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Slashing through her bonds, I lift her from the soiled plank. I look around, but I cannot see any soft place to sit her down. She curls up, her limbs finally free to take the position every human takes inside the womb, her arms and legs curled against the cruel world.
I have never comforted anybody, but I find myself making soft crooning sounds. They are not as calming or as beautiful as her song, but they are all I can give her. She is just so small and so vulnerable. She should be cherished and protected, but these animals who call themselves human have done their best to destroy her.
Guilt runs heavy through my veins. I should have kept watch over her. Instead I removed myself from the village, thinking I was putting the people there in danger, unable to trust myself to stay away from her.
She is trembling in my arms, and I am growing more and more furious by the minute. I’ve never wanted to save anyone for any reason. I’ve never wanted to be a hero - but she makes me need to be one. This tender, delicate little human has been treated worse than I would treat my worst enemy, and for no reason I can see other than the fact that she is different from the others.
She is not even that different. It is not as though she has an extra head, or her legs are made of fire. She is a red headed beauty who likes to sing. She should be celebrated, but instead she has been demonized. I wish they could meet me, a real demon, and try to put their painted hands on me. I would rip them off and feed them back to them. This cave would be painted with their entrails, not their hands.
Humans are scum. I never liked them as a species. No matter how much my kind may worship them, I see the worst aspects of scythkin in humans. They have none of our strength, and all of our avarice. They breed as we breed, without regard for the land around them, and they destroy all life in their path. They cannot appreciate beauty, not really. They think they do, but the moment they sense it, the seek to defile and destroy it.
She is the most beautiful among them. She is pure of spirit. Even I can see that. But she was outcast before this happened to her, and now she has been thoroughly broken. I cut through the bonds that hold her, but do I know what to do next? How can I tend a human?
Water.
All things need water. She is dry. So dry that she cannot make any sound other than a soft rasping rattle. Her gaze focuses on my face, but only for a moment. I do not have time to revel in hatred. She needs me to take care of her.
Leaving her in the cave, I run down the slope toward the spring which bubbles from the lower reaches. Reaching the spring, I realize that I have no vessel for the water. I have to run back to the girl and see if there is anything in the cave which might be of use. Seeing her lying there, so still and frail as I take a skull from the piles of bones lining the walls, and rush down to the flow makes me want to rampage through the village and slay every human in it in revenge. But I cannot hurt these humans. They might be important in some way I cannot understand.
The skull in my hand reminds me of their frailty. A human mind once occupied this hollowed bone, but now it is empty. I am holding a whole world of experience snuffed out and turned to dust by the passage of time. I wonder what sin this person committed. Did they sing? Dance? Did they dare to argue with the authority of their chief? It doesn’t matter anymore. Though I seem to stand near the beginning of human history, I am still too late to discover an innocent species. This kind devour their own for the smallest of infractions, and yet find forgiveness for the worst of crimes.
I scoop the crystal clear fluid flowing from the earth into the empty skull and carry it quickly back to the girl. She has not moved from the place I put her on the ground. I wish there was somewhere comfortable to lay her, but there is no comfort in this cave of death. There is only the harsh, ashen ground and the remains of other humans since departed.
Propping her up in my lap, I trickle some of the water between her dusty lips. It runs out of her mouth before she swallows reflexively, taking some of that life sustaining liquid down. Humans, like the rest of the life on this planet, are descended from water bound organisms which multiplied until they were able to crawl out of the primordial soup, into which little sparks of consciousness had been slung. The way she looks at this moment, I’m fairly certain she considers that to have been a mistake.
