It’s a rowdy night.

  Much like when the village’s festival is going on, one can clearly hear the people’s voices from all over the village. Though instead of the usual cheers, shrieks of horror filled the cold night air.

  Alise’s house is right at the edge of the village, just some steps away from the forest. In fact, it’s her house that the watchers quietly lean on while keeping an eye on the dark forest to relax a little while on the job.

  Being so close, her ears naturally quickly caught the sound of the nearby fight, and it pushed her half awake. She slowly opened her eyes in a daze, her mind lagged for a moment before a sudden shriek from behind her house jolted her and she immediately sat upright on her bed. Recent memories quickly resurfaced and pulled her mind out of the fog with a start.

  She quickly reached to her side, and with a hushed tone, began to shake her son awake. “Gale, wake up,” she said, pushing his shoulder left and right until he finally opened his eyes in the same daze she was in just moments prior.

  The young boy tried to bring a hand up to his eyes so he could rub it into focus, but when another shriek came from behind their house, Alise quickly pulled the blanket covering her son down and picked him up.

  It’s the same voices she heard that day by the river—the day when a rampaging monster sent bodies flying. It’s the sound of humans meeting their end in cold blood—of brave ones resigning everything for the sake of their loved ones—the sound of tragedy.

  The soldiers that confirmed that no orc was left in the forest had told the villagers that if an orc was actually still hiding in the forest and came to the village after they left, they should run as fast as their legs could take them. Hiding would do them no good, since the orc would pick up on their scent.

  Taking the soldiers’ advice to heart, with her son in her arms, Alise quickly made her way outside the bedroom and towards the front door. Her footfalls echoed loudly through the house as she ran with reckless abandon, hoping to get as far away from the monsters that surely emerged from the forest as fast as she could.

  When she reached the door, she immediately pulled the bolt that locked the door in place and threw it open, only to suddenly meet the clear eyes of a man on the other side. The unfamiliar face startled her beyond reason and she froze where she stood until she suddenly felt something cold pushing into her stomach, making its way through her skin and flesh.

  The unpleasant feeling caused Alise’s face to grimace for a moment before she looked down to look at what it was that pushed into her stomach to find a long piece of steel that she quickly recognized as a sword.

  “Ah, it didn’t go through,” the man in front of her said.

  “What’re you doing? Hurry up, we still have a lot of houses to check,” someone further behind the man then added.

  “Right. Just a bit,” the man said in reply before grabbing Alise by the shoulder.

  Just then, the wind suddenly starts to pick up. It blew from behind the man, ruffling his hair towards the mother and son, causing it to smother his face and block his vision for a mere moment, as it carried a message for the young boy carried in his mother’s arms.

  “These men intends you harm,” it whispered in Gale’s ears.

  “What’s with the wind?” the man asked while jutting his chin to try and move the hair out of his face just as the boy before him suddenly raised both of his arms towards him, as if asking for the man to carry him instead of his mother. “What, boy? Just wait a bit, I’ll get to you after your mother, ‘kay?”

  While he held Alise in place by her shoulder, he pushed his sword deeper into her until it came clean through her back, causing blood to rapidly rise up her throat, and seep through her lips.

  Then, out of nowhere, a large bug came flying around the man’s face, startling him. A grimace played on his face and he moved his hand from Alise’s shoulder to try and swat the bug away with an angered grunt.

  Though unfortunately, his hand didn’t find anything. No wonder as it's not quite the easiest thing to swat a bug away, but when his eyes finally focused on the nuisance, he was shocked to have found a small human nestled between the boy’s arms.

  Or not quite. It seemed to have wings on its back, so it's no small human, just shaped a lot like one. His confusion showed in his face for the briefest moment, before suddenly, his whole body began to lift off the ground.

  When his feet no longer touched the ground, he finally realized that the wind that was just blowing on his back mere moments ago began to pick up from inside the house before it finally sent him flying away into the other man behind him, and caused them to tumble around on the ground, kicking up a dust trail until they finally blasted through the house across from Alise’s.

  A dozen or so bandits started to pour out of some of the houses around Alise’s own and their sights followed the dust trail kicked up by the two men before settling on their comrades at the end of it.

  “The hell happened?!” one of the bandits cried out.

