R-16
WARNING: there may be words that refer to racism and activate triggers, so be careful when reading.
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Aysha Lawan, a 42-year-old woman with a few wrinkles at the corner of her mouth and between her eyebrows, her dark skin was of a jet-black hue only seen by people who live beyond the desert, in those tribes that the empire considers barbarians.
Her eyes were round and large with dark lashes which gave an air of veiled innocence to her already mature face, the irises look like the most golden premium whiskey shining like amber against the sun which is one of the hallmarks of the Moon Tribe Silver, along with snow-white hair.
The hair like the moon and the eyes like the stars, the children of the night and the incarnation of the will of the moon goddess, this was the tribe of the silver moon.
"Mom, are you feeling better?" Allancaster asks, approaching his mother and offering his arm for the woman to lean on to walk.
Aysha's body aches worsened in the last days of spring, which was still a little cold on this side of the coast, which left her bedridden for a long time.
"I'm a little better since the good doctor gave me the medicine," Aysha said, trying to reassure her eldest son, but he was still careful to make her sit in the chair to join in the fun of looking at the items on the table with Neon.
"That's good, I bought what the doctor said. Later I will ask Helena to prepare the dishes for you."
Helena is the name of Allancaster's younger sister, she had a figure very similar to her mother, and it seems that the characteristics of the women of the tribe of the silver moon would only be passed on in full to the next female generation.
"Where did you get money? Son… You are not getting involved with those people again I hope" Aysha said with something of concern in her voice.
"Don't worry mum, I sold all the healing potions yesterday, so I have a good amount of money now, we can buy these things without a bad conscience" Allancaster said calmly, as he placed a brown bag of bread next to his mother; the bread was warm and smelled good.
It was white bread!
Neon felt his taste buds salivate, he already wanted to take one and sink his teeth, but in front of the mother who won't move to get a piece of bread, he waited sitting with his eyes shining with anxiety.
"I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse that the Dark Iron Forest is going through the bloody summer" Aysha commented quietly, with some relief that her son could profit anyway.
By the time she met Neon's father, a wealthy merchant who had bought a baronial title, Allancaster was already 18 years old and left home saying he was going to conquer the world, he didn't want to disturb his mother's new life, not to mention that the mother's new husband's family were all a bunch of hyenas and hypocrites who just wanted to humiliate the teenager because of his tribal ancestry and his skin which wasn't as "dark" as his mother's and not as fair as the people of the empire, a sad mestizo who was a disgrace to the dignity of the empire.
The mestizos were worse than the real barbarians outside the borders because they were the symbol (or supposed symbol) of the decay of the empire's decency and morals by conceiving such people with impure blood.
Anyway, Aysha didn't stop her son from leaving, and they only communicated through letters for the next two years, until Neon's birth and her husband's death.
The son seemed to have become a different person, well, from what she knew her son had been through a life-and-death situation, being the sole survivor of a mysterious mission.
In a way it was understandable that her son had changed so much because of such a traumatic event, of course, there were the two years that her son had been away from her.
What did her son have to face alone for all that time?
The bloody summer is the time when the monsters, which come from some mysterious mountain place of the border country, invade the Dark Iron Forest, and many guilds and mercenaries are called to fight the monsters, so the sales of healing potions increased substantially.
Although it wasn't summer yet, the monsters descended earlier and the hunting "festival" started earlier for the mercenaries and adventurers, of course, the nobles were happy to reward such poor cannon fodder that drove the monsters away from the cities.
Anyway, since her son wasn't going to participate in the combat, Aysha only superficially felt sorry for the people who dared throw their lives away into the monsters' mouths.