Ch 5

One week of midsummer, she knew that night was the first blood moon of the year. When it began to get dark, the panic-filled servants and peasants to the temple ran to hide, to pray, to shout prayers for salvation to reach. Their sins publicly confessed and they understood that the witches and the devil would be loose in the savannahs looking for souls to collect.

She was the only one who did not go to the temple. She went up to the high hills of the mountains to contemplate the phenomenon all night long in all its intensity. She knew it would happen. The witch doctor gave her numbers and formulas to calculate. SHe wanted to check how true they were. SHe had no doubts. As she watched the night evolve, he understood that his calculations were correct. Nothing to do with demons and the dead. It was a natural fact.

A bright light in the sky caught his attention. Her heart squeezed. She remembered being only 14 years old, playing a woman of mettle. Her tears made her heartbeat jump and she couldn't deny it, she was scared seeing that light coming directly at her. Devoted to the goddess of the sacred scapular seas, she also knew that the blood moon coincided with the cherry blossom festival. Very few inhabitants knew what it meant; she also knew that the blood moon had nothing to do with rejoicing over the death of the warrior god's son; in reality it was a very ancient festival of theirs. It had nothing to do with the god lord of tranquility, who in fact his last supper was actually the celebration of the son of God and his Apostles of the spring prayer.

She was pondering on those terms; when Inexorable the light approached her, crashing against the mountain, several meters below where she and her horse were, with an explosion that thundered the region, generating a strong tremor that forced her to take hold of her mount and from the fright she let out a stentorian scream, she could not prevent her nag from rearing up and threw her into the air without considering her real essence.

It was mid-morning when the sun and the licks of her noble steed woke her up. Immediately she remembered. The Light. She saw the smoke and grabbing her horse's bridle descended to investigate.

whatever it was melted part of the mountain, now its stones were a gelatinous mass of green. With the tip of his dagger he took some. She heard the screams. Her men were looking for her. She waved her arms and they, with a gesture of not knowing whether to rejoice or curse for finding the countess or the worst witch in the region, approached with fear before the beautiful girl, who smiled innocently when they approached to take her back to her home.

The young girl asked for a blacksmith, the business she wanted to deal with was urgent. She needed someone knowledgeable to guide her on this particular subject. There was no bellows. The one in the castle was full of cobwebs, for lack of wood and metal, and of course there was no one who knew how to maneuver it. From the village they brought her a drunkard, mute and half crazy, who supposedly knew how to deal with metals. The mountain was hers, like all the farmland that her servants could use. But from now on the mountain was forbidden and with life would be paid the daring that anyone dared to step on her lands.

The comments behind his back were incessant.

--The doctor customs, the girl's brain was damaged.

--She was a murderess and a witch. Very soon the bonfire will take her away. She did not go to templ at the hour of the Lord, and it is a very bad hour when she was born. That's why her mother immediately hated her.

The madman did his casting and a shiny, liquid, golden metal was transformed. The young girl instantly smiled. She knew what it was. It was a sign from the heavens that the blood moon gifted her. A new destiny would have to be built from that hour. Destiny would have to change.

The time of the tributes was coming. Four years they had not come. The blood moon announced it. And all in that evil thought were pleased. The war lord emissary made himself noticed. Standing in the middle of the road he showed in the distance a blue silk flag. In just days he would be there to rob, to plunder, only now there was nothing to deliver.