Writing Prompts Archive/1/Lark Weaver

Someone from your past unexpectedly reappears... who are they and how do you react to this surprise guest?

His first target...he was 18 summers old when he was finally sent for his first kill mission. Some woman who had brought great displeasure against the boss...the perfect test he had heard when he left. Following the instructions given he headed to the small rough house in a poor area. Something about this felt eerily familiar that he couldn’t shake it off.

The house was old...unkept and falling apart. The smell of dust lingering as he walked in. Surely this was the right place. He looked round tugging at his hood when he heard a cough above. Climbing the stairs he headed to the bedroom when he stopped in the doorway. A woman with striking ginger hair like his own lay in the bed. Her form, once beautiful now aged and frail as consumption, had weakened her. Though unlike him her eyes were a honey’d colour . A person he hadn’t seen for 11 summers...One who sold him for her own freedom.

“Mama…” He said softly, stepping into the room. The woman looked to him, her eyes clouded from sickness and delirium. She made a questioning noise. “Are you a chirurgeon.” She asked him as he eyed around the dusty room. Taking in her frail form which still held some of her tragic beauty. Even though dulled her hair matched his in its striking orange colour. Though her grey eyes still looked as cold as ever.

“No...I’m not...But I can help with your pain…” He said, his eyes catching a small tumblr and a jug with water. This was the perfect test...the test to see if his loyalty stood with the organisation or his blood...or to see if he let emotions take over him and take out his rage on the target. But staring at the woman..the one who sold her own child to save her own skin...left him to be branded as the organisation's property the child she should have loved and cherished; he felt nothing but pity for the frail form on the bed that didn’t seem to know where she was.

“Thank goodness…” She wheezed as she watched him. “I must say...it’s unusual to see such hair here...normally a more shroud colour…” She wheezed. He raised a brow at her. “Yes I have heard that before…” He replied while pouring her a glass reaching into his pack to get a small bit of powder to add to the water letting it mix and dissolve. “One of my parents was from there…” He added smiling to her sitting by her side. Helping her sit up and offering her the glass.

She drank it gracefully still holding some of the grace he remembered from when he was small. Once she finished the glass he knew it wouldn’t take long...short but painless...and leaving no trace of the poison. With her current state it would look like the illness took her. He sighed while he waited trying to find out what emotion he should be feeling right now but came back empty. It wasn’t until her voice still as radiant as he remembered from his youth broke the silence he looked up with eyes wide.

“Win dain a lotica…” She had begun singing. A song he long remembered in the rumoured language of fairies he adored so much as a child. He couldn’t help but join her in melody.

*“En vai tu ri*
Si lo ta

Fin dein a loluca

En dragu a sei lain

Vi fa-ru les shutai am…”

“En riga-lint….” only his voice remained for the last line. He felt her weight on his arm slump. And the sharp noise of the small tumblr in her hand rolling off the bed and onto the floor. The noise of it rolling across the room till it came to a stop being the only thing breaking the silence.

He wondered what her last thoughts were...what caused her to draw the song she used to sing to him as a child to be her final moments...did she recognize him...torn about all the questions he sighed smacking himself in the head. “Stop it…” He scolded himself. Taking a snippet of her hair as a sign the job was done he quietly left the old dusty home. Victim number one...