"I can't find him! I looked everywhere mom, I can't find him!"
As Kalen approached his family's home, his ears could make out the girlish squeals of his little sister. Even though he was still at the bottom of the hill, the autumn wind seemed to have carried her grievances all the way over to him.
'Either that, or Layla's cries are so loud that they can be heard from half a village away.'
His sister Layla's voice resounded with the kind of youthful urgency that would turn any ordinary offense into an injustice begetting the end of the world. It was the kind of shrieking that only a little girl whose favorite doll had gone missing could make.
As he walked up the hill, Kalen's gloved hand that had been clutching his side instinctively reached up to his head to rub the bridge of his nose as he often did, but paused midway through the motion.
Kalen looked at the bits of earth that were clumped onto his gloves.
"Oh I forgot, I'm still covered in mud."
Kalen shook his head at his own forgetfulness before veering to the side of their house just as he was about to approach the door.
He was sure he would have gotten a mouthful from his mother if he were to step inside, filthy as he was.
The boy stopped for a moment by the pile of buckets placed on the side of the cottage, taking off and dipping his gloves in the half-full pales to clean them. He submerged them while scrubbing the dust and dirt off of his jacket, before also washing his face clear.
He also grabbed a handful of water and brushed it through his dark purplish hair, removing most if not all of the mud that had accumulated there as he fell multiple times throughout the spar.
While he cleaned, he was aware of a dull pulse of pain from his ribs, but as time went on, he slowly put it out of his mind.
Three years of training with Marshall had not been for nothing, after all. While he couldn't say his swordsmanship was on the level of a guard's just yet, he was certainly accustomed to receiving more grievous injuries than today's.
After putting on every article of clothing once again, he finally entered the cottage.
With a big smile emerging on his face, happy to see his mother and sister, he prepared to greet them as his mouth opened.
"Kalen, welcome ba–oh, you're filthy! Go out and clean yourself off!"
Immediately as he stepped through the door, Kalen's mother turned her attention from the young Layla to Kalen, and formed a tight frown before Kalen could say hello.
Kalen looked down at himself with a confused expression, only to see he had forgotten to clean his trousers and the bottom of his jacket.
"Oh–"
"Kally!"
Before Kalen could saything more, a flurry of brown hair sprang from around his mother's shadow and pounced on Kalen. Kalen's hand immediately found itself patting the little girl's head as she welcomed him back much more enthusiastically than her mother.
"Hi Layla, how is your morning going?"
Kalen asked in a sweet voice as he saw the arms of his mother fly up in resignation.
"Mrmm…"
Layla thought about it as she unclutched the lower hem of his jacket. Clearly she did not share the same aversion to mud in the house as her mother.
"Fine…"
"Oh yeah? What's wrong?"
The little girl frowned as her mother answered for her.
"She realized that she lost something this morning, probably from playing with it yesterday outside."
"A toy?"
"Some stuffed thing, a cloth bear?"
"No! Bundun is a rabbit!"
Layla interjected.
Kalen nodded, now aware of what he had overheard her yelling about from so far away.
"I see, well how about I help you find your rabbit later? How's that sound, Layla?"
The eyes of Kalen's little sister sparkled.
"Really?!"
Kalen smiled while nodding.
"By the way, how was Old Marshall?"
After a moment, their mother asked Kalen. He responded without taking his hand off of Layla's head. Kalen's mind instantly went to his injury, but he saw no need to rile up the household.
"...He was alright today, though he needs to take a few days break from my training in order to keep up with some orders at the smithy."
His mother nodded.
"That's fine, I hope you told him how indebted we are to him since he started teaching you. It's hard enough to get a swordsmanship teacher in this village, let alone one as skilled as Marshall. Even your fathe–"
Kalen's mother stopped what she was saying a moment after realizing Layla was present. Prompting Kalen to quickly agree and fill the silence.
"I will mother, I understand how much we owe Old Marshall. I'd never make things difficult for him."
"Good. Oh, and don't ever say that in front of his face. I can't remember how many guards who he trained were knocked on their butts after calling him 'old'."
'...?'
Kalen's mind paused for a brief moment.
"Got it, of course."
Kalen nodded his head and took his hand off of his sister's head, who rapidly repeated to him what she had told their mother about the missing Bundun. From the fragmented story-telling of a four-year-old, Kalen basically figured out that she had lost the stuffed rabbit somewhere in the fields beyond their house. He would start looking there.
Kalen glanced through the back window. The expansive field of grain was reflective of the sun's golden hue and had stalks growing nearly as high as the window itself. As he prepared to walk out the door again, Kalen heard his mother call over to him.
