I Need A Hero (Open)

[Amanda Freeman]

Her weary steps fell into rhythm as her long blonde hair blew about her face as the blustery wind blew around her. Her mouth hung open slightly as her tired eyes glared at the dirt road ahead of her. Angrily, she brushed her blonde tresses away, but not without the pans of weakness within her touch. She was beyond tired, beyond hungry and she needed to sleep. When was the last time she ate, again? Oh, yeah, Monday…Monday had been two days ago.

She was in a trance now, her reflexes so low that she wouldn’t have been able to jump away if a bolt of lightning came down and struck the ground next to her. Her vision had turned blurry and her world was swimming in front of her. Her hair wasn’t the only thing that was blowing: the biting wind was yanking insistently at the folds of her long skirts and tattered shirt. She wore no cloak and new shivers of pure cold ran up and down her back, making her arms go numb beneath the shredded fabric. Her legs felt like lead and her head ached for want of rest. The only thing the young maiden had been able to access as the water from clear-flowing streams and brooks in the places through which she wandered.

Suddenly, her foot struck something hard and solid on the ground and she flew a foot or so forward into the muddy grass at the side of the road. For a moment, she lay there in the mud, panting, eyes closed. Then, bringing one arm forward, she hoisted herself up enough to roll over onto her back, where she lay, thinking of how nice it would be to just go to sleep. But she couldn’t, she couldn’t possibly…she had to move on. If she stopped where she was, it could start snowing and she could die out here, only right then, dying didn’t sound like a half-bad idea.

She tried to sit up, but her limbs weren’t going to cooperate. She tried to keep her eyes, as blue as a jeweled pendant around a noble woman’s neck, open, but they burned with the desire to close, to sleep, to see no more. No! She didn’t want to die, didn’t want to go to sleep. She was still young; there was still hope for her in the world. She was wrong; there was no hope for a peasant girl, lying the by the world, friendless, helpless and utterly alone.

[Shay Adele Kelly]

Shay had spent the last three hours making lists in her head as she rode. She'd started out with "Why on earth I'm doing this," "What I wish I could've brought with me," and "Places I want to see whether or not Da's letters send me there". Then she'd moved on to "What could go wrong", "How likely is that?" and "What I'm actually excited to see on this trip...thing."

"Trip...thing" was probably the closest definition she was going to get for what she was up to right now. Her plan was fairly simple--she was following the letters her father had sent her over the past two years, up to when he had stopped writing six months ago. It didn't make much sense, but there was some small part of her mind that insisted that if she followed in her father's footsteps, she might understand what had happened to him. That, and she might figure out whether she was missing anything important before she tied herself down with marriage.

His first letter was sending her toward Inverarish, not that she had any idea where that was, so she'd been following this road for God knew how long, hoping that it wouldn't take her in a giant circle. Shay was traveling the same way her father always had, with not much more than her horse, a compass and a tent. Unfortunately, she was also traveling without the one thing her father never left behind--his unfailing sense of direction. Shay could navigate by the sun and the stars fairly instinctively, but other than that she had inheritated the directional genes straight from her mother. Her mother, who could--and did--get lost in their garden on foggy mornings.

A giggle spilled out of Shay's mouth as she remembered shouting back and forth with her mother the previous week as she stood at the front door, a game of Marco-Polo designed to navigate her mother back toward the house through the fog. For a moment she almost wanted to clap a hand over her mouth--giggling over it seemed almost wrong--but then she had a better idea.

"I'll miss watching Mam act all loopy," she said out loud, starting another list, "and I'll miss running through the forest behind our house. Swimming in the little pond in the summer, and dancing around the kitchen with Kylie to make Tanner laugh. Oh yeah, I'll miss playing with the boys when we don't have to act all proper--tag and chase-and-tackle, and them throwing my shoes into trees and Teddy insisting on climbing up to get them for me." She giggled at the memory of Teddy, who was anything but flexible, trying to get his long legs over the thick branch of a pine. "Kylie's hair smelling like sugar, and Tanner and his big sky-eyes. The way Teddy always smells like autumn, even when it's the wrong time of year, and the--gah!"

Belle had decided to engage in one her favorite activities--that is, spooking at something on the ground and sending Shay flying forward. Shay was so used to this at this point that she was able to land safely and roll to a stop in front of Belle, near whatever had caused her to spook. Shay bent her arms and legs gingerly--nothing broken. Her leg was bleeding pretty badly from where she'd landed on the jagged edge of a rock, but the cut wasn't too deep--she would be fine. That was when she noticed what had frightened Belle. It was a pile of cloth, mud and blonde hair. "Oh, god," Shay whispered. She tried as gently as she could to brush some of the girl's long blonde hair off of her face. She was awfully cold, but she didn't look dead...what did dead look like anyway? It wasn't like Shay had much experience with this sort of thing. She swallowed against the crawling sensation in her throat and instictively reached down to squeeze the girl's hand.