury inside of her during battle. What made her slash through people without only a moment of doubt?

She once believed in the good in the world. She had gone through life without acknowledging all the evil shadows that moved among them. They had walked beside her, been cast from the fires inside of her neighbors' homes. She either closed her eyes or had been unaffected by their darkness. Josselyn had not truly seen the oppression she joined when her moon’s blood appeared. Josselyn never thought it ghastly that women were expected to lay with any man that called himself her mate. She passed the shadows as a horse blinked. Her tunnel vision had widened though. Her eyes were opened harshly when she learned her suitor’s name.

“But father, I could never love a man like Hadrian,” her voice was desperate. He had to listen to her; he had to put a halt to this. She could not marry this man. Not when her heart belonged to another. Not when her intended was so cruel a man.

“Please father, I beg you,” She moved to her knees, her dress smudged by the dirty ground. The cold hardened soil grabbed ahold of her knees, freezing them instantly. Her hands grasping her father’s legs. She bowed her head and felt it touch her hands. Josselyn could not look him in the eyes. She could not face the look that she would find there. Disappointment and regret, she would not find the strong eyes of a man that would fight for her.

Her father’s hand reached upon her head and his voice spoke: “You will marry Hadrian. This conversation did not occur; Elrik will have your tongue if he ever heard those words leave your defying lips.” That was it. She was condemned.

The canvas that hung before the opening of her tent dragged across the forest floor when Meredith stepped inside. Next to her was Emma. The slender girl looked disturbed. The fear in her eyes was almost palpable. Those eyes felt like a stomp in her guts. The way they radiated fear, just by looking at her leader, brought a knot to Josselyn’s insides. She had never touched this girl with any finger. She had not laid her hands upon any sister for that matter; still this innocent maiden was looking at her as if she was the adversary herself.

“Please sit,” Josselyn said motioning to the young girl. Emma moved closer, hesitant and cautious. “You look like you’ve seen a phantom.” She smiled at the girl that reminded her so much of Rebecca. Meredith stayed at the entrance of the tent. “Would you like me to leave?” She asked. They communicated in more than mere words. Meredith’s tone revealed that the question was just a formality. Meredith would stay with her. Meredith barely trusted anyone; she had become so close to Josselyn that it took a lot of effort to let her be by herself.

“No need for your absence my sister,” She replied. Meredith was loyal, Meredith was true but she was willful too. The bed Josselyn sat on moved slightly when the girl sat down next to her.

“Do you know why I asked you here?” The words were light and warm, this was not an inquest. The darkness played on the girl’s face and licked the anxiousness that possessed her. She shook her head and the way her braid of dark hair moved with the motion almost made Josselyn’s throat swell up. Rebecca had that same thick dark hair, always tied up in the braids she disliked so much. It had been a repeating fight every morning to get her to bind her hair together. The girl’s hair was a hurricane of a disaster when not bound together; still Rebecca fought every attempt of Josselyn to work her hair.

“You must have noticed we have a rather unusual guest since yesterday,” She remembered Emma riding up to her on her dark mare. Telling Josselyn that Rowen was repeatedly asking for her. Josselyn had replied to her in a hard fashion.

“I am so sorry I talked to Rowen,” She blurted out. Panic was in her voice. “I did not know you disliked us talking to him. I…” Josselyn stopped the girl from talking as she saw her big eyes fill with tears.

“Calm down my dear,” She whispered as the finger that lay on the girl’s lips retreated and cupped the girls face. “You are in no kind of trouble. Please do not fear me, it hurts my feelings.” She forced a little smile upon her lips, but smiling was hard when a girl so like her little blood sister looked at her with such dread.

“Why is it that you joined us, you seem so young and I mean no offense, but you seem unbroken?” Josselyn glanced at Meredith, still standing at the entrance of the tent. They exchanged a quick glance, in which everything that needed to be said was wordlessly spoken. With that one look she felt again Meredith’s slender fingers spreading some stinging paste across her fresh scars upon finding her bloodied and broken. Her soothing words that had pleased Josselyn’s ears as she bit down on her lip preventing herself from screaming out. Meredith’s eyes always told her more than any word could achieve.

Josselyn turned to the girl next to her again. The little dark haired sister had turned her head down and was looking at her feet.

“It was just after I received my moon’s blood, that my father told me he had given my hand in marriage to this man. His name I will not speak of, for I bear him no ill-will. I do not seek revenge like most of our sisters.” She stopped, keeping her eyes locked on her boots unable to look at her leader.

“I understand you did not want to be betrothed to this man?” Josselyn carried on. She could see the girl before her; she could slither into her skin and feel all the different emotions and confused thoughts moving through her. Josselyn could see the girl’s past from her eyes, for she once had been her.

Emma shook her head. “I did not. He was an old man and I was scared of him for he was thrice my age. I ran because I had heard whispers coming from the lips of travelers and old fish wives.”

“What words where those?” Meredith asked from across the room. Her voice had chilled again and her statue had been up straight and frozen from the moment she had brought Emma inside the tent. Josselyn gestured towards her trusted sister to stand down. This girl was not the enemy. She was one of them, maybe more innocent, maybe more vulnerable, still she was one of them.

“Words of a bedeviled female antagonist that lured insubordinate girls into her bed and slept with them, turning them into rebel fighters as well.” The words were soft and spoken with a shame that could only reveal the contradiction she had found as she had finally been found by her sisters.

“And why did you go find such a cruel woman?” Josselyn asked the girl. Had the old man she was sold to been so terrible that this girl would have chosen a demon woman above the beatings?

“I do not believe in such monsters, my liege,” Emma whispered. That was when Josselyn grabbed the fabric that covered her left shoulder. She tensed her fingers around it and heard the ripping sound as she tore it to pieces. A deep and redden scar appeared. It ran from her collar bone down to her breast, just stopping before her nipple.

“Foolish girl, you better start to believe in monsters,” She spoke soft but the words were cutting through the air around them. “One of them is sitting tied to a pole, just outside this tent. Get used to the idea that those stories of demons are true, that way when they come for you, you are ready.”

Josselyn's fingers hovered over her scar; her nakedness was as empowering as it was a display of her vulnerability. But never again. Never again.