Underestimate Me

Meredith was roaming the rivers bank. In her hands she clutched leather waterbags, they had emptied them on their way up the stream, knowing they would be easily refilled. After this stop they would have to be more careful with their water supply, for the travel would venture into the deep woods. Darkness would greet them day and night, animals not as scared as they should be. The next watersupply would be more than a days travel, for the donkey and the walking sisters did not move with high speed.

In the distance she could make out Josselyn, sitting on the big boulders that had been dropped by the violent stream; too heavy to bare. Her grace radiated through the thick summersky, heat was already bending the lines of reality. The air was rippling like water, leaving it hard to distinguish the mood on Josselyns face. Meredith needed only too look in those strong eyes too know what her sisters was feeling. She knew her leader better than she even knew herself. At least, she had always thought she did. Since that snake had turned up, Josselyn had been different. Her story had always been a mystery and Meredith had been fine with the little pieces of information Josselyn had granted her, though now that her past had joined them, she wasn’t sure that she was content with her lack of knowledge.

The sun was beating down on Merediths golden head but she could not convince herself to walk in the shelter of shadow. Her eye stayed upon her love, for she had left her with that devil. Evelyn was with them and even the innocent Emma, innocent yet not foolish. Regardless of the exces security among Josselyn, her body did not agree with the distance between them. Her heart was screaming at her to walk back. As if it was attached to her leader, every step pulling threads from the pounding muscle beneath her ribs. Her eyes could not be rippped from Josselyn as her heart was. She saw her sitting on that boulder, motioning to Emma, who walked over and sat down on a lower rock in front of her sister. Josselyns lank fingers reached to the thick dark hair of her sister, entangling her fingers and pulling strings from it. With a soothing rhythm she saw how Josselyn started to braid. She is not Rebecca, why do you torture yourself?

Ripping her eyes off the scene, Meredith walked on. She would get some fresh water and return to her sisters immediately. This whole venture was ludicrous. Josselyn and Meredith had agreed not to return to him. Not unless it was a case of life and death. The sisters had their own menders, their own healers, such as Laila. Though none knew the mysteries that were revealed to Gregory. None had his touch and his wisdom. He had saved them once. He had been their savior for that one time, that time of life and death. They had promised to stay away. Their presence had been such a threat on his life. Their presence had easily gotten him killed, if they had not been the ones dying. One of wounds, the other of compassion.

Merediths glance traced the rippling of the waters surface. The river was streaming gently downward, unlike that one day.

The angel had ripped the sky. Falling down from grace to splash into the water and dissapear beneath the raving turbulence. It had rained for days and the river had swollen to a broader and stronger version of itself. She had been hiding in trees and caves, staying clear of the rain. River banks had been flooded, branches and stones once dropped where picked up again and carried down stream. After watching the woman fall from the sky, Meredith had sped towards the river, but her eye did not find the naked woman. The seraph had dissapeared with the same divine violence as she had presented herself. Merediths long strong legs carried her down the stream, her eyes wandering the mighty waterway.

Just as she wanted to give up the search. Just as she wanted to return to her convinement of solitude, her eyes spotted the creamy skin. The woman drifted like a piece of wood, speeding down on the water. Her body was swiring around, limbs feeble on the strong current. She was carried down with the wild force of nature. Meredith did not think, without taking her eyes off the helpless frail body, she treaded the violent water. Cold took ahold of her, chilling her bones and soaking her pores. Forces where pulling at her feet, her legs persuaded to give in, let the river take over and float down just like the divinity.

As she neared the bare body, drifting but away from her, she saw the awful clawings on her. Her skin was broken, pierced by a sharpness that could only mean two things; animals, or human monsters. Meredith was close now, she needed only to reach out and she could touch the divine creature. Her hand grabbed the woman beneath her shoulders, hauling her towards shore. The river was getting more violent, angry of her taking its prime possession.

They crashed on the shore, her angel turning more blue than her cream skin should be. A strange apparition lay before her; white skin almost transparent, blue veins and a blueish glow covering her body. Red stripes of agony littered her, showing the fragileness and as Meredith looked closer; they revealed the cruelty of men. Marks like these were no animals. These cuts were too clean and neat for this to have been an animal attack. This woman had been subjected to a babarity only capabal by humankind.

Was she breathing at least? Meredith crawled towards the woman, on hands and knees and layed her head upon the bare torso of the angel. As a strong beating of her heart reached her ear, she finally exhaled. Her ear touched the wet cold skin and she felt how she was raised up and down with the movement of breathing. The angel did not die.

Meredith traced the wounds with her finger; the angel had not died, but was she intended to?

~~~

Rowen was sitting across from her. His heavy manacle still around his neck. Josselyn could see his muscles tensed to keep it upstraight. His jaws were grinding the hard bread between mandible and maxilla. Once he had tasted a single mouthful, the hunger in him had won and he had taken a few more bites. Somewhere she was glad he was eating. She knew she would get no pleasure out of watching him starve himself to death. His death would be a fight. A fight with her, one on one, she would be the one to kill him. She wanted the pleasure of putting a blade between his ribs, or maybe beheading him like she had so many men.

Her fingers tangled in Emma’s hair, moved in a trance, pulling at strands of hair and crossing them into a braid. The girl was leaning back against her, the soft rhythm of her breathing revealing her consent.

“Where are you taking me?” Rowens voice was hoarse but unmistakably strong. Evelyn looked up, searching or waiting for an order to shut him up. Josselyn did react. Her eyes were set on her fingers, moving through Emma’s hair so fluently.

“Somewhere you do not deserve to be.” It was more information than he was due, but Josselyn could not hide the displeasure this trip pressed upon her and her sisters.

“Why are you saving him?” Emma requested as she had sat silent, listening to the conversation around her. Josselyn grimaced. It was a question that had undoubtely occupied the mind of all her sisters. Why were they saving him? Why was she trading in her precious favor with Gregory for the likes of him?

“When you kill a little bear cub, you can expect the wrath of the mother bear to come upon you. I do not like the odds of us against Elrik.” She said to them. “I want to use this cub, then kill him.”

“But we won the battle.” Emma defended.

Flashes of the raid appeared before her. Her sisters hacking through limbs and blood pouring down as rain. The screams haunted her ears and the look upon their faces filled her dreams. She had seen Meredith, her gracefull movements with a blade. Even Emma, who was perched on a treebranch, sending rocks out of her sling. The girl was young and inexperienced, though she had a gift for wielding that sling. Rocks and arrows were raining down, hitting either head of heart. But they had not won. They had lost.

“I did not win anything.” Josselyn said with a stern voice. She noticed how the grip around the thick strands of hair had tightened. “I lost six sisters, Maa save their soul.” Josselyn reached and took ahold of the chin of her little sister, turning Emma’s head so she was facing her. The innocence in those eyes, the ignorance even, still shocked her.

“Do not ever say we won, when that victory has been bought with lives.”