15minuteficlets // Prompt word: electric // “The Tree on the Battlefield”

[katiefoolery]

Here is my third ficlet for the 15minuteficlets community.  I do love writing these!  This one was inspired by a certain character of mine who decided to die on me recently...

It was a bit tricky to write this at times, as it refers to a place with a complicated history, not to mention the convoluted connection between the narrator (Katarrin) and Mack.  The country they live in is divided into many, many counties, although most people either refer to themselves as Northerners or Southerners.  The Northerners have always been both aggressive and protective, proud of their strength and their heritage.  The Southerners tend to resent this... then they started a war.

---

Title: The Tree on the Battlefield
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG
Word count: 612
Prompt word: electric

I didn’t hate the Southerners.  Let’s get that straight - they’re not worth it.  They can start a war; they can destroy my family, my life and my country, but they’ll never earn my hate.

Cowards aren’t worth hating.

Mack wanted to stop me from going to war.  Yeah, I know what that look’s for and believe me, the element of surprise definitely worked in my favour.  Often.  I mean, what am I?  Short, female, un-threatening...  But believe me when I say I can hurt people if I need to.  And no self-respecting Northerner could stay safely at home, away from a fight for our own country and still be able to live with themselves.

So I had no choice and he knew it.  He knew he couldn’t stop me, but it didn’t stop him trying.  And when he decided he was coming with me, nothing I said would change his mind.  If I was so determined to do this foolish human thing, he said, then at least he could make sure I stayed alive throughout it.

He might have been fey, but he was the closest thing I had to family.  Not a friend, not a lover, not a brother... just Mack.  Just my shadow.  I used to feel funny if he wasn’t beside me.  People would look at me strangely if I walked into a room without him, as though I wasn’t really Katarrin if Mack wasn’t right there behind me.

I really don’t hate the Southerners, but I do wish they hadn’t started their stupid war. The wounded pride of five hundred years past is no reason to begin a battle like that.  I should laugh at myself here, because we never thought the Southerners had any pride.  What a way to discover that they did.

There are a lot of things I’d rather forget about the war.  The dirt, the blood, the smell of death.  The way these things stopped bothering me after a while.  But I do remember there was a tree there - a beautiful tree in the middle of a battlefield - because I sat against it as he killed himself for me.

Well, I say “sat” but I suppose I really mean “leant hopelessly against it”.  The idea that I was actually capable of sitting is laughable.  I was surprised my body still remembered how to breathe; my heart, how to beat.

And Mack...  Well, Mack thought my life was worth more than his.

Idiot.

I would have died otherwise.  I don’t doubt that.  We were more than surrounded and it was just the two of us.  And at that point, Mack was the only one capable of standing.  I was the one tilted against a tree trunk, fighting desperately for each breath and wishing pathetically that I could do something.  Anything.

There wasn’t even enough energy to raise a circle.  My hands were resting against the earth but no energy flowed into them.  I couldn’t have coped with it even if I had managed to draw anything in.  I couldn’t have summoned us up a miraculous escape.

I couldn’t even find the strength to tell him not to do it.

Oh, his death... his death was electric.  He broke my heart and soul into little pieces, standing in the middle of the battlefield in all his fey beauty.  He never was so magnificent as when he glowed with life and smiled at me, before shattering into a cloud of splintered light.

And all I could do was sit there against that stupid, beautiful tree, watching him destroy himself and hating him with every fibre of my being.  Because he was so worth hating.

---

Comments and feedback are most appreciated. :D

Comments

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

With this one, there might actually be more. Well, there will be more if the four incredibly bossy characters in my head have any say about it. Glad you liked it. :D

[naelany.livejournal.com]

Yay! This be good news indeed ^_^