"Kalen, while you're out, take the bucket's on the side of the house and fill them at the well. We'll need at least two to wash the carrots and make the stew for tonight, you hear? And try not to touch any of the grains on your way to the well, okay?"
"I got it."
Kalen frowned at the last part of that sentence, but despite the mention of his condition, he left the cottage smiling.
He swung around the side of the cottage and picked up two stacked wood buckets, before disappearing into the shoulder-high field of grain.
On his walk through the field his eyes wandered to the staggering height of the grain. Their stalks had nearly risen to his own height, threatening to swallow him should he enter the golden sea.
"Hmm, I guess it'll be only a few more weeks until the next harvest."
As Kalen approached the stone water well, his purple irises fell onto the striking natural wall of violaceous woodland. The Moonlit Forest, that surrounded the sunken basin where Willowhearth was.
As a young child, Kalen had been told that it was a sign of luck that his personal features so closely resembled the hue of their home. As similar to the local flora, his hair and eyes both expressed a deep shade of violet. Though the common consensus of his sister and mother was that his eyes were actually a darker shade of blue.
"If only they didn't come with such a curse, I might've actually taken pride in my appearance."
Kalen, in the whole of Willowhearth, was the only one who bore such a likeness to their local environment. However, his abnormal appearance was not what bred his loneliness and isolation, but the affliction he had developed during his earliest memories.
Kalen sighed as he set down the two buckets he had carried over to the well.
His need to take care not to touch the village's crops was just a small part of what made him a pariah in his community. The real reason people avoided him was for the same reason he was made to wear clothes that encompassed most of his exposed body.
He could not touch others.
Or, it was more accurate to say that he must not touch others.
Such a condition had long put a stigma on Kalen's back. One which unfortunately had extended to the rest of his family.
Because of this, Kalen knew that if his own father hadn't known the blacksmith Marshall before he passed, there would be no one in the village who would've been willing to teach the boy who could make them feel sick with a simple touch.
It was mercy enough that he was still allowed to live in the village, but alas, the village head was a generous person.
As his face fell into a scowl while thinking on such things, Kalen's gloved hands grasped the rope pulley of the well. As he got to work bringing up the bucket from its depths, the resistance he felt from the bucket was noticeably peculiar.
"Did something fall down?"
Kalen's scowl broke from confusion.
While pulling it up from the depths, the bucket was noticeably heavier than usual. Kalen's first thoughts were that something might have fallen into the well and then the bucket at the bottom, but there was no vibrations of movement along the tense rope length.
In Kalen's mind this immediately ruled out the possibility that an animal had fallen in. It was too dark to see into the pit of the well to make sure though, as the structure bore an overhead roof to prevent rain contamination.
After a moment, Kalen finally brought the bucket up from the abyss, where he immediately noticed too mud-soaked ears popping out from the wood.
"You've got to be kidding me! What are the chances that I would find this here?"
Kalen's confusion was yet again replaced by mirth as he pulled the stuffed rabbit doll of his sister from the well's bucket. He tipped it slightly just to check, and sure enough the rest of the bucket had filled with mud.
'Seems like someone let the rope go slack and the bucket hit the bottom, or maybe…'
Kalen facepalmed. On second thought, he could totally envision the sight of his sister and one of the other children from the village scooping mud from the ground and throwing it into the well. Along the way, they must've accidentally knocked in the rabbit toy too…
'That seems like a ridiculous chain of events, but they are just children after all.'
'Thankfully the prejudices of children have yet to form, and Layla still has people to play with.'
Kalen smiled to himself, shaking his head. Though the fact that he had found his sister's toy so fast and not to mention, at the site of his other task, possibly left him with a lot of time on his hands.
Kalen looked toward the well.
'Should I go back early? Or…should I practice Old Marshall's lesson from this morning?'
A pulse of adrenaline ran through Kalen's arm as he nudged the dull sword around his waist. Though his rib had yet to even begin healing, he felt like he could probably still move it before it began to get sore. Kalen did some twisting motions to experiment with that hypothesis.
'Yep, I could probably get a few hours done before I'm forced to stop. Let's do it!'
Kalen looked around himself before he started. In the field of mature grain, he couldn't see his cottage from where he was, though he knew it was roughly south.
A devilish grin creeped onto his face as Kalen unslung the sword at his waist.
"I'll just say it took an extra long time to find the rabbit."
