Challenge: the story ends atop a tree.
There's a story in my village about a creature that lives in the canopy of the emlwor trees. The thing that makes these creatures different from the small, winged tandeltins that live in the canopies is the wings; they don't have any. Nobody knows the name of these creatures, or what they look like; it's been a century since anyone has seen these creatures. We only have rumours passed down through the generations. But we know they still exist; they're still feeding off us.
Two days ago, my sister's newborn daughter was taken in the dead of night. The only thing left behind were the claw marks in the wall. The only thing we have to go on to know these creatures exist.
That day, my brother-in-law gathered every man that was willing to hunt these creatures. But it didn't stay a group of men. Ten women followed me to the meeting place where he was waiting with the fifteen men he had gathered. He took one look at the faces of the women behind me, and nodded. This mission was personal. It didn't matter if we had never held a sword or shot a bow before. Sometimes, the strength of will is greater than the strength of arms.
Now, we sit in the camp nestled in the giant roots of the emlwor trees. Some of the men don't believe we should be here. It doesn't matter how many of them we fight and come out the victor; to them, battle is for men. But we will show them; we will prove, for how ever long it takes, that we have the right to be here. We can be fighters just like them.
As I sit here, I wonder if we've come across these creatures without knowing it. The past couple of nights around the fires have been spent telling tales of the creature, each one of use giving our family's version of the story. There is only one thing we all agree on: it has no wings.
*Short today, but this one was interesting and I edited it quite a few times to get it to read how I wanted it to read. It's a fun little story, though.*
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