#i thing

TW: ostracization, Murder, starvation, loss of parent, child neglect , mentioning of (unsafe) abortion, mentioning of marital abuse, mention of child loss, religious trauma, misogynie

Witch hunt

The first time the witch hunters come to Sage's village she watches her mother burn. She doesn't understand what it is that makes them think that her mom did something wrong. Not then despite the way the adults talk, not later when the other children start making fun of her. 

Not once had Sage's mother let a man into their house that hadn't been seeking her mother's help, not once has she lain with one of them. She didn't even leave the house at night, or at least she didn't most nights, and when ever she did she took Sage with her. In those few nights more often than not they would help one of their neighbors with some affliction, but some times sometimes they would leave to the forest. 

They would dance under the moon and sing songs in her the language of her mother's home, celebrating a holiday only them two. Their secret their little sanctuary way form the town folks judgment. 

Sage learned to understand before the hunters return. To understand why the towns folk had given over her mother into the clutches of her murderers so easily. It was the same reason they had whispered sharp words before Sage's mother was killed. They didn't like people who her different, they especially didn't like women who could stand on their own. It was against their religion, or so they made themselves believe. On the few occasions they had actually had any kindness to spare for Sage after she had lost her mother to their dislike it was for their god, too. On the churches holy days they offered her bread or sometimes an old cote. The priest had offered his failed kindness even before they had burned her mother, had taken her in but not with out akin as if Sage was beneath him, he was kind, but he had no kindness to spare for the child of a witch.

She starts spending more time in the woods not even two years after. Collecting things to eat and hid in vacated fox holes. In the winter months she is forced to return to the town, the forest provides in the summer but barely, nothing to prepare for the winter left, not that she handy place to store anything. Sage wasn't sure if she should call it lucky that when it became really hard, she one of the girls in had gotten pregnant, unmarried, alone, desperate enough to hope that the daughter of the former midwife would know some way of ridding her of the thing taking root in her, ready to give up some food scrapes as payment. 

No one could fault Sage for taking that chance half dead from hunger, desperate herself, fearing frostbite as much as the priest. Her mother had taught her many things had done her best to instill all her knowledge in her daughter, one of them was how to free a woman afflicted with a child. Sage hadn't been sure if she would be able to concoct the brew right, but she had to try, even if should it go wrong and the girl would die, her live would be spent. Not that her chances of surviving the coming winter would be any better with out what little the town's girl had to offer. 

It worked, and soon after an other woman sought out Sage's help, this time in keeping her and her baby alive, she had lost a child before, her husband was a cruel man, she couldn't loose an other one. So had been Offering food as well. 

Soon when the winter reached it's deadly heights, Sage fund herself in the position her mother had occupied, just slightly less part of the community, if one could be more ostracized than a mother with out a husband or family in a town full of prejudice. 

It wasn't an easy live, she still had to try her best to keep herself alive in the stretches that no one sought her services, hunger became a friend. So did solitude. No one wanted to get close to her still the judgment of witche's spawn hanging over her. The fact that she often couldn't bring herself to enter the towns church, didn't help their judgment. But she couldn't enter the place that had been the origin of the series of lies that had killed her mother, the place that had stocked the towns dislike enough for them to erupt into a fire that ate up her mother. Hell, sometimes she could hardly stand helping the children that had cost her mother her live. But she did.

And it worked for a could of years, the young desperate child that did her best to keep afloat turned into a woman herself. And than the hunters returned. 

This time they would come for her, she knew, her or one of the working girls, maybe the old man that was far to tenacious to die from the cold and his hurting joints, one of the few that Sage could bare to be around, one of the few kind to her. Maybe the would come for all of them. Burn them all together, all the ones forced to the borders of the society of this dammed town.

Sage had grown inclined to see the forest the plants and the air as more god like than what ever they worshiped in the church, she knew she could leave could find somewhere else. Maybe hid in the forest for a while. 

But what then, should she survive, not get hunted down, not be burned, if she left the others like her behind, even if they sped on her.

Would their live weigh on her? People that where left by the god of the hunters?

What a cruel being the thing they called god must be. if this was his children she was willing to not count herself as one of them. 

She would do a lot to spit at them, even if she couldn't she lived of keeping them alive, she lived like her mother wanted her to. Far more a picture of the love for your neighbor she had heard the priest preach. 

Note

Hi I'm back and this time with one of my longer texts.

This is actually my second idea because my beta reader mend the first one would need a lot more room to breath.

I hope I didn't hit someone over the head with this!

Send help! Is the pape-pocalypse 😵

Re-Blog here: @brett-and-swatch-the-second