Kalen said aloud to himself as he took a glance at the face of the stuffed rabbit. His eyes narrowed in mock seriousness as if sussing out whether or not Bundun was going to rat on him when they got back.
The air soon became filled with the smell of sweat, and the grunts of a village boy as he repeatedly practiced forms.
…
Hours came and went and by the time Kalen had gathered both filled buckets and the stuffed rabbit from around the well and began to head south, the sky had started to darken.
"Mom will scold me a bit, but not too bad. I probably missed some preparation, but there will definitely be enough time to wash the carrots for the stew."
Kalen spoke aloud to nobody but himself.
His mind wandered to the dinner preparations he was possibly missing out on. It had gotten late, but he wasn't worried. Fetching the stuffed animal for Layla had surely earned him some points in the mind of his mother.
At least, such was his hope.
Yet as the sky began to darken, so too did Kalen's face.
As he made his way over a hill of wheat, a throbbing hue of orange and red reflected in his violet eyes.
"What…what is this?"
Kalen's face fell into a gaunt terror.
His arms abandoned the buckets and rabbit and he began to run as fast as his legs could take him.
Kalen flew down the basin of wheat. All around him passed by visuals of orange and yellow flames licking the sides of buildings and roaring through broken windows.
As loud as the roaring flames themselves, screams shook the air and the boyish mind of Kalen, that was growing more messy by the second.
As he dashed over the scorched beams of fallen buildings, Kalen saw furred shapes move far faster than him over the bruning ruins of the village like flies, producing screams whenever they jumped down onto someone.
Kalen ran to the hill of his home, and was able to make out the agonized faces that villagers made. Illuminated by fire as the fangs of the wolfish figures tore into the soft flesh of their bodies.
Kalen strained his eyes as tears began to well in them. He looked forward and up to the hill. Where were his mother and sister?
As Kalen began to panic he reached the summit of the hill, only to be greeted by a scene from his nightmares.
"KALEN! RUN!"
Kalen's mother wailed as she saw the figure of her son arrive. His forlorn expression as he witnessed her neck clasped tightly by wolfish beast and drawing blood, broke the dam that held her cries back.
Kalen's breathing stopped as he noticed a trail of red liquid streaming down her tunic, from her forehead to her fingertips, signs of struggle were present.
And so too, was the grotesque fanged grin of the monster beside her.
A river of sweat streamed down the adolescent's face as the world around him seemed to dull. His mind lost rationality as it went into the first state of genuine panic that it had ever experienced.
The sensations of Kalen's body suddenly went dark. Even the pounding in the side of his chest that he had worked up during his training left him, and all feeling went to his fingers, to the metal guard of the dulled sword at his waist.
Kalen's hand slowly crept down toward the blade's handle, which caused the beast gripping his mother's neck to grin even wider as it noticed his actions.
Once his mother saw what he was doing though, she broke out in distress.
Her pained shriek allowed Kalen to tear himself out from his trance.
"NO!"
"Kalen, take your sister and run! Run Kalen! Now!"
Kalen's mind reeled as he saw the fragile body of his sister break from the woods and run toward him, as fast as her small form could.
'S-sister? Layla!'
His shock only increased as he saw the tears running down her cheeks.
"Kally, please!"
Kalen tried to understand what was happening as his sister collided into him. Her tears stained his jacket as she begged him to take her away from here.
"Kalen, run!"
"Mom! I can't leave you!"
Kalen shouted back. The wolf at his mother's side narrowed his eyes at this, and growled a deep pitch.
It was conversing, Kalen realized. As more of its kind sprung from the brush of the woods around them, he understood that it called for reinforcements to deal with them.
"You have to go, Kalen! Now! Take your sister with you!"
His mother's speech was cut off as the beast tightened his grip with a growl.
Kalen bit his lip and glanced at Layla. Her eyes were red and tearful, but she appeared unharmed. His mind felt like it was being torn apart. That he was making an impossible decision that he shouldn't have to make.
'What do I do? What can I do?'
His hesitation lasted for a second too long however, as one of the beasts present fell down on all fours and broke into a sprint toward the two.
'I must protect Layla!'
Kalen scooped up his sister and held his sword out with his other hand. Running as fast as he could in the opposite direction of the beast, he fought through the pain that was spreading in his chest.
'I'm sorry mom! I'll find a way to save you, I swear!'
Kalen ran into the darkness of the woodlands as he swore to himself, before dedicating himself to losing their pursuer. Who he noticed was just then joined by another one of the present wolf-like beasts.
He no longer had the luxury to think about anything but running for the rest of the night, and so he let his sister under his arm cry enough for the both of them.