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Stories / The Oath [Vegetarian/Pacifist challenge]
« on: August 25, 2021, 10:50:28 AM »
The youth gazed in mute disbelief at the charred and mutilated bodies, laid out as if in rest by the blackened ruin. Six of them. Even the youngest sister, three years old. Serene and unwounded but dead nonetheless. Bad air? How could this happen? The youth stared at his wounds, his bloodstained clothes...his hands, his bloodstained hands, and tried to remember. Dreams. Nightmares. A drunken father, a battered mother. Terrible words. An argument - demands to leave the cabin, to seek fortune elsewhere. Away from everything and everyone they knew? Defiance. A son's fists raised in defense. Knives drawn, then worse. Brother fighting against father. Sister against brother. Then blood. So much blood. And flame.
Six bundles of sticks gathered and laid out like beds. The smoke stinging his eyes brought relief; for at last he could cry. Let their spirits join the air, the forest, the waters.
Crying still, he tried to wash away the bloodstains from his hands, his clothing; but to no avail. "I did this," he thought. He would have thrown away or burned his tattered clothing, but some semblance of survival instinct stayed his hands. Around the ruined homestead, the snows of winter still gripped the land; though the buds of new leaves had started to grow. He would not survive, naked and foodless in the snow. "No more. No more blood. No more hands raised in violence, save perhaps in the direst need of self-defense or defense of my animals. No more will I draw blood nor eat the flesh of human nor beast nor fowl nor fish. And if I starve, let it be the spirits' judgment upon me."
And he wondered when at last he left, "Could the sweat of my brow ever wash away the blood?"
Six bundles of sticks gathered and laid out like beds. The smoke stinging his eyes brought relief; for at last he could cry. Let their spirits join the air, the forest, the waters.
Crying still, he tried to wash away the bloodstains from his hands, his clothing; but to no avail. "I did this," he thought. He would have thrown away or burned his tattered clothing, but some semblance of survival instinct stayed his hands. Around the ruined homestead, the snows of winter still gripped the land; though the buds of new leaves had started to grow. He would not survive, naked and foodless in the snow. "No more. No more blood. No more hands raised in violence, save perhaps in the direst need of self-defense or defense of my animals. No more will I draw blood nor eat the flesh of human nor beast nor fowl nor fish. And if I starve, let it be the spirits' judgment upon me."
And he wondered when at last he left, "Could the sweat of my brow ever wash away the blood?"