12/21/11

Our mother had told us to go find berries in the woods, because she was going to make a pie. We had gotten our baskets and our hats, and then we headed into the woods. Two hours later we returned, baskets full of berries, to find our whole village smoldering. Some of the houses were still burning.
We looked at each other. We knew who had done this. Our village had rivals; they were not above acts such as this one. Things like this happened all the time. Several of the villages we traded with had been burned in our lifetime. We were only lucky, I suppose, that our village lasted as long as it had. We were even luckier that we had been out picking those berries when they had razed the place.
It took me a while to notice the boy standing in the middle of the main road. I was too shocked by the smoking, burning buildings. I did not know how long he had been standing there, absorbing our ruined village. He had not moved a muscle since we arrived, but he had noticed us. I nudged my sister, and we walked towards him.
That night the three of us ate our berries for dinner and slept in the town square, around a fire built from the burning buildings. We did not want to go into our houses. We knew what we would find inside, and we did not want to see it.
The next morning, however, it became clear that we were going to have to go into the houses. We had eaten all of our berries. We were going to have to go somewhere, and we had no supplies to take with us. So over the next two days we did go into the houses, and we did get some supplies—food out of people’s cellars, and sometimes clothes out of their closets. Those who had razed the village had mercifully not razed everything. It would have been stealing, but we doubted our neighbors would ever need those things again.
It was the boy who suggested hunting the shandavar. We all agreed that we needed to go somewhere; we could not stay in our village and let our rivals find us. But my sister and I were reluctant to hunt the shandavar. We knew about them from our father’s ancient tomes, but we had never considered hunting them. We knew it was a suicide mission. But when the boy talked about it, we saw fire in his eyes. He was excited about hunting these shandavar, and his passion infected us. When we were ready to leave, we agreed to go with him.

12/11/11

How many of you think unicorns are fake animals that only exist to amuse little girls? They're so pretty in the stories, with gleaming white bodies and long, flowing manes and perhaps hooves or a horn of gold. They're gentle and kind and have healing powers. They love princesses and people of noble birth. Well, I'm here to tell you that while the unicorns of legend don't exist, there is a breed of horse, called the shandavar, that lives in the wild places of the world, and they possess a single, twisting horn, and if you manage to somehow get that horn, it has the power to make your wildest dreams become reality. 

           There's just one problem: no one's ever been able to capture a shandavar and get its horn. Oh, people have tried, and some have come close, but shandavar are extremely dangerous, wild beasts, and to even approach one is to have a death wish. They kill people with those horns; they'll run them right through. They lure people and prey by pretending to be wounded and then turning on those foolish enough to approach them and attacking viciously. Shandavar are always surrounded by this mist that, if it's inhaled, disorients anyone who breathes it and has the power to create terrible illusions. They live in the mountains, near volcanoes, in the dark woods, and anywhere hazardous to man.

         Hunting shandavar is like hunting death.

         My sister and I are hunting shandavar. 

         Our home was destroyed. The rest of our family is dead. We have nowhere to go, no one in the world who cares about us. But if we can find a shandavar and get its horn, we can fix our miserable world. There'd be no more pain, no more suffering, no more death....Everything would be right again. It's an impossible task, and we'll probably die, but we have nothing else to live for now. 

        The shandavar are our last hope.

        We left our ruined home two days ago, along with a sixteen-year-old boy whose parents were also killed. It's him and the two of us, all alone in the wild, hunting a savage beast that will kill us.

        This is going to be interesting.