When did it all began?

I guess it was some thirty years ago.

I was just a kid at the time. Thirteen years old I think.

But things were very bad for me.

I have lived in this small village all my life. I never went to nowhere else.

It was me, ma, pa and Tommy.

But back then we didn’t have any walls around the place or anything.

The previous lord wouldn’t expend so much money on us.

So we were attacked a day.

´noids.

Faces like nightmares. Deformed bodies.

There weren’t many of them. Fifteen maybe.

But we were just farmers. Pa was first. He told us to run when the door was broken in the middle of the night.

Our house had only two rooms back in the day.

We ran like Pa said to us to do, but they were outside as well.

They had taken our quarter and were getting what they could. Killing people and taking the food.

The militia came, but they were only four and would group all on a single monster, to avoid dying.

´noids are strong.

Most of them are people who broke through the aura limit but didn’t become total monsters.

Brutes, bandits, people of the mountain who would rather take the risk than to die to a pack of mad hounds or something.

One of them took ma by the hair.

I tossed a stone on him, but it just bounced on his forehead.

He broke ma’s neck just like that.

´noids don’t make prisoners. If they want to have woman or man they first kill, then they use them.

They aren’t like people; they aren’t like superior beings.

I took Tommy by the hand and started to run with him.

But there was one more in front of us.

His hand was almost at my face when she appeared.

Marie.

She cut the monster in half just like that.

Who was she?

She looked young. Maybe she was a Superior Being.

But why would a Superior Being be here?

No matter.

The things were dead a little after.

Then she sat on the ground, breathing heavily.

Her eyes were wild. The militia was warry of her.

She looked at me and said.

“Hey boy. Care to get me food and some bigfoot root?”

I couldn’t react. As I looked at her, she collapsed on the ground.

The woman of the village took her in.

In the meanwhile, we prepared the grave for the dead.

Thirty people. Me and Tommy had lost ma and pa.

We dug the two holes in the ground, then put the firewood under. After we put the bodies of the dead and burnt they all together.

I couldn’t eat any kind of meat for eight years after that.

***

Marie came to live with us in the end. Me, Tommy and the other children.

The old block became an orphanage of sorts.

I was the oldest one left alive. Tommy was eleven. Sylvy was eight. Oran was seven. Billy and Mattew were only five.

Hadn’t Marie been accepted in the village and they would probably be taken in by the other families.

If any family remained after the ´noids finished their business.

We took the old houses down and rebuild a new one, this time bigger. It had four rooms. One for Marie. One for me, Tommy, Billy and Mattew. One for Sylvy and Oran. And one to cook food and eat together.

It was a big house.

And so we kept living. Marie needed a whole year to recover from the wounds she had all over her body and the frostbite which ate all of her fingers.

We thought she would lose those, but she knew intermediary-level healing.

And for a couple years we believed she was a superior being.

Then, it was time for her to go.

I got sign of her packing her stuff one night. I was already an adult, so I could look after the kids if needed.

But I didn’t want for her to go.

I was just a farmer, but I didn’t want for her to leave our village.

She told me the truth that day.

But I didn’t care.

In those two years she had done a lot for us.

She helped us to recover the soil by exchanging which crops we grew and were.

She took care for me, Tommy and the others.

She taught Sylvy how to hunt. The two of them would bring fresh meat from the forest and trade it for grain.

She helped the militia to hunt down the ´noids and monsters around.

Not a single death in those two years. Our village hadn’t a single one.

How many people died every year before she came here?

Two?

Maybe three?

She healed those who got attacked, helped the pregnant woman to give birth, salved so many lives.

She is no monster. She is even better than our useless lord who won’t even give us a wall to protect ourselves.

From there on I lived with her.

She was no monster; she was just my wife, Marie of the Long Lived Race.

The heavens gave me thirty years with this woman so far.

And I don’t regret even a single moment.