“This place... it's peaceful. It is amazing. I wish I could see it for myself.”

As Kalli seated herself in the remnants of the keep, Essa drifted about, locating a good stick about a thumb’s width, perfect for a ‘sword,’ and drifted back towards her friend. “I wish you could too. I don’t know why we’ve never come here before. I guess it’s because it’s always been just MINE you know? My sanctuary. The thought of anyone else being here never crossed my mind. I'm sorry for that. I should have brought you here.” En route, she stopped next to a young tree, its trunk several inches in diameter, that like so many other plants, had grown over the years through the cracks and defects in the once stone floor. She smiled at it, before employing an en garde position, holding her makeshift sword at the ready.

"There’s a tree growing here, used to be a sapling, but it’s bigger now,” she began, providing her friend another auditory painting as she went. “This tree...has been so many things over the years. Sometimes, it’s an enemy, and we fight!” she squeaked a bit excitedly, her sword thrusting and blocking, swinging and dodging around the motionless plant as she did so. “Sometimes, it’s been my commanding officer, OR one of my subordinates, and I have plenty of orders to give,” Essa went on, her body language becoming passive, except to salute the tree. “Sometimes, it’s a dashing prince and he sees me from across the room and we watch each other as we drift, little by little towards each other until we meet in the middle. And we dance,” the teen instantly took to swaying, adding a spin and whirling about the tree as if it were a dancing partner.

As if realization of her age began to set in, she slowed to a stop, mirth fleeting from her light complexion, eyes taking in the tree solemnly. “I should have named this tree you know. It's been such a wonderful actor of a thousand talents in all of my play and pretend,” she mumbled lightly, setting her ‘sword’ down next to it and ambling off to skirt about the perimeter where she began collecting little wild flowers and ferns. Once satisfied, she assumed a seat cross-legged next to Kalli and began weaving the flowers and fern together into a wreath.

“This is my song to you, dear Essa.”

From where Essa was meticulously tying stems of her flower chain, the little brunette glanced up towards Kalli, a warm smile appearing on her face. “A song for me?” she bubbled, wriggling in her seat summarily. She stopped her task, devoting her full attentions to her talented friend so as to appreciate the gift without distraction.




Touched to her core, Essa bit at her lower lip, genuinely enchanted by the poetry that flattered her so. Chocolate colored eyes very nearly brimmed over, completely moved by the kindness. “You make me sound so magical,” she mused longingly. Kalli’s melodious voice surrounded them as she sang, the old stone walls like arms to hold the two in phonic bliss. She was quiet for a moment as she worked on her flower wreath. “You know, the gods can work miracles. They could give you your sight back, if we prayed hard enough. I pray every day that maybe, just maybe my father will return, alive and well and happy to see us, and I pray your eyesight is returned. I know that’s a lot to ask, so if they could only choose one prayer to answer, then I would want them to choose your eyesight,” she avowed rather endearingly. Without another word, Essa, too, broke into a quiet song, her voice not nearly as dulcet as Kalli’s though pleasant still to the ear. A doleful and sweet incantation, it drifted over their heads and across the aged stone of the decaying fortress.



No one ‘got’ Essa the way Kalli did, not even her own kin, who she had a harder and harder time relating to with each passing day. Admittedly, she wasn’t like them at all, and feeling ever more the pariah, Essa sought sanctuary in her books, or cherished retreats like the old fort, or her best friend. “Here, I made this for you. It’s a flower wreath. I’m gonna put it on your head okay?” she shook off the melancholy their conversation had dipped in to as Essa proudly fixed the simple but pretty little wreath atop Kalli’s crown of platinum blonde hair. Sitting back on her haunches, she giggled. “You look like a beautiful wood nymph. Now I shall have to protect you from the satyrs that come snooping about.”

“Still,” the brunette royal answered, working to allow Kalli’s statements to smooth the contours of her guilt on the matter, though she still found it difficult. Of course no fault lay in any one, and certainly it was foolhardy to turn one’s resentment and vitriol towards the gods. They must have their reasons for making permissible the burdens of their earthly mortals. “Well, you never know. Miracles happen,” Essa concluded, and even though it was a far-fetched request to ask of the gods, little embers of optimism still glowed in her heart. Taking full advantage of the gift of sight, she glanced around at the foliage that was inch by inch recalling the once-occupied construct of men, the quietude of it helping to relieve earthly cares and concerns. Magical indeed. At least, to a boisterous imagination like Essa’s. A smile lifted the corners of her darling mouth once again, easily reaching her eyes to signify the authenticity of her mirth. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Girls our age are supposed to be thinking of boys and future marriages and having children and politics and all that, but here we are…..And I like this much better,” She plucked a single blade of grass and twirled it idly between her thumb and forefinger. “I hate the idea of being too old to get lost in worlds of fantasy,” she considered such delinquencies in her perspectives, especially when analyzing all the adults she knew; seemingly struggling to remain happy while they fought bloodless battles amongst themselves over who held the most power, commanded the most respect, monopolized the most resources, and so on. They always appeared rigid and devoid of happiness, going about their days so grounded in a desolate reality of their own creation that they'd long since forgotten how to do something as simple as stare at trees and blades of grass or make flower wreaths. Maybe it was by sheer luck that her flights of fancy and lack of focus had thus far escaped notice by her mother or relatives. Or maybe, they simply didn’t care. Either way, she took no issue. What lay in store for herself was hard to imagine, hard to hypothesize, and even harder to employ acceptance of such inevitability, should the time come.

