Eania - part 1

The buckets fell to the ground with a terrible noise, and with a splash of water that made the black cat a few meters away jump high into the air.

Eania didn’t pay any attention to the cat’s offended screams. She held both hands over her stomach, kneeling to the ground, moaning.

"That’ll teach you!" the tall, black-haired boy infront of her said triumphant. He had hit her. Just because she wouldn’t let him have her buckets with water and instead get his emty ones, so that she would be forced to go all the way back to the well to get new.

Eania was twelve now, and the boy was seventeen. When she was younger, she had always done as he told her. She had been his little slave, you could say. She had learned to walk fast, to not make her mother suspicious of the time it took her to get the water, so now it only took a little longer for her than for other girls that only had to walk back and forth once.

This was early summer, and the sun was broiling hot. All winter had it been raining, and she had not needed to go get water. There was enough in their water reservoir. It was basicly a big barrel in which they gathered the rain. Eania had not but seen the boy from afar since before winter. She had been eleven then. She was twelve now. This made her feel brave.

"You are such a coward, Tehilon!" she hurled at him. She rose strenuously, and backed off one step to be out of reach of his fists. "I have seen no other boy pick on little girls like you have picked on me!" This was not entirely true – she had seen it plenty of times. But no other boy seemed to enjoy it as much as Tehilon did.

"You call me coward?" Tehilon roared. His otherwise pale face turned bright red, and before Eania realized what was going on he grabbed her blond hair and raised her into the air in it.

She let out a heart-rending scream of pain, and kicked and beat the air around her. It felt like the world was falling apart, like it shivered and cracked, and like a roof that cracks and falls in, as did it feel like the worlds roof did – crack and fall ontop of her head.

Lanay, one of Eania’s friends, came running. When she came around the corner of a house and saw what was happening, she stopped and clapped her hand over her mouth.

"Eania!" she whined. Lanay was only ten, and her shoulder-length blond hair was braided in around twenty thin pigtails. Her large blue eyes were filled with tears, as if she could feel Eania’s pain as well.

A dull thought beat its way through the pain in Eania’s head, and in an attempt to prevent Tehilon from hurting Lanay too she wriggled graciously and kicked Tehilon in the stomach. He dropped her, and she hit the ground with a painful thud. She rolled out of his way, and huddled with her hands around her head. Faint sobbing could be heard from the little bundle.

Lanay ran to her, and fell to her knees beside her. "Eania!" she whispered. "Eania! Please Eania, say something!"

But before Eania could say anything, Tehilon threw himself over them, and Lanay let out a scream of fright. He threw Lanay out of the way, and started beating Eania.

Lanay was in no way immobile, and she ran to get Eania’s mother.