Amor, Vere Oboediens Et Capax

I made the first cut as it stung and hurt while doing so, my hands shaking and making the procedure even worse. I kept going, I needed to see. I could see yet not, why was this even a thing?

The blood fell into the shattered mirror as I hastily wiped it away, constantly spewing insults at the suffering that I was inflicting to myself. And yet I kept going even further, cutting slowly but surely, making the process painful and yet somehow even satisfying.

The shard in my hand left bits and pieces into where I was working. The pain seared as I could only grit my teeth and keep going. The feeling of pain felt oh so insurmountable, and yet so good to finally get it over with. The very moment I was able to do one eye, a soft whisper came into my ear as I shuddered at it.

And the rest could be said for the other eye. Aside from the fact that while I was about to finish it, the whisper became louder and louder as I opened the cut wider and wider. And when I opened my other eye, I could hear it all around me. The only thing I could do was fall to my knees from the exhaustion and listen to the symphony beheld to me.

The world was singing, singing all around me as my eyes opened wide, bleeding, in pain, and yet the beauty of everything was beheld even further to me.

There was nothing else that I could possibly say to make this feeling more similar to anyone aside from those who have personally felt it.

The stings from the tears burned the still-fresh cuts as the blood and eye fluid slowly travelled down my fae into the flat void underneath me. My mouth was still missing, as I kept my eyes on the mirror while I continued everything.

Trying to cut my face to open my mouth again was a very difficult thing to properly do, but I was able to do the same. The final cut was done as I dropped the bloodied shard and looked at my hands. The tears haven't dried, and neither has the blood.

The fatigue of cutting my face to open my two very important senses was a bastion, and I could only fall on my back as I closed my eyes again. The searing pain was getting duller and duller as I slept into a dreamless sleep.

The moment I awoke, I felt as if nothing had properly changed, but when I crawled over to the mirror, I bore witness to my eyes and teeth. White, pure white. No pupils, no irises, simply white eyes. That is, until I blinked.

The shape of my pupil slowly but surely formed, and it wasn't something conventional like a regular binocular vision, no no no, it was different. My left eye was darkening as it turned pitch black with a single, small, and otherwise unnoticeable red dot.

The right eye on the other hand, was a story that seemed weird. Green filled it as it gave way to a very odd golden pupil inside of it. The shape of the pupil was just outright illogical as it was a circle.

Yes, I mean what I said, a circle. Nothing more to it, except for the thing within it. There was a single blue dot that seemed to be floating freely within it, letting itself bounce around to its own flow.

I couldn't help but fall back on my arse as I got away from the mirror. I blinked again as both my eyes seemed to change again. With the left being gold with a pink pupil, and the right being some shade of purple with a gray triangle within it.

There wasn't much I could do to make sense of the situation, so I won't be making sense of it. What made something truly odd were my teeth.

They retained being as sharp as they were while I had the curse, but they had odd things to them.

Every single one of them seemed to host a groove within the front of them. I couldn't really know what that was for now.

So for the time being, I shakily got up, felt my hunger slowly but surely pass away, and try to ignore the song in my ears that was still completely playing.

I needed to get back to the children. I don't even know how much time has passed since I was within this blasted realm. I quickly closed my eyes as I had added another thing to ignore into my list, to be specific, it was the pain.

The darkness dragged me all the way out of the realm and back into the world, and I was outright shocked to see what was there. It was the exact same, but there was something off about it.

There was a grave, and a single piece of paper from my old notebook that I left here for them to use while I was gone.

I waded through the snow with as much speed and force as I could to properly see what was on it.

I looked up in the tree and saw that the fire was out, with only smoke billowing through the branches. The tree itself was unresponsive to me being different, and so I got to the paper, which was lightly soggy from all of the snowflakes.

The words were more than enough to say. "Brother gone. Me might be next. Angry man, go now. Angry man left for own reason."

I could only look at the paper as I shoved it into my fresh pants' pocket as I climbed up the tree once more. My hands were still rather calloused from all of the other times this has happened, but when I tried to get further up, it was felt harder to do so.

The grooves within the tree were slowly disappearing. And at that very moment I noticed something about the skeleton within the tree itself. It's skull was cracked.

I cursed under my breath as I climbed and climbed up the tree, back into the boughs where I saw them. I looked at a sight that was just, well, let me describe it.

It was the angry one. She was sitting there with little to no light in her eyes, holding her knees, while looking at the remnants of the fire.

I stood there, looking at her like the idiot that I was, until I went over to the fire again and started to make it burn again. I pushed the ashes away as I could only sigh from the cold again as I grabbed some of the wood right next to her.

She didn't even acknowledge that I was near her as I grabbed the firewood that we needed to burn, a bit of the fat that I left in my haversack, and a very somber look on the kid's face.

I kept making the fresh fire as I went and grabbed another cut of the meat within the haversack and handed it to her by leaving it in front of her.

She looked up at me as I didn't really know what to do. I'm not even actually sure at this moment. Well, aside from going hardass on her. "Eat. Little one must eat for strength."

Those were the only words I gave her as a little light returned to her eyes as I walked to the fire and started to cook up the meat.

"You know, the snivelling little one was always the kind to walk up to me and hand me my share of the meat when they were done cooking, then they ran back into your arms with some hope in their eyes."