Her inner deliberations tapered as Kalli paid her a compliment. She giggled a little more. “My singing voice sounds like a cat yowling for a meal, but thank you,” she couldn’t help but laugh. Teenage girls were nothing if not insecure, and the greatest of their own critics. Finding self-acceptance always proved to be an insurmountable task for her, though that was something she kept close to her heart. She had her moments however, where attitude, and arrogance, came easily, exuding the confidence she otherwise found elusive in any other context.

“Turning into a tree doesn’t seem so bad, though, I wouldn’t want to be like that forever,” Essa mused, contemplating a tree’s existence. She liked movement and activity far too greatly to shed such freedoms in order for great age and unflappability. “You know I think th-” The teen started to speak before something caught in her hearing. It was still a short distance off, but it was the undeniable sound of human voices. Drawing silent, she turned her gaze to follow the auditory trail, staring off with brandy brown eyes in its direction. “You hear something?”

There was almost heartbreak. How dare anyone come violate the sanctity of her fortress, of her secret place, her refuge in the world. And yet, someone approached. For a moment, the brunette adolescent wasn’t sure what to do. Some part of her felt a vehement need to defend her fort, and yet, a voice of reason assured her that that was absolutely ridiculous and her ego had inflated inaccurately to excessive levels regarding her own competence. Thinking the better of it, she got to her feet, dared to listen for a few more seconds before reaching down for Kalli’s arm. “Come on, maybe they’re just passing through,” she offered up in optimism. “There is plenty to hide in. We’ll just find a spot until they’re gone.” With care, she helped Kalli to her feet and guided her towards the cragged remnants of fortress walls. Where a collapsed wall had left a pile of rubble at their feet, and tumbled half-strewn beams for them to duck under, Essa pushed her friend’s head down gently to lower it enough to clear the beam. “Careful….footing,” she cautioned, hastening to get them out of view. Curling up in the base of an old watch tower, half of its interior long since toppled, it was difficult to traverse save for a few entry spaces made possible by the ancient building’s time-warped defects. Proving to be a perfect little nest, Essa helped Kalli inside, the two squatted down in the dark, out of sight, yet able to maintain a few of the inner yard of the old fortress by way of the missing bricks here and there.

Essa’s brandy brown eyes scanned the otherwise motionless scene. She could hear the voices growing louder, but saw nothing…..yet. It would be another minute or so as time rolled by, leaving the girls in a small infinity of silence save for their own breathing. Slowly, a group of six individuals emerged along the vestiges of the old road, on five horses, one carrying two riders. They rode into the fort, their voices audible, but hard to understand.

“I see them,” Essa whispered to Kalli. “Six people, five horses.” The majority of them were dressed in dark clothing of dyed leather, the lower half of their faces painted black. “I can’t hear what they are saying….” Collectively they dismounted, and one individual emerged instantly as a leader of sorts. He had a tall bearing, dark hair, and a build that testified to his physical potency. Essa watched them, trying to describe things here and there to Kalli. The group dispersed a little, but remained in a rather small arc, and one person became the center of the collective’s focus. Dressed like a local in the clothes of the peasantry, his face was not painted, and he wore a shaky grin on his middle aged face. When he found himself in the center of the circle, the humor was already beginning to drain.

On and off in the wind, Essa could barely make out the words, hearing only broken bits here and there.

“.........told them about………..foundation of this organization is one of………….” The tall imposing leader of the group was pacing around the sixth individual in the center of the circle, like a massive predator, eyeballing its next meal. The very appearance of the scenario was making Essa nervous, the atmosphere changing further with each passing moment, darkening as the set-up harbored prophetic undertones.


“.......I had no choice!........was just one….I gave them…..” the local in the center was suddenly on trial, and adamantly defending himself. Surrounded on all sides, it wasn’t going well. Essa could feel anxiety welling up inside of her, the sense of uneasiness compounding with each breath, mirroring the blooming anxiety in the man who was suddenly the outsider.

