TYOV- Experience 2

 Prompt 13: Generations of the same family serve you. This line starts from any mortal character/descendants of a dead one. 

[Flock of Sheep resource lost, and gained Servitors of the Lineage resource. Experience added to Memory 2]

My actions have not gone unnoticed. 

I buried what was left of my father out in the woods, in an unmarked grave. God forgive me. I wanted to do more but I couldn't risk him being stumbled upon. 

I left the house less and less after that night. Found I couldn't leave. At least not during the day. It started out that only the mid day sun would keep me inside, but that fast became all but the low light of the evening. The suns glare is unpleasant, beating upon me like God's anger that the priests would warn us about for sinning. 

My absence also does not go unnoticed.

You can't really see to a flock of sheep in the middle of the night. Worse, since eating my own good old father I've been getting hungry like the Winter of the bad harvest. I know what I need to eat, but I can't do it. So I settled for our family sheep. We never had many, and I've been trying to ration them to make them last, but I figured if I can't sheer them and let them graze, then...

Anyway, the neighbours noticed.  It started with me seeing them out there, trying to peek through the wooden boards I'd put in front of the windows. That gave me a scare. Thankfully they left quickly. But they kept coming back. I'm not sure if they knew father survived the attack and wondered where he had gone, or if it was the vanishing sheep or just not seeing them out in the field or...well it doesn't matter.

They've kept their distance, more or less.

I could hear them whispering across the fence, (for apparently my senses seem far more capable these days), whispering that this small hovel of ours, our home, was cursed. 

I suppose it is. When those Norsemen came and burnt and raided, if we were all indeed dead, then how did the holes in our roof get repaired and by who? Well it's not like I was going to put up with the holes and things, doubly so with that light pouring in. 

I managed to keep this up for weeks. Months? I lost track of time hiding in the dirt of that home that was barely a hut I had come to  decide.

Cwenhild came. God I missed her but with what I did to my father I couldn't risk going to see her, or anyone. But then one day there she was outside the door. She had some wildflowers. For us? There was someone else with her. They were bickering. Arguing about needing to knock the place down, take the sheep maybe (or what's left, who knows what they thought of them vanishing if they realized. Not that many were left).

The second voice said something about there being no curse here. Banging on the door. Battering even. Of course it didn't hold,  the thing was half rotted and just to keep the light out. Someone from the village was with Cwenhild. Even then I couldn't think of his name, it escaped me. They both entered, tentatively looking around. They couldn't see me in the shadows of the corner. I think I cowered there, not worried about what they would do to me, but worried about... Well, even with the sheep I hadn't felt full, truly sated, since that night. 

God forgive me, I thought I could hold it it. But the man saw me, and as he panicked at what he thought must be some filthy monster in the corner, the look of panic...he reminded me of father. That did it. I don't know if it was hunger or worry that he would go out and tell the village or what, but I fell upon him like I did before. Sunk my teeth into his throat, his guts, and filled my stomach.  

This went on for awhile. 

I had forgotten about Cwenhild though. She was collapsed across from me, us, paralyzed in what must be fear at this feral thing pouncing upon the man she was talking to. Coming to my senses, I wiped (likely vainly) at the blood and flesh around my mouth and teeth and reached out for her, said her name. 

Somehow I thought she would recognize her old best mate and it would be fine.

I mean, not in the way that I thought, but I suppose it did. 

Her eyes sparkled with what I came to suspect was some madness and fear. She proclaimed me some new power, like the ones that are meant to live in the forest. The old pagan gods that we would get shouted at for talking about when we were young. The ones you still hear about from the older folk. About the wild men in the woods and the deer with mens faces.

I'm not sure what she thought I was, but when she started to babble about getting me more of the neighbours if that was what I wanted, or if I were some vengeful shade full of hatred for those sea raiders who attacked us... I'm not sure she is still the Cwenhild I knew, or if she is another scared animal driven by self preservation like the sheep.  

I cried for awhile. She didn't flee the house. Likely because I was between her and the door at the time. I told her to leave, disgusted in myself. Told her to say that the man, whatever his name was, was attacked by a wolf and dragged off or...something. To lie. I'm just as driven by self preservation I suppose. But she kept coming back every night, in the dead of the dark, to whisper at the door. Asking if I needed food, or water, or...people. 

I wonder if she had come to her senses, and that this was her way of showing concern for her best friend mixed with that fear causing her to bargain for her own survival.  But at least I had an ally now to bring me things in the day.