Twisted Fate: Chpt. 1

Cyndra hurried through the woods toward her hidden home behind the privacy of a waterfall's foamy curtain. It would be morning soon. People would be out. She simply couldn’t afford to be seen. The guards would be out looking for her. They had been for the past… how long had it been?  Two months? Three months? She couldn’t remember, and it didn’t matter if she did. All that mattered is that they would be out, and if she got caught, she would be hanged. She hadn’t done anything wrong, oh no, no, no, it hadn’t been her that stole the bloody torches and set the old man’s field and house and his, well, everything on fire. He even died. But it wasn’t her fault. She had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time. It was those twins. They had been caught tipping the old man’s cows, and he had yelled at him. They were always causing mischief and somehow weaseling their way out of their much-deserved punishment. But they had gone too far this time.

Much too far.
 
    After they stole the torches and set his field on fire, Cyndra had seen them, yelled at them and, dropping everything, had run to the nearby stream after grabbing a bucket from the not-yet-burning barn and attempted to put out the flames. By the time she got back from the stream, more villagers had come about, wondering at the flames. As soon as she had come into view, the older of the two had pointed a finger and shouted that “It was Cyndra! She did it! Everyone knows that she hates cows!” this was true. She did hate cows; she had ever since she had seen a bull kill a dog when she was five. But she did not hate them enough to do such a horrid deed. But, of course, everyone believed him because they all knew that she did hate cows. Cyndra had run. What else could she do? There was a mob after her, as well as an enormous fire threatening to burn her lithe body to nothing but a pile of charred bones. This, as she registered after she had run to the point of collapsing and the mob could scarcely be heard, had only made her look guilty. But it didn’t matter now. She was seventeen, and knew how to survive by herself. Especially when the townspeople were stupid enough to not guard her old home. Cyndra was clever, and she had made trips. Little by little, she regained her essential belongings, like clothes and soap and a good cooking pot, as well as her bow, her hunting knife, her machete, and her bed-roll. She was lucky that her father had been a carpenter, and she knew how to build a simple hut. So, she got to work made a little one-room pine-log cabin in a cave that she had found behind a sizeable waterfall in the clearing where she now stood. But she had stolen; indeed she had, for a human body could not survive on meat alone. She had stolen milk and bread and vegetables and even a few apples. She really did hate stealing, and she took only what was necessary. But, alas, she was now growing into the criminal the villagers already thought she was. She could feel it with every bottle of milk she stole, and she hated it. Even though she always returned the bottles (Of course, for what use did she have for them?) she still felt as if she might as well have stolen someone’s cow. Even though she hated cows.

                “When shall my misery end?” she said to herself as she stepped inside her cozy, well-mad cabin. That, however, was not true. Cyndra was not miserable. Besides the subtle paranoia of being found, and the hatred of her own criminal-ness, she was actually almost enjoying herself, though she would never say so out loud. Sighing, she walked over to her deep, clay fireplace that she had managed to build into the wall. It even had a respectable chimney. One of the perks of being a fugitive living in a cave behind a waterfall is that you never need to worry about smoke. The waterfall tears the column into barely-noticeable wisps. You can’t even smell it on the other side of the ever-churning curtain. Cyndra poked her fire with a pole of petrified wood that she had found in the woods a few days after finishing her hut. It hissed and spit at her, obviously in its death-throes. She added another log to the top, which her mini-inferno eagerly attacked. She turned to the pot of thick vegetable-wild-garlic-and-hare stew that she had made earlier that night. She put a flat slab of stone on top of her fire and set the pot on top of it to warm up her dinner. Recovering her single (and much-prized, mind you) spoon from a little table she stirred the mixture, making sure that it did not burn to her beloved pot. After it was close to boiling, she removed it from the blaze and set it another stone slab, careful not to burn her wooden table. As it cooled, she took the pelts of the two hares (which she had expertly skinned to make her stew) from the wire that went from wall-to-wall in front of her fireplace and threw them on her bed roll. Her cabin was window-less, so the only light, at the moment came from the fireplace. She had placed six candles around her small hut which gave it a lively glow. She lit these candles with a flaming twig. She would need more soon. And, almost sadly, she knew where to get them. “What has become of me?” she asked the noble gushing of the waterfall. Her only answer was the never-ending crash of water on rocks. So, here sat she; eating hot stew in a hut in a cave behind a waterfall, with nothing but her cheerful stolen candles as accompaniment.

    So, as our dear Cyndra lay down on her bedroll as the first rays of sunlight slid over the horizon (She had settled into a nocturnal schedule.) in her cozy hut in a cave behind a waterfall, she pondered her fate. This is where the real story begins.