The village head bid me goodnight and retreated to her hut. I turned and walked toward my own, the night air cool against my skin. It carried the faint smell of woodsmoke from the dying bonfire.
The path home was familiar enough that I could walk it without thinking, which meant my mind was free to wander where it always did when I was alone in the dark.
There was a time when we didn't live like this. Hidden in the forest, dwelling in huts. Back then, life was normal. I had a father. I went to school. We didn't have to pray for survival every single day. I used to complain about assignments. I used to fight with my father over whether or not he was cheating at cards. I used to know what tomorrow looked like. That, more than anything, was what I missed: the ordinary certainty of life.
But everything changed after the great war between the vampires and the hunters. Yes, we were always at war, but none was as devastating as the great war.
The aftermath was a wasteland of destruction. Families torn apart, cities reduced to ash, and dreams left shattered in the rubble of everything that used to be.
I used to dream of becoming a doctor like my father. He had a way of making people feel safe just by entering a room. There was something in his voice, the easiness of his smile, and I had wanted that. I wanted to be the kind of person whose presence was a comfort in itself.
Now, dreaming was a luxury, and the world kept showing us what happens to them when you hold too tight.
It was as though God and the Demigods had turned their backs on us.
Sometimes, I even doubted their existence, though my mother dismissed such thoughts with a quiet reprimand.
All we prayed for now was to get through the night and see another day.
As I stepped into the hut, the warm enticing aroma of freshly baked beans greeted me, and my stomach growled in response. Whatever heaviness I'd carried up the path loosened slightly.
The aroma of my mom's meals always made the worst evenings feel briefly survivable. I hurried to the kitchen, happy to see the table already set.
"I love you so much, Mom," I said, sinking into a wooden chair.
She chuckled, drying her hands on her cloth. "You only say that when you see the table set before you."
I laughed. A real one.
Just as I reached for a piece of bread, her wooden spoon swatted my hand.
"Ouch!" I yelped, rubbing the sting.
She gave me a stern look as she sat across from me. "We give thanks to the gods before we eat."
I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
The gods did nothing when our world fell apart, when my father was slaughtered by a vampire right before my eyes, when I stood there too small and too powerless to do anything but watch. And yet, we were expected to thank them for the food we'd toiled to grow and harvest ourselves.
Lovely.
"Close your eyes, Kira," she instructed, her tone leaving no room for argument.
I complied, tuning out as she murmured her prayer. It felt endless, and when she finally finished, I eagerly began eating.
"No matter what, Kira, always thank the gods," she said.
I ignored her and continued eating, scraping the last of the beans toward my spoon. But her next words stopped me.
"We're alive when so many others are not. That's something to be grateful for."
My appetite vanished.
I dropped my spoon and stared into her pale blue eyes. Eyes that had seen everything I had seen and somehow still held something I couldn't understand. Faith, maybe. Or just the practiced numbness of a woman who decided, long ago, that falling apart was not an option she could afford.
"The gods could have saved the others," I said, my voice trembling with anger.
"They watched us suffer, watched us bury our loved ones. They let this happen. We couldn't even bury Father!"
Her gaze fell momentarily, the weight of my words evident. For a moment, I almost stopped. But the anger had been sitting in my chest for so long, and now that it had found a way out, I couldn't seem to close the gap.
"They let us struggle, Mom. And yet, you want me to thank them? For what?" My voice broke on the last word.
"Kira!" she snapped, her voice sharp. "They see everything. They can hear us."
"Let them hear me!" I shouted, standing. "They demand praise and worship, but they've done nothing to deserve it!"
The table rattled as she rose to her feet. "We're still alive, Kira —"
"This isn't what being alive should feel like!" I interrupted, my voice rising. "There's no joy here. No hope. How can you expect me to thank the gods for this misery?!" I turned away, my chest heaving, unable to look at her face any longer. "The meal was delicious. I'll do the dishes when you're done."
I stormed to my room and slammed the wooden door shut. The sound of it echoed and then went quiet, and the quiet was somehow worse.
I slid to the floor with my back against the door, pulling my knees to my chest. The tears came hot and fast before I had a chance to decide whether to let them, and I pressed the heel of my hand against my mouth so my Mom wouldn't hear.
I had meant every word. Every single one.
I thought about my father. The way he used to hum while he read. The way he smelled of antiseptic. The last time I had seen his face clearly, before everything that came after made it hard to hold the image steady.
My mother had lost him too. She had lost him and she still bowed and gave thanks, and I couldn't decide if that was the bravest thing or something that broke my heart.
That night, I couldn't sleep, so I heard when my mother entered the room. I stayed still, pretending to be asleep.
The bed dipped as she sat beside me, her cool hand taking mine.
"My special girl," she whispered, pressing a kiss to my knuckles. "I love you so much, Kira. I hope you know that."
I opened my eyes. In the dark, I could just make out her face — the lines that had deepened since the war, the silver threading through her hair that hadn't been there before.
She looked tired. She always looked tired, I realized, and I had stopped noticing because tired was just what people looked like now.
"I do," I said softly.
She smiled faintly. "Having you in my life is the greatest blessing. I would give my life a thousand times over to protect you."
Tears welled in my eyes as I sat up and hugged her tightly, pressing my face against her shoulder the way I had when I was little. She held me without hesitation, and I let myself be held.
"I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean to yell."
She cupped my face, "Never apologize for speaking your mind, Kira. Never."
"I love you, Mom," I whispered.
"Forever." She said, stroking my hair.
"Forever," I echoed.
But in our world, forever was a fantasy, as fragile as the dreams we no longer dared to dream. I knew that. She knew that too. But she said it anyway, and I said it back, and maybe that was its own kind of faith.