A ray of light shone that morn, snaking its way across the hilly landscape, maybe in hope of bringing some happiness to the day.  It was failing. For today was something that all knew was far from happy, not at all a day of celebrating. Today was a day that no one smiled, no one laughed or joked. A day where mothers told children to stay inside and the children agreed with them, not wanting to be a part of what would very soon take place. Today was the day that one of our kind, the Terron, was to be Casted.

By Casted, I do not mean  human standards where a type of splint is placed  on one’s broken bone to reset it into place. I mean by our standards, my species. The type of Casting where someone found guilty for extremely terrible crimes is punished. During the Castings, the crimes of the condemned are burnt into their skin by a steaming hot metal rod. It is branded across their face and arms, legs and hands. Anywhere that can normally be seen without the removal of clothing. Along with being branded, the guilty are beaten fiercely and then thrown from the very village itself, never to be returned again.

Probably you are wondering why a Terron can’t just go to another village and start again there. The answer is simple: The burnt markings speak the crimes. If another Terron comes in contact with the convicted, they will immediately read the markings, knowing that this person had obviously done something wrong to have gotten them. Once they do, they will warn their village and the village will either kill or threaten to kill the Casted one.

I was but a child at this time, but I remember the event as clear as a cloudless night sky, when the stars shine brightly down from the heavens. I was inside my home at the moment that the trial was being held and I remember watching my mother pace endlessly about our tiny kitchen. Sitting on the counter, my legs drooped over the side carelessly and I couldn’t understand why mother was so upset. I never found out until many years later why she fretted so. Against her will, she had fallen in love with the man who was being punished.

To this day, I don’t know how or why it happened but my mother became very attached to the man. You say to me, “Why is that strange? There are many stories out there where a good woman falls in love with a bad man.” I must agree with you, there are many stories like that. Many a time have I sat down to listen to a bard telling a love story and hear them speaking of a pure woman falling in love with a dark soul. The odd thing of it though, is that this man had harmed my mother greatly. He had harmed her in such a way that no other woman could probably fall in love with him after he had done the same to them. My mother had been one of the victims of his lusting ways.

Many years before this trial or even before I had been born, when his actions were still unknown to everyone, he had taken my mother to quench his thirst for lust. He had forced her to be his toy of pleasure and then threatened to kill her if she had spoken a word of it. Being that my mother was not a very strong-willed woman, she never told a soul about it and that was just fine for the both of them, until a few months later. My mother had been putting on an increasingly startling amount of weight over the course of the passing months and for the longest time she knew of no reason why she could be gaining so much weight. She finally realized what was wrong when she gave birth to me.

Though I was an unplanned child, my mother still loved me with all her heart. She kept me and raised me well, I suppose or so that’s what people say. But still, I don’t know why she fell in love with that man. It could have been merely a love for his outer shelling, there couldn’t have possibly been something on the inside that she had loved. At the moment that he was proven guilty, I hadn’t known why he was being Casted, but later I had found out.  The man was heartless, a sadistic and heartless creature. Inwardly, he was black and twisted and all around very  vain.  His actions were clearly those of a demon, yet mother loved him.





I remember how she looked, blonde hair frazzled and long ears drooped in a saddened way, mourning already for the one who would never feel the same for her. She had begun pacing at around the time that the guards had brought him into the building where he was being judged and every so often, she would stop and glance out one of the windows in the kitchen longingly, maybe wishing that she could be there for him.  I only watched with curious eyes, wondering why my mother was acting so sad and wanting to comfort her in some form or another.

For what seemed like hours to me, we sat in silence. My mother continuously pacing around, stopping only every so often to peer out the window and I watching her from the counter top. Then, upon one of her laps around the kitchen a sudden gasp escaped her lips and she moved to her place in front of the window. I sat upright and stared at her, trying to see past at the thing that had made her suddenly alert.  

