Reap What You Sow
For @flashfictionfridayofficial
Title: Reap What You Sow
Word count: 649
Wattpad
In the shroud of the night and making his way through the shelter of the dense forestry, he manages to find the clearing, his wife following close behind. Late-autumn air bites his skin raw, but his blood run hotter than usual, his heartbeat blaring in his ears. The moon hangs high above in the sky, appearing between the hazy clouds above the hill and cutting the night roughness like a sharp knife.
He takes firm steps towards the center composed of squared white stones placed in odd positions and stands in front of it. He looks up to the sky and notices that the moon is reaching the highest point, right above the strange nature-formed centerpiece.
It is almost time.
He searches in his back pocket and grabs a silver blade that possess, in its engraving, the illustrated lifetimes of all its former bearers. A glint of moonlight shines bright over the metal; he turns his palm facing up, and he proceeds by cutting three lines: one over his heart, another over his life line, and a last one over his fate line. He squeezes his hand, ignoring the slight sting of his superficial wounds, and watches with expectation as drips of blood touches the rocks.
A light resembling the moonlight begins radiating beneath the stones in a sweet cacophony, and the sound only begins to quiet when a flat, triangular-shaped head emerges from the ground. He offers his hand, and the slender, but long snake, begins slithering upwards. The sensation of its dark-blue scales over his bicep mesh with the sensation of the crisp wind. When the serpent flickers its black tongue near his earlobe, he understands the need to do what is coming next.
“Honey?”, he calls his wife behind him without turning around, “can you come here?”.
She has been watching the night unfold in silent horror, never knowing when to intervene. However, there is that prickling sensation in the nape of her neck that she should have turned around and let the trees engulf her when she had the chance.
She forces her feet to sever her sudden roots to the ground and walk up to her husband, her hands clasped tight and pressed against her abdomen. He puts his hands on her waist with the gentleness that she comes to expect from him, and her shoulders relaxes. When he places her on the rocks, the tension comes back tenfold.
“Sweetheart?” she asks, and grimaces at the temblor in her voice.
“Are you aware of how powerful this type of magic is? How much it requires you to sacrifice?” he asks, but she knows it is rhetorical.
He holds her chin, and his eyes pierces her soul. “The sacrifice of the one you love the most”.
She wonders if her terror reflects on his eyes or if it is just the moonlight mocking her.
Her strength it is too brittle for pretenses of bravery, and despite her resolve, tears slide down her face, freezing in the slope of her cheeks and the corners of her lips. She stares up at the man that she has loved since she was fifteen, and her stomach churns with a dark fire at the sight of his sickly-sweet expression.
The snake trails down his arm in direction to her face.
He traces a finger in an attempt to rub off the tears. “I love you”.
“You will reap what you sow”, she spits, letting her warning be the last words he will ever hear from her.
When the serpent sinks its fangs on her skin, a beam of white light shoots up to the sky, merging with the ear-splitting screaming of his wife. He takes one last chance to look at the face of the woman he loves before she disappears to the light.
If duty is the death of love, then greed must be the death of humanity.
