Chapter Text
"It went this way!"
That was all Caleb needed, he set of running in the direction of the mans pointed finger. It was late at night, the moon was full, the stars shone brightly and the sun slept. However, Caleb could not stop to admire it's natural beauty, as he so often did. Instead, he was scanning for what the townsfolk only described as with two words:
a witch
It had been 5 years since him and his younger brother, Philip, had arrived in Gravesfield, a closed off community who very little knew about. The brothers had lost heir father at the mere ages of ten and eight; a tragedy involving a neglected fireplace and a wooden barn, two things that don't mix well. Unfortunately, their father had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was their widowed mother who brought them to Gravesfiled, knowing an old friend who moved there after she was married off. Though, like most women in that town, she was found to be a witch, and so she was burnt at the stake. She taught her sons to read in private, a women knowing how to read was forbidden, a sign that she was a servant of the Devil. Caleb never forgot her screams of mercy and forgiveness. But death has no favourite child, so, with one last cry, her breathe was stolen from her. An old carpenter took them both in. Having said that, Caleb was pretty certain that he only did it for free labour, as a month after their mothers passing, he set them to work. So along side helping the man keep his business alive, they also were forced to participate in the one thing that killed their mother.
But, for some reason, his brother enjoyed the towns unsavoury practise. Caleb didn't know if it was due to the fact that Philip wanted to fit in with his strange peers or he really did enjoy hunting those women
Not women, he should say, witches.
But Caleb didn't have time to wallow over the past, he must capture that thing and bring it back to the people. It's what they wanted.. Right?
He closely followed his fellow hunters, making sure not to stray too far from his group. As he was running, he tripped over a tree stump, causing the pitchfork he was holding to scratch the side of his face, blood escaping from the wound. He did admit, it hurt more than any injury he had ever came across, but he couldn't worry about such trivial things in that moment, there was still a witch on the loose, and he needed to catch it.
He scanned across the forest looking for his group, but he found nothing. No light from their torches, no shadows of their mostly hefty figures, not even a faint shout. Nothing.
As Caleb was contemplating his scarce options and trying to ignore the faint burning on his head, he saw a figure run by him. He figured it may be one of the men from the group. He called out to them, begging for assistance. When the figure did not reply, instead they kept running, Caleb started chasing them. He kept calling out to them hoping that they would answer.
When the figure stopped in a part of the woods he had never came across before, he finally caught his breathe.
"hello, it's me Caleb, I'm not a witch. I was just wonderin-"
He was cut of by the figure lunging towards him, causing him to come crashing to the ground.
"Hey! I just said that I wasn't a witch, can you get off of my now?" Just as Caleb said that, it dawned on him that the reason that the figure attacked him was not because they thought that he was a witch, but something else.
The figure attacked him because he was human