From my position, I could see nothing, but from the sounds I could pick up, it was obvious that the meeting had been let out and that the man was to be Casted straight away. Faintly, you could hear the struggle the man was putting up from outside and it grew louder as they came nearer to passing our home. I shuddered at the ferocity of his growling and threats, but upon looking to my mother, found her staring in sorrow at him.

Their passing of our home was quick and from my mother’s actions, her shoulders stiffening and her ears becoming rather alert combined with the cry of anger that rose from outside, I could only guess that he had been forced to the ground in the center of town. At this time, they were probably binding his wrists together tightly, holding him in place while the eldest member of the High Council began to list to whoever was watching the great many crimes the convict had committed. I could hear various listings of crimes some words sticking out more than others, murder, rape, the listings of his victims.

At some point, mother couldn’t take it anymore and so, for the first time in minutes, she moved and rushed quickly from our home, tearing down the street as fast as she could to get to the center of town. In her swift departure, she forgot to close the door and being the child that I was bound to be, I slipped from my safe perch upon the counter and followed my mother’s example by running from the house to where she was.

Mother stood high on the balls of her feet, trying to force herself taller to see over the crowd that had formed around the area. I fidgeted back and forth, staring through the legs of many people to try and see, but growing more impatient and curious by the minute, soon gave forth to shoving my way through the sea of legs to the front. As I was just stepping to the front, the crowd began to give a series of hollers and shouts, clapping and cheering loudly. My eyes drew up to the sight before me and widened in fear as I saw the eldest of the High Council handing the burning rod to the King.

Before this moment, I had never witnessed a Casting. It was merely a word that the adults whispered back and forth once in a while when someone was being put on trial. Now, though, it was given a greater meaning as the King towered above the growling convict, eyes downcast and face showing complete disgust and also a hatred like none other I had ever seen before. His eyes, though facing down, were fierce with what could be called a fire burning within them. I remember thinking at one point how the King looked extremely scary, more-so than the man he was Casting.

The man himself glared back up at the king for but the briefest of moments before his eyes completely changed. They grew round and wide, pleading for the king to stop. His eyes were the cleanest blue and so wide, almost trusting. The king lost his nerve and for a second, lowered the burning rod to his side, seeming to no longer want to harm the man. This caused an uproar from the crowd, but with one side-glance from His Royal Highness they stopped and I could feel them shift uneasily as if one great body instead of multiple different people.



The king returned his gaze to the guilty one and without raising his eyes, barked  in a harsh tone to the men holding the prisoner, “Strip him.”  Both men quickly set to work, first pulling from him his clothing and then his necklaces and earrings. Despite his struggling, they soon had him completely bare and shivering in the slight breeze. A murmuring wave passed through the crowd and I noticed a few women blush and look away. I guess if I were older, I may have studied his body in more depth and maybe would have realized why the women blushed and looked away, but then I was too small to realize how uncivilized it was to be nude in public.

Again the metal was raised, but this time, unlike many other Castings that I have seen in my older age, the rod was pressed against his chest. Never before had I heard such a sound, nor did I believe one could ever exist. From the man came a cry of pain so dreaded and terribly twisted that to decipher it from the cry of a man or a beast would have been impossible. A sound so full of anguish that it forced me to take several steps back and cover my ears, but another sound had helped to move me.

Where the king had touched the man’s chest, an immediate blistering had begun and from this blistering had brought forth the immense sizzling sound, an indication that his flesh was burning. I winced at the sound, but my attention was brought to the stinging sensation beginning to play at the ends of my nostrils. The smell grew stronger as the king seared the burning metal over the convict’s skin in the words of our kind, writing widely the names of the victims across his chest.

By this time, I had my eyes clamped shut and my hands over my ears, frightened by what was going on around me. Trying to turn back through the crowd had failed miserably, since everyone was so closely shoved together, wanting to see and not miss anything at all. Cheers rang out every so often when I could only guess that the king had done something extremely painful to the man, my guess normally being proven true when the man let out another anguished cry.

