Kalla’s Flight – A short story.

Kalla’s legs beat faster and faster into the snow, though she could not feel it. Her beautifully molded face, all feeling long since lost in the biting cold, drove into the wind with urgent purpose. Her lungs beat inside of her chest, begging for respite from the exhaustion, though her instincts drove her forward. She held close to her a small bundle of rags, her sole reason for perseverance. It was her child, the last memory of her lost beloved, and her only care in this most miserable of lives. Suddenly she burst from the encolsure of the forest onto a great plain of rolling hills and dipping valleys. She would have liked to stop and admire such beauty of the natural world, but no such thought entered her mind now. She raced on towards her destination, a small villiage on the border of Icara.

A wisp of wind rushed by her ear, an arrow fell into the ground in front of her. Her fears now rushed back to the forefront of her thoughts. Terror griped her very soul as she fought the looming glare of death. "Not far now," she thought, "I don’t have to run much farther, I’m right there." She tried her best to calm herself and keep her muscles working. Her entire frame would have liked to collapse and remain montionless, but it is quite a wonder what a human can do when spurred by fear.

She was right on the edge now, she could see the gates to the town, smell the fires in the houses. She need only step inside and her nightmare would end. This newly kindled hope lifted her exhaustion, and she ran now as fast as was physically possible for her body. She felt neither the pain of the cold nor the comfort of the sun. She was completely numb to her core. All such feeling or emotion gone now, replaced by the simple yet powerful need to survive.

She was there. Finally, three hours after her husband had died protecting her. Three hours of constant running, and her torment was over. She did not feel the arrow slicing into her spine. Her body fell limp and lifeless over the threshold of the town gates. The small group of soldiers that
had given her that final chase had stopped some 200 yards back, deciding that their chance of stopping their mark had came and went. One
archer had the urge to fire an arrow at her in frustration, thinking his cause lost. He would later brag and his "Miracle shot" to any man unlucky enough to be in his presence.

The townspeople had begun to gather around the poor girl’s corpse. "Such a pretty thing," remarked one old woman. "All that effort to end in such a way. It makes my hands tremble," said a man. "Look! What’s that in her arms!?" cried a young boy. The baby had started to cry, and a woman from the crowd quickly bent down and picked it up. "Maybe she didn’t die for nothing then," the old woman said, "There’s destiny in that child. People don’t live through such things on chance alone."