It was a warm spring evening when I walked through the streets of the abandoned town. People looked at me with disgust on their faces. I couldn’t really bme them—at the time, I reeked of blood and sweat. I just hoped the blood was what was overpowering over the sweat.

  Slung over my back was a blood-soaked bag full of harpy wings. The wings were the materials I was paid to gather. It's rare to find hunters that kill monsters, and normally we charge less than the average inquisitor. So basically, what that means is that people like me are easy targets for penny-pinchers who want some cheap monster materials, such as my client for today.

  I walked into an alleyway where I met the said penny-pincher. He was a fat, short man with a full beard that covered most of his face. He was wearing some expensive-looking clothes, but honestly, I wouldn’t know. It’s been some years since the st time I bought anything new to wear. This time, as opposed to the first time we met, he was accompanied by a tall bald man, which was certainly a bad sign.

  As I approached him and handed him the bag with all the wings, he opened it to examine the materials. “How many wings are here, hunter?”

  “Six pairs, as we had agreed on.”

  “Six pairs? But I heard from the locals there were about nine harpies in that nest.”

  “What we agreed on is six pairs. What I brought is six pairs.”

  “Well, luckily this will be enough for what I need. Here’s your money, hunter.”

  He handed me a bag filled with coins; however, as I counted it, there were 80 pounds, as opposed to the 100 we had agreed on.

  “Hey! We said 100 pounds for six pairs! Where’s the rest of the money?”

  “Well, I was hoping you would bring me nine pairs, so I guess we both will go away from here disappointed.”

  “That’s not how that works, you cunt. Listen here…” As I got closer to the client, the bald man got between us. As I thought, he was a bad sign. This prick was probably expecting to run away with my money from the beginning. “*Tsk* Whatever. Just get away from here already...”

  The man left, grinning and giving the bag of wings to the bald man to hold. I should’ve known this man was a deadbeat prick from the moment he told me he was a mage. All of them are bad, but it seems like the younger ones are worse. It’s not the first time I have had a bad experience with one of them, and if I’m being honest, it probably won’t be the st. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I already know that mages only come after hunters to kill monsters when they’re desperate or broke; anyway, it’s never a good deal for us.

  I walked to the nearest tavern where I hoped I could get some cheap meal and a bed to sleep. However, due to my unpnned ck of money, I wasn’t sure I would be able to get both. I entered a small tavern hidden amidst the other, bigger, and honestly, better-looking ones on the street. The pce was as good as abandoned; some parts of the wall were literally falling apart.

  I sat at a table and ordered the cheapest thing on their menu: a tasteless and cold soup. I don’t doubt it was just water with salt and raw potatoes. After drinking that meal, I was going to talk with the barkeeper to ask if they had a pce to sleep, but a slim man with a mustache approached me.

  “Sir, you’re a hunter, right?” The man asked.

  “Yes, I am.” I was tired and angry, so I wasn’t really interested in getting myself another job at the moment. In times like these, I’ve learned that just being rude and cold is enough to make these people lose their interest and leave me alone.

  “W-Well, you see... I am the owner of a timber company, however, the forest in the city has been haunted by a spirit that has been ruining my business. None of the lumberjacks want to work there anymore.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not interested in taking any job right now. If you have a problem with a spirit, a preacher should be able to solve it.”

  “Bu-But I can’t simply call myself a preacher. All of the ones in the city refused my offer. It seems the spirit in the forest is much too dangerous for a simple prayer to scare them away. We need someone willing to fight them away.”

  I let out a big sigh. I’ve already encountered many people like this before. They are immediately scared if a slightly bigger creature appears in front of them, but he was probably right. In my knowledge, preachers actually can only deal with a small portion of spirits; any one a bit older forms physical bodies, so a simple prayer won’t exorcise them. Unfortunately, it looks like the man here found out about that, and I won’t be able to run away from this job so easily.

  “I’m sorry, sir. But I’m actually leaving the town tomorrow. So I really can’t accept your job.”

  “Please, good sir. This is an urgent matter. I’ll pay you five hundred pounds for the work as well as any expenses you might have.” Five hundred? This is the amount you would pay for an inquisitor to deal with a physical spirit. This man is either stupid or really desperate. Anyway, I can’t deny a good deal when I see one.

  “Five hundred, huh? Okay, you got yourself a deal. I’ll meet you in the forest tomorrow. And I would like my payment in advance.”

  “Sure, good sir. I’ll pay you first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll already arrange your stay in the best inn in town.” Five hundred, and I get to stay in a good inn for a change? This might be the best work I had in a while.

  “By the way, hunter, my name is James. What is yours, if you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Jonah. My name is Jonah.”

