Vode

I sit within my tent sharpening my sickle blade with a stone, not that it was necessary. 

“Vodevelloy?” A voice that has not uttered my name in years says beyond the entrance. 

I sheath my blade and approach the curtains. I slowly pull open the purple fabric and meet her eyes. 

“Dire Sapt,” I nod to her. 

She smiles, stepping beside me and into the tent. “I'm no longer the Dire.” she reminds me.

I nod recalling the night a week ago when my grandfather had to ask the Goddess for her blessing. 

I am no goddess. I recall her telling me as I received the blessing. Just an unlucky being like you.

“Aunt Sapt,” I ask sitting before my small fire pit that has no flame. “When you became the Dire what did the Goddess tell you?”

Sapt sits beside me placing her hands in her lap. “There was a Dire to be born in the future who could bring Terra to its knees.” She pauses. “The Goddess giggled in a child’s voice when she said this and I was unsure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.”

I nod, indeed there were once many Dire’s who could bring Terra to its knees but they were never things to be concerned of although perhaps the Goddess was referencing a Dire that never recieved her blessing yet had the birthright. I clear my throat. 

We are heading to a sensitive topic I have been trying to bring up for many years now. “Did she know that the Gladio was the Prince?” I ask, picking at the grass beneath the pillow. 

“Who?” she asks, turning to me.

I hate to say the name, but it is one we have to acknowledge. “Flubytter.”

I watch as Sapt’s eyes soften, her eyes dart and then her throat bob as she swallows realizing how much that name hurt me and her. “No.” she says, lowering herself to sit beside me. “Only I, your father and grandfather knew. We told the rest of the Mountaineers after his mother died, Flubytter had left and Devo was laid to rest.”

This time I tensed feeling my chest clench. Devo, my dearly beloved older brother. 

Sapt places a gentle hand on my shoulder as a means of comforting. “You have done good, Vodevelloy. He is proud of you from beyond.”

I smirk, nodding my head even though I doubt he is proud that I became something far more violent and unstable then the little girl he knew. “Thank you, I will surely win.”

Sapt laughs, slapping my back harder than I anticipate. “If you do not win, I will personally strip you of your title.”

The comment is a joke but it quickly takes away my confidence like a paper lantern being crushed. “I’ll be sure not to lose.” I nervously laugh. 

Being stripped the title of Dire while having the mark of heresy would surley be a fate worse than death. 

My back aches at the thought as a tattoo from years ago still aches with the memory.