Visalia was only fifteen when she killed the does devil.

She had imagined herself in a beautiful gown with handsome prince dancing with her surrounded by the most fantastical of people in the most fantastical of places.

The ruined castle she had played in almost everyday since she could leave the yard was her sanctuary. Her safe place. Her home.

She would live the life she wanted but could never have.

On this particular day in the castle, she was hunting. There had been a food shortage in the trade and her parents didn’t have enough to afford food.

So she stalked any shadow that dared to move.

She was swift and stealthy like the wind.

She had two pheasants attached to her belt when she saw the catch.

A beautiful deer that had seemed to come out of no where. She pulled her bowstring, hoping this was a time when her arrow would fly straight.

She aimed her shot and let it fire.

The second the deer heard the arrow whiz through the air it was already too late. Visalia’s arrow had shot straight.

She watched as the doe dropped to the ground below the brush behind the crumbling walls of the ballroom. She took one quick and terrible twirl before stalking towards her catch and off the marble and decaying floor of the ruined hall.

Visalia crept towards her catch hoping the deer was as healthy as it looked. It would be a weeks worth of meals for her family.

But to her horror, the deer she had sworn she had seen was not there. Instead, she saw a woman on the ground, arrow through her heart and eyes unseeing.

Visalia fell to the ground beside the woman, scared of the consequences of killing another human.

So she buried her.

She dug a grave and laid her in a bed of wildflowers before giving her back to the earth.

She had cried and had cried even in her squeaking bed back at the small cottage she lived in with her parents.

That woman was a mother, she’d thought, that woman had a family to go back to.

And so then, she vowed she could never let this guilt reach her. She vowed to never, ever kill another soul.

Except Visalia’s story went no such way.