  A brief silence followed before one of them trailed the dust trail back to the other side and found Alise there with his son in her hands. “Oi! What’d you do?!” he then asked, prompting everyone to turn their attention to the mother and son.

  Gale, the center of their attention, has his eyes on his mother who now has blood flowing down her face onto his shirt. When her eyes met his, she could somehow feel a sense of worry, shown not through his expressionless face, but through some warmth in his eyes, and she gave him the warmest smile she could muster to ease his worries.

  But, though she tried her best to hide it, her body refused to cooperate and her legs suddenly buckled when the strength all but left it and she dropped to the ground. She quickly let go of her son before she collapsed entirely, causing him to drop on his rear in front of her.

  The boy immediately got up and approached her, both his arms on her weakening self. His mother began to violently cough up the blood pooling on her throat, and he felt something churning inside him as his mind suddenly blanked.

  Behind him, more and more men began to gather outside his house, rowdily talking amongst themself about what had happened and what they should do, but since they made no attempt to advance on the house, the wind stayed calm and left Gale unbothered with the feeling of something making a mess of his inside.

  The alien feeling is making his body feel like it should do something, yet his mind knows not what he should do. Then, he noticed something pooling beneath them. Red and thick, and somewhat familiar.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Now this, he knows of. It’s something his mother has taught him before, ‘hurt’. When the word appeared in his mind, it was as if the fog clouding his thought suddenly cleared and he immediately figured out what he should do. He was to ask his friend for help.

  Quickly, Gale ran inside the house towards the table where they usually eat. In a hurry, he grabbed his mug from the table and made his way towards the barrel they use to store water in the house, from which he filled his mug with water.

  With his friend now in hand, he ran back towards his mother, before he clumsily tripped over a table leg and fell face first onto the floor, spilling the water he had in his mug.

  Alise let out a slight chuckle.

  It brings warmth to her heart seeing her son trying hard to help her however he can, only to clumsily fail like children always do. Her child is normal—just like any other children it seems like. Though instead of helping to warm her body up, the scene seems to have taken the heat away through the wound on her stomach, leaving her feeling ever so colder.

  “I’m okay, Gale,” she once again muttered through thin lips to ease his worries.

  She then turned her sight down towards her stomach and found the sword that had run her through no longer embedded there. The man must have brought it with him when he was blown away by the wind.

  Now, the wound in her stomach is left gaping for blood to freely flow out and pool on the floor beneath her, making some sort of trickling noise as it does. Or maybe not. When she focused on it, she realized that the sound hadn't come from her wound, but rather, from where Gale had dropped his mug.

  Settling her eyes on the mug, she found the water puddling on the wooden floor didn’t seep through it like it usually would. Also, the puddle seems to be getting smaller, yet taller as if pulling itself together.

  It did. The puddle of water pulled itself together to form in its center, a small human with its legs tapering into a large fish-like tail.

  “Oh… so that’s where your friends come from,” Alise noted.

  Once he saw the water fairy before him, Gale pulled himself up and went to pick the fairy up in the cup of his hand. With rushed, but careful steps, likely because he wanted to be careful not to drop the fairy like he did the mug full of water, he brought it over to his mother who had collapsed by the door.

  Slowly, he then brought the fairy down to Alise’s stomach where they slithered down from his hand. When they move around on her stomach the part of her shirt where it passes through was dampened, causing it to cling to her skin, but it quickly lets go after drying up in mere moments. It's a weird sensation. Cold, just as the water she stored should be, but for some reason, also pleasantly warm.

  When they found the gaping wound on Alise’s stomach, they lowered a hand to the wound and touched it, before then raising another to point further inside her house and suddenly jerking it back, causing something to fall over with a loud crash from inside the house.

  The sound of running water then followed. The barrelfull of water came rushing out of the splintered container, and made its way towards Alise.

  “I know this…” she said weakly when she noticed the water beginning to envelop her. “Are you going to help me too, little fairy?”

  The water fairy offered no response but the water seemed to be rushing into her wound. The water left in the cold of night felt warm inside her, and she knew from the oddly pleasant sensation that it was surely helping her. It's made even more obvious by the fact that her blood is no longer flowing out.