It seemed I had been standing that way for hours, hands over ears and eyes shut to the point that they actually began to hurt, before the stench became overbearing. It filled my nose and stung my eyes, despite them being closed, so much that they began to tear. I could soon begin to taste it and within moments, it began to pour down my throat, becoming a mixture of a nauseating scent and taste. An automatic reflex of the body, I began to choke, falling to my knees, one hand hitting the ground to stop my fall. The other hand met my mouth, trying to cover it, maybe in hopes of stopping the smell from going into me.
Eyes widened and shoulders heaving, I stared at the ground trying to catch my breath, trying to stop myself from being sick. For that brief time, everything seemed silent, every sound around me had stopped. I was the only person to make any noise and maybe that was what calmed me. But as soon as I raised my vision to the event before me, everything came crashing back to make one big picture.

The crowd behind me was becoming ecstatic with the king’s performance. He had already finished much of the brandings on the man’s chest and now was working on both of his arms. The prisoner panted heavily, fangs sinking deeply into his bottom lip as if in an attempt to keep himself from yelling, that or to keep himself from falling unconscious. A fine stream of blood trickled down from the corner of his mouth, seeming very out of place atop his pale complexion, but my sight didn’t rest on merely his face for soon it fell upon his chest and once again the feeling of being sick overwhelmed me.

From every stroke that had been drawn upon his skin, millions of blisters had formed and each blister had opened, causing blood to pour from him like running water down his chest. Great puddles of the red liquid rested beneath him and snaked its way down the small slopes toward the crowd. Every crevice seared into his flesh was filled with the vital fluid, glistening in the sun’s rays. His hair clung to his face, damp with sweat and blood that had splashed upon it, no longer the beautiful auburn that I had remembered.



If it was possible, my eyes widened farther than they previously were and a chill shot down my spine. This chill branched into every nerve in my body and if I weren’t already on the ground, I’m afraid I would have collapsed once more. The hair on the back of my neck stood as my whole being began to quiver. And being that I was but a child and extremely frightened, I cried out, the tears that had been forming for some time pouring from my eyes.

Now, I don’t know whether it was coincidence or if he had actually heard my cry, but suddenly he locked those big, blue eyes on me. The ones that even as a child took my breath away. For only the slightest of a moment, a grin smoothed over his lips, but not one of vanity that was so commonplace for him, nor was it one to hide agony. This grin was of the reassuring kind but still kind of cheeky as if to say, “Don’t worry, darling, they can’t hurt me.”

“ Mind you, at this point I still didn’t know that he was my father. It wasn’t until many years later that I had found out he was related to me in anyway.” The woman perched atop the bar stool spoke, the far away look in her pale blue eyes fading as she looked back to the bartender before her.

The bartender leaned on the counter, wiping clean a beer mug with a cloth before asking, “If he’s so terrible then why are ya looking for this bloke?”

With a grin, the young woman laughed gently, used to being asked this question by now, “Well, even if he’s terrible like they say, he must have enough good in him if he can smile at someone like that. That was not a bad smile.”

He shook his head, “Suit yourself, little lady. Just don’t get caught in between  a rock and a hard place.”

She only nodded and took a sip of the drink before her, holding the cup momentarily in her hands as she gazed into it, thinking. Only a few seats down, another woman stood slowly, frizzy red hair in fine curls protruding from beneath an ivory cowboy hat. She swaggered over, boots clicking on the hard floor until she reached where the other woman sat.

Leaning over the counter beside her she smiled, “Hey, I couldn’t help but overhear your story and I thought I should let you know. I saw a man not too long back who matches the description you gave fairly well. He had these bright blue eyes, brightest I’d ever seen but he was all covered in scars. If I remember correctly, he was headin’ towards the city.”

Raising her gaze from her drink, she smiled, “Thank you” and stood slowly, setting her cup on the counter. Turning from the other woman, she walked casually to the door and without looking back, pushed it open and walked out.

A deep creasing frown embedded itself on the bartender’s face, “She forgot to pay for her drink.”

The woman with the frizzy hair just smiled and sat down slowly, “ Aw, put her on my tab, Sam.”