"....."

"I'm not going to say sorry. You knew that this could happen. You didn't place trust in me for good reasons. I don't blame you for going through this.

But I will give my condolences. Your brother didn't quite deserve to die one of the worst deaths a child could suffer. If it is any consolation though, they won't be hungry anymore."

The elf looked at the slowly chilling piece of meat as they then stared right back at me. They grabbed it, bit as hard as they could, which was a bad idea to many since she accidentally bit her cheek or tongue, because there was a little blood.

"You. You dead." were the only words she said as I looked out into the snow. "I've done that before. You need to use longer sentences. Your brother would have wanted you to at least be able to properly converse with someone."

I bit into my own cut of meat as I immediately get a light rush from it. The bloody feeling of cannibalism being good was still there. That was a feeling that I don't find quite appealing in the long run.

"I will kill you. You left us to die."

The words came out of her mouth slowly as I ate the last of my cut. "Because of circumstances beyond my control. So then, what would you like to learn?"

A moment after I finished it I hunched over closer to the fire and kept my hand near it. The heat didn't scar me or broil my hand this time. That was a very good thing. Very very good, now I don't need to worry about summer coming, or the odd occasion where I might actually need to cross a fucking desert.

She stood from where she sat, with the blood staining her lips as she clutched the cut of my cooked flesh within her grasp, giving me pure unbridled anger out of her eyes. "Teach me, how to kill."

I could only look up at her as I tried to think how long had it been since I went into the realm, suffered, and done something really really odd. The elf waited for my answer as I told her to sit down.

"To kill, is something that you should think about, little one. Death is a constant. Life is a variable. Constants and variables are normally intertwined in ways that make sense. But the things I will teach you, they have no sense.

To end a life, you must also be ready to bear the burden of a very very very obvious possibility, you might die while doing so.

Do you truly and completely find yourself willing to perform the deed? Or do you wish to live a normal existence? Live long, in this tree, mourning for your brother as you buried him in a shallow hole because the shovel I brought you was much too small?"

The little elf still have me the same very eyes that I expected to still be seeing. "Stubbornness, a thing that marks a good Hero, or a stupid Villain. I will give you what I give you. Strengthen yourself, and let me open your mind to whether or not you want this to occur."

And when those words were done, I stood up carefully back to my tiny little part of the bough as I kept staring at the sky before me.

'Damn-' my thoughts flew into the cold wastes '-this winter was absolutely shit.' I then spent the rest of the day examining my body and the sorts of changes that have occurred to it.

I used to have 28 teeth in my mouth before I came to this world, predominantly because I had my wisdom teeth removed from my mouth from the pain that they gave me whenever I lived.

And yes, I do mean whenever, not wherever, because every second it had crescendos and the whole shazam going for me. But now, there were fucking 40. I wasn't joking, I kept a shard of the mirror from my "realm" and examined what happened to my face.

I wasn't able to get any supplies for this week, but there was still more than enough for the two of us. She needed tutoring for what she was about to do next. And I don't blame her, but neither do I blame myself.

It may not have been out of my power to be able to ensure their safety, but I didn't. And at that moment, I felt that something was completely different with me. I kept thinking until I realized what was happening.

I was more apathetic to their existences right now. And that wasn't a good thing. I may not have been the attached-type, but this was borderline completely utter disinterest with what they were to my plans.

I was reacting idiotically. I needed a clearer mind to really get myself into the flow. So I calmed myself a lot further and did some deep breaths.

I didn't know how to actually and accurately meditate or do breathing exercises, but more often than not back in the older days I got a tad more shooken up than what I would rather say out loud.

And whenever those days happened, I always made sure to let myself breathe carefully and as much as possible. And they helped, I was out from the jails more often than the average guy who gets into some trouble.

Looking back at the lass, she gorged herself on the meat while I sat near the fire. She didn't get any closer than she had ever been, and I am absolutely sure that something may be different here on out, but that's to be expected since, well, her brother's fucking dead.

Every second of looking into the fire as it crackled and made embers was spent trying to also figure out a better plan. She, as of my current knowledge, is probably the only elf right now. I don't want to test my luck, but I'll try to let things get a tad faster for the sake of safety.

So for now, I stoke the flames, and wrote in the notebook that I had near me, making sure not to make anything lost to me. I needed to make sure that I don't lose my safeties within this fucking world that I got thrown all the way into.

And so I waited. And waited for her to calm down. And waited for an entire day, falling asleep, and seeing her still sit there with grief running down her face and into the tree's branch. "Remember to nourish yourself as well, little one, all of that meat means nothing if it doesn't get used up.

And to simply give your tears to the tree and losing more water is going to be a greater degree of pain that what you'd think.

The suffering now makes the suffering later less."

I didn't give her anything truly substantial to work with, since this'll, at the very least, allow her to use her brain for other things aside from waiting and wishing for death to rejoin her brother.

She looked back up at me and stood up from her sitting position and walked over with my bone knife in hand. I still had my axe with me as I stood and towered over her.

"We go down, and we will see what we can do to allow your o kill me a lot better."

All she did was walk past me and quickly climb down the tree. I sighed and followed after her. This was going to be a long month of her blowing off steam.