“I don’t like this, Kalli,” she dared to mouth the words. “Like a pack of wolves on a lamb..”

“.....just one? ...One?.....loss of JUST one…...still unacceptable….betrayed us…...the Black Hills don't....” the dark leader was calm, quiet, particularly hard to hear. He seemed unflappable, collected, and all the more sinister for it. The Black Hills? Not a name Essa was familiar with offhand, but that wasn't unusual.

“......please…...surely you……..else was I supposed to do?.......family to look out for….” the target was more and more realizing the gravity of the situation, that he had not been brought out here to boost his ‘membership’ in whatever this was. He wasn’t being awarded, he wasn’t being inducted, he wasn’t being praised. Essa’s legs cramped from remaining so curled up and confined to the makeshift hidey-hole they’d found, but the scene unfolding before her dared her to do anything about it. The voices of those involved were rising, at least, the target’s voice was, higher and higher as he made his case for his own defense. Essa did not recognize any of them. The five predators creating the perimeter of the circle were unknown to her, especially with their faces half painted, their clothing of thick leather, visibly armed, and ominous in presentation. She glanced about their immediate surroundings, looking for a means of escape, a profound sense of dread like cement in her gut.

“..........family is dead…...the price you pay…….”

The words struck in Essa’s ears, mouth wide open in disbelief. “By the gods...Kalli I think we should leave…. I can’t hear everything...but….”

Once more her whispers trailed off as crying and wailing broke the otherwise quietude like the shriek of a siren. The target’s pleas went ignored, his suffering reaching the tree tops and scattering birds roosted there, as the rest of the group spurred into action. Several of them were procuring rope from their horses and it took the five of them to restrain their hapless target as he thrashed and flailed, his hands and feet tied. To Essa’s horror, they dragged him towards some of the largest trees in the area, throwing the rope up and over the branches. In doing so, they’d moved out of Essa’s direct field of vision, and it seemed a perfect opportunity to flee.

“We have to go, I can’t see what’s happening but….” She urged frantically, grabbing at her friend’s arm and working to usher her through the tangle of crumbled building materials and out the other side of the old watch tower in which they’d been hiding. The sounds of screaming began to amplify, piercing and violating their ears, and somewhere in that, a different sound, one more terrible, if such a thing was imaginable. It was a sound of ….stretching….of structures giving out under the strain of overpowering forces. As Essa extricated herself from a gaping hole in the watch tower’s exterior, she quickly turned and straightened to further ameliorate Kalli, the blare of excruciating agony a backdrop around them like the curtains of a theater.

Without any conscious thought, Essa’s panic-stricken eyes darted towards the center of the sound, and through the dilapidated walls, clear as day she could see the target, the lamb, the fellow who had committed so heinous a crime, that the people around him had seen fit to destroy the entirety of his life. Each arm and leg pulled taught, he was strung up across a few trees, the branches serving as pulleys, with horses on the other ends. Essa would never forget the way he looked, splayed into unnatural angles as he was being pulled apart, screaming in the most guttural of ways she could never have though possible from a man. The sounds of tendons and ligaments snapping under the pressure was sickening, tissues tearing and as she stood there, locked in paralysis, the horses were sent into a final charge in opposite directions. The target came apart into pieces and a violent spray of angry crimson. The image burned forever in her brain, the teen squeezed her eyes shut, hands clamping over her ears, a desperate attempt to shove out the sensory onslaught of a gruesome death that would haunt her until her dying day. Unable to unsee what it looked like when a man was ripped a part, and his insides suddenly outside, everywhere, all at once, the girl almost shrieked herself, those short nanoseconds playing over and over and over again in her mind’s eye, the sound of it, the gods-awful sound of it, loud and oppressive in her ears.

The peculiarity of trauma was such that it is accompanied by a host of mechanisms of the body to defend itself against such events, to shield it, and to instill a sense of survival. Vulnerable, alone and the innocence of the fort as their refuge now awash in a see of blood and entrails, Essa and Kalli were likewise now in the most dangerous of scenarios. With hardly the time for hysteria to induce inertia, Essa’s eyes popped open, grabbing at Kalli’s arm and tugging her along in an explosive tilt away from the fort. “Oh gods...oh gods.....gods...we hafta go!” she sobbed, trying not to yell, lest it give away their position, had they not already, tears pouring down her cheeks, voice trembling and strained, despite her best efforts to keep it reeled in for Kalli’s sake. “We hafta go! We hafta go! Run!” Off into the underbrush she dragged them, branches slapping and scratching at their arms and faces, felled trees and nearly decomposed old stumps all proving to be obstacles to trip and fumble them, and yet, in an all out adrenaline surge, Essa just ran, her grip tight on Kalli’s arm, frantic to escape the carnage behind them.