A Love Like No Other

She was a beast, I was a hunter, you get the gist of it. Here goes nothing.

This is the story of two younglings leading two very different lives yet fate would do what fate does best and have their paths be crossed. One of the youngling happens to be me. I am Elis Artemas, hailing from a family of triumphant beast hunters, at your service. 

Before we move on with the story, let me introduce my family properly. My great-great-great grandfather was the first man to hunt down and identify all of the mountains beasts of our land. My great-great-grandfather was paralyzed so he didn't become a hunter but did help compile The Book of Beasts and was an expert on the subject. Then comes my great-grandfather, who was also a master swordsman and a Rank One Beast Hunter. My grandfather was the best of the best, well, at least until my father came along. He wandered to lands different from our own and hunted beasts we had never heard of, hence adding to the Book of Beasts. Finally, my father. He was the only man ever, in the history of hunters, who was triumphant in hunting down the rarest beast of all; the White Winged Cat. So you see, I was meant to be a hunter and a great one too. It was because of the hunters that us humans had a chance in the world, and when I failed at the very job I had been born for, you can only imagine how everyone reacted. 

Luckily for me, I never got to see it all unfold because I had run off. After what I had done, I did not have the heart to go back, especially when my heart was somewhere else. 

Now back to the story. After years of arduous practice, the day had come for me to go on my first real hunt. I had just turned sixteen, the age when a boy evolves into a man and is officially allowed to participate in the hunting tournaments. It was a day I had been looking forward to since the first time I laid my eyes on a picture of a beast as my father narrated me a story about his first hunt. You know there's a saying that is something like "Everyman's first is his most memorable." Well, it's true.

 As I saw the beast before my eyes that day, everything around me stopped. All I could hear was the sound of my heart beating and my father shouting my name. Soon it all came zooming back, and I was back in the real world, the beast still in front of me. She was nothing like what I had seen before, not even close to the pictures of beasts in the Identified Beasts Archive. She had iridescent black fur and eyes the colour of topaz. In size she was three times larger than myself and towered above me in all her mysterious glory before she turned around and pranced in the opposite direction. Without thinking, I ran after her and I kept on running until I lost track of her. She seemed to have disappeared in the blink of an eye. I found myself in a part of the mountain that I had never seen before. The trees were thicker and the light breaking through them gave it an almost ethereal ambience. The whole time I wandered there looking for the beast, my sword was in my hand, ready for anything that came my way. Back where the tournament was taking place, people started looking for me and soon they would be talking of my failure in hushed voices. As for me, I kept wandering. Finally, I saw a shadow. I tiptoed nearer to it, not knowing whether it was the creature I was seeking. Something moved again and this time, it was partially illuminated by a stream of light. I recognized a shoulder, a bare human shoulder. Then I saw a hand and finally a head peeking at me from behind a tree. It was a girl, the same age as I, perhaps a bit younger or older. She had wavy black hair covering her bare chest and the same fiery yellow eyes. 

"Are you a shapeshifter?" I barely whispered. I saw her eyes and they were staring at my sword. I carefully placed it on the floor. "I won't hurt you." 

She moved a bit closer and as the light caught her hair it erupted into a plethora of different colours. She was the beast. I was bewitched and quite frankly in love. Yes, yes, I know. A beast hunter and a beast. But it's true, I loved her and I still do. I did not have the heart to kill her because I realized the same curiosity in her eyes that I probably had in mine when I looked upon her. She walked over to me and touched my face and examined me closely with her big yellow eyes. Man, her eyes. I have mentioned them for the third time by now.

So what next? well we got married in our own little way and started a family of magnificent shapeshifters; turns out her genes were dominant. I lived among all kinds of beasts in the world beyond the mountains where no man, save myself, had ever stepped foot. I might not have hunted the rarest of the beasts that there were but I sure did marry one, I mean how many men can claim they did that. Let me tell you the answer, not many. Years went by and our children grew older and us weaker. We shared jokes and stories and even secret family recipes, merging our worlds together.

Now we're both rackety and old and our children have left the nest and life is still as great as it was the day I met her. So yes, I did stain my family's legacy and lost them, but I got something better in return. I found another family. I found a love like no other.

Elis Artemas, former Beast Hunter signing off.