The Death of Me- By TheRoseofTheStar

AN- I'd appriciate feed back!

Chapter 1: Well

She was there; a ghost of indecision, of the shards of her past, a phantom child. If she looked out of the corner of her eye she would sometimes catch a glimpse of her now. Her child as she should have been.

She had given her up, had her surgically removed from her body when she found she could not safely carry her to birth.

And the child, the decision, haunted her still: when her breasts ran with milk and the sweetness of it dripped down her sides, when the father left her in disgust, and when she fell through that blasted well and the phantom appeared before her as she should have lived. She was older, whole, dressed in a ridiculous frilly dress, and staring at her balefully.

She reached to take it in her arms and her fingers passed through like smoke. She knew to cry then, as she could not before; howl, pound upon the walls of the well, to tear her nails on her skin, rip her clothes to shreds, let her milk splatter upon the ground, and act with such desperate possession to rouse the people of the nearby village.

They peered over into the well, lifted her up and carried her to their grandmother healer, exclaiming over her outlandish clothes and her current state. She raved, carrying on about "children," and then clawing the sky and renting the air with her furious rants.

The people laid her at Kaede's feet and left to wait outside for news of the woman who stirred their pity.