Don't Cross Me

      The first of the month was always a breath of fresh air. A new start. Another chance to move on, as my love would say.

      “Get up.”

I gripped the blanket and groaned, “Gea…”

      “Come on, you have another chance to move on,” she scolded, “besides your cousin wants to see you.”

      “He can wait.”

      I feel a foot press into my bare back. Abruptly sitting up I look down at the woman next to me. Gea smirks and gets up next to me. “Good morning!”

I get up from my place on the floor and throw the blanket onto Gea. “It’s too early for your nonsense.”

“I love you too Otlene.”

The seventh of the month always brings strange feelings. A week into a new month, sometimes it doesn’t feel real. I often wonder about time, and how easily it can mess with the human mind.

“Can you get out of your own head for five minutes?” Wimarc growled, “can’t you try to, I don’t know, get into the head of the enemy?”

Snapping back to reality I looked over at my cousin, a tall and muscular human being. Although, his outward appearance doesn’t scare me. However, the inside is that what terrifies me.

“Yours doesn’t seem very interesting if I’m being honest,” I shot back.

Wimarc flashed his unusually sharp teeth. “You’re not cleaver.”

I pinched his lips shut. “Go back to filing your teeth you deformed wolf.”

He backed away and picked up his axe that he threw into a trunk of a tree. “I don’t understand what Gea sees in you.”

“I don’t understand what she sees in you,” I echoed.

Wimarc threw his axe into the dirt. “You’re arrogant,” he spat.

“Seems to run in the family.”

“You’re self-obsessed!” he continued, “Always thinking, never doing anything! I would have thought better from our future leader.”

“You know nothing!”

He gave a wolfish grin. “Have I struck a chord?”

Picking up his axe I slammed the hilt into his chest, sending the bigger man flying backwards. “Don’t cross me Wimarc,” I warned, “the Gods won’t be pleased.”

The fifteenth of the month was always the most difficult. Something always happened halfway through the month. Either a rival group would try to invade our territory, or we would crack from the inside. This time, it was a dreadful mix.

“What do you mean they’re outside?”

“I mean they’re standing outside our tent. Now are you going to let them think they’re welcomed guests or show them just how terrifying you are?”

Gea always had a way of riling me up before doing my heiress duties. I grabbed my white fur cape and had my love put it on me. It wasn’t a tradition or anything, but she insists on doing it. Grabbing the axe confiscated from my cousin a few days prior I marched out of my tent to see. Utar please let this go well.

A group of men, who looked more like Wimarc than the people I protect. “Where is Thorn?” one of them, their leader, demanded.

Don’t let them know he’s ill, don’t let them know he’s ill. I reminded myself. “On a hunting trip,” I answered, “he will be back in a few weeks. Whatever you have to say to him you can say to me.”

“It’s still too cold for hunting,” said a man with long blond hair, “no animals out there but birds.”

“This is a different region from your home, different times to hunt you see,” I reasoned.

The first man didn’t look impressed. “No matter. Tell Thorn that if he doesn’t surrender peacefully, we will take this land by force.”

“No!” came another voice, an all too familiar one. Wimarc.

Wimarc came out of another tent with a spear in his hands, his body in a position to fight. I raised my hand and Gea snuck around him and knocked the spear out of his hands with her own weapon. Turning my attention back to the strange men I nodded. “I will let him know.”

They didn’t say anything, they just turned and walked away with our guards making sure they left our lands. But Wimarc didn’t go back to daily life like everyone else. The strange men were barely out of our camp when he approached and shoved my shoulders. “Who do you think you are?”

“My father’s daughter. Don’t ask stupid questions Wimarc.”

“You-” he paused, making a bunch of strange sounds, “we could have killed them! That would have sent a message!”

“Yes, a declaration of war. A war which we do not need right now.”

“You are being stubborn!”

“I’m looking after my people.”

“Thorn said we both need to look after our people. I did not agree to letting them go!”

“Don’t bring my father into this!” I shouted, finally shoving him backwards. “I’m his daughter. Me! Until he recovers what I say goes!”

Wimarc took a step forward and raised his fists. But I had the axe, and only gave a little cut to his right arm. I stumbled back and he had a look of weak on his face until he realized something and frowned.

“I would have taken off that entire arm if we didn’t share blood. This is your last warning, Wimarc. Don’t. Cross. Me.”

The twenty second I awoke to a prod. “Stop it…” I mumbled.

A poke.

“Gea…”

A giggle.

“Enough.”

“Relax,” she finally said.

“I would. But you keep pestering me.”

“Now is the best time to be pestered don’t you think? The world is asleep, except for us.”

I rolled over to where Gea’s face should be, though in the dark it was hard to tell. “You know my love for you is eternal,” I admitted.

Another giggle. “I know, but no matter how many times we say it I feel as though it can never be enough.”

“Then what do you think we should do?”

“I have a few ideas…”

The twenty ninth I went hiking with Wimarc, to try and make amends for what has happened over the past month. “It’s nice to step back every once in a while, no?”

“I will admit, it is rather nice,” he said.

We walked along the cliffs overlooking the nearby sea, as we had done when we were children. I always found it odd how there was a forest atop of cliff, yet down below there was the salty sea water. Though Wimarc never seemed to mind, jumping off tree branches into the water below, at least in his adolescence.

As we walked along I wandered too close to the edge until I lost my footing and slid off the side of the cliff. No, was all I could think. As I was ready to grab onto something, someone grabbed onto me instead. Wimarc.

“Thank Gods for your agility,” I praised.

For a moment, if only a moment, he looked torn. At least, before he pulled a knife out of his boot stabbed my other hand, pinning it to the cliff. “Praise be to Athys, praise be to Otyx,” he said towards the sky.

He looked down at me with his wolfish grin and wolf-like teeth. “You don’t need me to tell you that I envied you,” he revealed, “praying to the Gods really does work huh? Maybe you should pray for a less painful death!”

Letting go of my hand and kicking me in the face, I fell into the sea below. My pined down hand being pulled up from the ground as I fell, and the only thing stopping the salt water from going into the wound was his knife.

The thirty first I felt nubs on my head. Utar told me not to worry and that my horns were just simply growing in. Horns. I always wondered if the Gods existed. I looked at my still impaled hand and gripped the handle of the knife.

In one swift motion I tore the knife from my other hand. Nothing... not even a hint of...

But I have my answer now.