• Gore streamed from the gash, his body gone limp. Menispermum raised her hand to cover her mouth, her eyes fogged and she moved the body. It slumped down and hit the floor, limbs falling about over the body. She was surprised by her own strength as the skull had nearly cracked into two separate pieces.

    A shiver ran the length of her spine as she left the room and retrieved her pack. From it she pulled the scrap of Drosera’s blanket and went back in the room. After giving the blood enough time to flow as it could she wiped his head with the cloth, prepared to salvage his brain as she could not drag an entire body back to Raeyunna with her. Once the cloth had absorbed as much as it could she removed it and saw the brain.

    It shocked her to her very core, she had been so careless. The brain was severed. Cut open by the edge of the trunk. The souls would have left it, gone to freely in the open. She had taken the priority of killing Anethum further than that of bringing his brain back Aristolochia. She hated herself now, for all that she had let go wrong. A whimper sounded in her throat and she stood up, grabbing her sack and running out the door.

    The bar downstairs was booming with noise at the peak of the evening and she doubted most of the fight had been heard. She clutched her sack to cover the majority of the blood coating her hands, nodded to the bartenders and hurried from the building. Though she had been traveling all day she was not adverse to traveling throughout the night. She wanted to be home and though her legs ached from fear and hopelessness she persevered.

    She took the Western Salt Path until she believed that she was directly North of Raeyunna and headed south. After a few long nights of walking the trees began to thicken, getting taller and fatter before it condensed into the forests. Raeyunna lay in twilight upon her arrival, most of the townspeople gone in for the night. Menispermum crept up to her home and quietly turned the knob and pushed it open.

    Inside, Aristolochia lay upon Menispermum’s mat, already in a deep slumber. Menispermum walked quietly over and touched the woman. Aristolochia’s eyes opened and she looked at Menispermum for a short second before sitting up.

    “Menispermum,” she whispered the question obvious in her eyes, “You’ve come back I waited here for you to return.”

    “Yes....” She said quietly, not raising her head to meet Aristolochia’s eyes.

    “You didn’t find him, did you?” She asked.

    Menispermum nodded, “I did. I found exactly where I was and I saw him and I even spoke to him.”

    “It’s alright if you couldn’t,” Aristolochia said, but she evidently did not think so, “I wouldn’t have been able to kill him. I understand.”

    “No. I did find him. I did kill him.”

    “Then what is wrong?” Her tone hinted around excitement.

    “I- I destroyed his brain. It was cut into. It was so stupid of me; I owe my life for failing you.”

    “No. No. It’s alright. It happens, Menispermum. They’re born, that’s how we know that they exist. I can have one, it’ll die within a few years anyway and I’ll have another child.”

    Menispermum shook her head, “I couldn’t let you go through that. You know I couldn’t.”

    “Then what do you plan to do about it? There is nothing you can do,” Aristolochia told her, but she was wrong. There was something that could be done about it.


    In the late afternoon the next day Menispermum had decided. She had nothing to live for, and there was nothing that she could do but this. The severe hopelessness that she felt in her situation left nothing but room for hope, but she had none. Menispermum knew that there was only one option if she wanted her friend to be happy. Give her the only soul available to her, her own.

    The knife was a rusty one, old and dull, but sharp enough to do its job. She slid the knife beneath her clothing and walked into the centre of the village so that she would be found immediately. As she pulled the knife from its hiding place she felt nothing, no regret, no sadness, and no second thoughts lingered in her head. There was no question of what would happen to her after her death. Even if she did not know it, she would be Aristolochia’s child.

    Menispermum took one long breath and let it out, raising the knife to her breast. Without feeling she plunged it into her dark skin. It began with rivulets, a small amount of blood seeping past the knife. She removed the knife and a heavy flow started.

    Her legs went weak and she collapsed into a strange figure upon the ground. Pale green hair sprawled beneath her, lavender eyes staring blankly. She saw nothing in her line of vision, heard nothing but a buzz in her ears, felt nothing, and thought nothing. Despite the fact that she was dying it was the best reality she had ever felt. She was completely calm, empty and serene. Like overdosing on a drug, slowly but unfeelingly fading into oblivion on the best high you’d ever felt.

    She came to register the buzz in her ears as screams and calls of those around her, her mind reviving from its state of panic for only a moment. She saw the witch-doctor come towards her, her walking stick tapping against the hard, dry soil.

    “What can we do?! Please! Help her!” A faerie woman shouted.

    “No,” the doctor replied, “Leave her.”

    Menispermum’s mind then faded into emptiness, the world vanishing into darkness.



    To read chapter six: http://gaiaonline.com/arena/writing/fiction/vote/?entry_id=100734439