Tears of Sorrow

I slowly came back to consciousness and I could still feel pain from the tips of my fingers all the way down to my toes. Slowly I tried to open my eyes and as a tiny spot of light appeared in my vision I stopped as pure agony stopped me from further trying to see.

I shifted my fingers and it hurt quite a bit but it was at least tolerable this time. I started with small hand movements, feeling the soft blanket under my hand. I notice it's very soft as I continue to feel around as much as I could without igniting the pain in my arm that surges up to my elbow whenever I move my hands too much. I start to hear the softest of words drift into the room.

"do you think he is awake again?" asks a distinctly girly voice in a whisper. I hear what appears to be a boy's slightly younger sounding voice also whispers back with a bit of trepidation. "I can go poke him if you want sister!"

I start to shift my hand slowly on my right side that I can hear where the whispers are coming from hoping to get the attention of the kids. Before I slowly start to lift my hand as slowly as I can before I stop due to the pain shooting towards my elbow once again. I drop my hand back down to the bed and I feel utterly exhausted again as if I had just run a marathon but in reality, I moved my hands a few inches at most.

"Why am I in this bed? Why am I in so much pain?" I think about myself. What happened to me? The last thing I remember is... seeing smoke over the village from Reed's and my secret pond and clearing before we took off running back towards the.... v-village", my thoughts start to stutter as I start to remember brief flashes of what happened. Seeing the gate on fire, the dead guards laying in the grass. A terrible feeling starts to form in my gut as I start to panic in my mind. Remembering the blood under the guards, I start to see a different face emerge, one also laying in a pool of blood, with eyes void of life.

"I think he is crying!" the little girl whispered. "I'm going to let dad know he is awake again!" the little girl said as I heard a rapid movement leave the vicinity quickly.

"I will stay here and watch over him!" the little boy said resolutely from the doorway.

The little boy stayed mostly quiet as he shuffled in the doorway. I couldn't open my eyes so I had no idea where I was but I was overcome with pure grief as I remembered what had happened to my mum.

I watched the sword come out of my mother's chest over and over again in my mind. I remembered that even to the end, she wanted to protect me as she yelled at me to run away so her precious little boy could live on and escape the sudden horrors of the world if not indefinitely then for just a while longer. Even to protect me for one second longer would have been worth it to my mother. So, she gave her life willingly in the hopes that her boy would live a long life.

The tears were flowing down my face now as my small body started to shudder in grief. I forgot about the pain in my body, the worry of what happened to the villagers and I just laid in the bed and cried my heart into the blanket I had finally managed to pull up to hide my face with.

After what seemed like an eternity stuck alone in my grief, I heard footsteps approach me before a weight settled onto the bed and a hand started to run through my hair and another arm wrap around my shoulders and pulled me into a hug.

In the soft embrace from a middle-aged woman, I could finally hear a soft female voice whisper "shhh shhhhhh Bruni it's okay, everything is going to be okay Bruni."

To the comforting hug and the soft words of compassion I slowly started to drift back into the darkness of exhausted sleep.

Later I found out that the women holding me was Anne Flitcroft, the mayor's wife and the 2 voices I had heard were the couple's children, Kait and Heath Flitcroft. They had taken me inside after I had collapsed still hanging on to the hilt of the sword I had buried in the now-dead Gale the Blooded chest.

They couldn't find a scratch or burn on me as the guardsmen and the mayor came to see if I was still alive or if the fire that had appeared all around me and coming from my hair and hands had killed me or not. upon inspection, all the blood that I had on me came from Gale. The mayor had come and picked me up himself up off the ground under heavy guard and returned me back to his mansion.

He carried me personally up to the guest room I recovered in before setting me into the bed. He turned to one of the guards that followed Mr. Henry up the stairs. "Go get a maid let's get the little Mage-ling cleaned up and put to rest in bed. The poor boy has lost enough as it is and he has no one else to care for him. It was his mother that the DAMN mercenary killed!" The mayor snarled out of rage at the injustice the kid's life had become. "First the boy's father not 3 years ago died due to a Forest bear that had come down from the mountains and now this!" the man quietly said to himself as he looked at the boy over his shoulder on his way out of the room. "sorry lad, but I have work to do and more people to help," he said with sadness in his eyes as he left the room before the maids arrived to clean and bathe the boy.