  The water fairy worked silently, unlike the wind fairy who began kicking up another gust of wind that suddenly caused Gale to get up to his feet. They warned him of an incoming attack and he quickly extended both his hands towards the door in response.

  Outside, a few men are rushing into the house with their swords in hand. When he saw Gale’s hands extended towards him, they jumped to the side before anything happened and a strong gust of wind suddenly blew past them, bringing with it some of the less nimble.

  “It’s a fairy!”

  Having jumped out of the way, one of them was now out of Gale’s limited vision that can only see beyond the door frame from inside the house.

  “I can see wind and water!” the man spoke once again. His voice now sounds much closer, as if right on the other side of the door, which he probably is, hiding right next to the door frame.

  Alise stared at the door blankly where the man was, worried that he might suddenly rush inside and went wide eyed when he did just that.

  “I’ll get you now, you cheeky brat!” he declared before stabbing his sword into the ground with his hand grabbing the door frame firmly.

  After he suddenly appeared, Gale once again blew a gust of wind out the door with the wind fairy’s help. This time, the man is putting up a fight by holding onto his sword that he just embedded into the ground and the door frame. The wind isn’t strong enough to completely push him out.

  Over time, as if Gale, the usually emotionless, began to feel growingly irritated by the man’s tenaciousness, the wind picked up even more power and speed. The strength of the wind is now strong enough to lift the grown man's whole body off the ground, and he was only barely hanging on to his sword and the door frame, which unfortunately began to creak under the pressure.

  But before the door frame could give in and the man lost his support, Alise’s weak body began to also lift off the ground, causing her to start rolling to her side towards the door.

  When he noticed what he’d done, Gale immediately pulled his hand back and grabbed the wind fairy nestled between his arms to stop the wind from blowing. When it did, the man’s feet fell back to the ground and he immediately rushed in, leaving his sword behind.

  It's a bold move to leave his main weapon behind, but the man still had on his waist a knife hidden by his shirt which he quickly pulled out and thrust towards Gale. But before the blade could cut into the young boy’s flesh, a sudden mass, a stream of water suddenly rose from beneath him, pushing him out the door.

  “Ghk! Hghak!” Alise cried out in pain.

  The sudden loss of water that's being used to heal her left her body in a sudden state of shock that caused blood to once again rush up to her throat and also push out of her wound.

  The voices outside became even more rowdy now that yet another one of them had been blown away, and the bandits once again became unsure of themself. The ruckus outside restarted, but in that moment, it all felt like something happening in a far distant land to Gale.

  He went wide eyed in shock when he noticed the sudden drop in his mother’s condition. It’s the first clear expression that Alise ever saw on her son’s face and her lips weakly curled into the thinnest smile.

  Following the shock, his face was washed over by worry, and immediately after, anger. After it showed on his face, he then let go of the fairy in his hand and kicked on the floor beneath his feet to make his way around his mother to get out of the house.

  Maybe the worry in him is making him desperate for anything to help his mother now that the fairy had pushed their water reservoir out the door. Maybe the anger in him is causing a desire to rise up within him to punish the men that did this to his mother. Either way, nothing he wanted to do now could be any good. So, before he could find his way outside, Alise grabbed onto his arm.

  Strange. She knows for sure that the strength had left her limbs long ago and left her pretty much limp now that most of her blood is on the floor instead of inside her. But somehow, she had just enough strength to hold her son back.

  “Gale…” she weakly calls out to her son and he slowly turns his head around to look at her. “Come closer will you, son…?”

  With a rush, Gale fell to his knees right beside her and he brought both his hands to hers to grip onto it with everything he has, making it a point that he won’t let go of it.

  The smile on Alise’s face grew wider. Her son is actually this expressive. He has shock, worry, and anger on his face just like any other child does. His hand has the same warmth that everyone has. And his body can properly convey the love that he has for her just fine. Gale is normal after all. She had to wonder why she ever worried in the first place.

  “Gale… run… leave this place. Leave Carmul behind, leave me behind… you grow up well, strong, and… and…” Alise began trailing off as the light in her eyes seemed to be diminishing by the second. In her dimmed vision, the only thing she can see now is Gale, tears dripping down his face onto her hand that he has in his. Though oddly, she can’t feel the tears touching her skin at all. “Live well, my son…” she then continued as her last ever words spoken.