  The man walked with me to a big inn in the town square. It was as good as an inn could be in that city, where no one ever stayed unless they were desperate or hiding from someone. As I walked inside the building, that man named James talked to the inn owner to pay for my stay. He then said he would meet me the next morning before leaving. I slept for the first time in a long time in a comfortable bed in a room where the roof wasn’t smelling like blood and piss.

  The next morning I went to meet the man in the forest as he said. There he was accompanied by two tall and strong men who were probably some of the lumberjacks that worked for him. He expined to me where the spirit usually showed up and how it looked, before giving me the money we had agreed on. He said it took the form of a young girl and walked around the forest bothering anyone who entered. Thinking I had gathered all the information I needed, I moved into the forest. I entered the forest with nothing but my sword and a bag, normally you wouldn’t need more than that to kill a spirit. As I strolled through the trees, I noticed how peaceful those woods felt, especially for a supposed haunted area. When I moved even further, I spotted what looked like a little girl walking alone. Although that fit into the description that James told me, it's always better to confirm before acting or I would end up just attacking some innocent kid.

  I tried moving closer to get a better look at her, but as I did, I noticed something weird. Her skin was not pinkish like a human, or even pale like a spirit, but green. I didn’t really knew much about spirits, but I was sure they weren’t normally that color. I tried to sneak closer but as I did, the figure spoke to me.

  “There’s no use in hiding, Jonah. I’ve felt your presence a long time ago.”

  “What the… How do you know my name?”

  “You’re a hunter but don’t know what I am? I am a nymph. We have a close connection to every living creature. I can probably tell more about you than you’d know yourself.”

  I’ve heard of nymphs before, but never saw one. Honestly, I always thought it was just a folktale to scare away hunters that killed animals for fun, but seeing one so close in real life does bring a certain fear in me, even if she looks like just a kid. She certainly had a unique aura around her that I’ve never felt before. I dropped my sword and the bag and got closer to her, but still not much, since something about her still made me uneasy.

  “A nymph? So there’s no spirit here?”

  “Spirit? No, I don’t think there is. What made you believe there would be one here?”

  “Some man named James said a spirit was scaring his lumberjacks. But it seems it’s only you.”

  “You said lumberjacks? I have scared away some who tried cutting trees here, and I remember a certain James coming here trying to make me stop himself.”

  “So he already knew it was a nymph here… But why won’t you just let them work?”

  “The times are changing, Jonah. I remember when I was just born, when the first tree in this forest was pnted. People used to cut trees down to build their houses, feed their fires and once they gathered all that they needed, they won’t cut another for a long time. But men like James would cut all this forest if he could make money out of it. Do you think once he cuts a tree here he will sell it in this town? Or do you think he will move out all of the wood from here to the big cities, where he can sell it for a bigger price? The need for profit would kill this forest and anything standing in their way. Why do you think they called you to come kill me?”

  “So he was trying to trick me into thinking there was a spirit here and kill you? Just for money?”

  “Money has changed humans, Jonah. Or you think I don’t know how you also don’t like your job? What other way would you have people doing things they hate every day and do nothing to stop it?”

  I was now being scolded by a wood fairy that looked like a little girl. And this was supposed to be an easy job…

  “How would you even know that?”

  “As I said, I can feel your emotions, Jonah. I can see the unhappiness you have and how it is mostly reted to your job. Your emotions are pretty complex, but I can still tell so much.”

  “Sure, maybe I hate doing what I do, but so does most people.”

  “See? Your people could live a much more peaceful life if only you weren’t so dedicated to making more and more money.”

  “Things aren’t so simple. We only advanced as a species because of this way we work.”

  “Sure. Are you going to kill me, then? Are you going to complete your job and bring me to your client? That is the work you do after all.”

  “… No. I won’t kill you. Because I wasn’t paid enough to kill a nymph.”

  “I already said I can feel your emotions, Jonah. You are angry that you were tricked and you know that deep down you agree with me.”

  Unfortunately, she was correct. I’ve been tricked by many swindlers before, but never before has one thought I was so stupid as to just walk into a forest and kill a “spirit” that just happened to look like a kid. And as much as I didn’t fully agree with her idea of how humans should live, coming to this shit hole of a town and taking all of their wood is just an asshole move. “There’s no use for you to lie to me, Jonah. I know that as much as you want to do what you think is right, you’ve been told to just act as people expect you to.”

  “And what would you know about this? You might know what humans think, but you don’t understand it. You’ve just been in this forest all your life. You don’t know how humans live, do you?” As I said that, she actually looked thoughtful for the first time since we started talking. Maybe I hit some nerve with her.

  “You know what? I think you’re right. I’ve grown distant from the townspeople, many don’t even know there’s a nymph here. So why don’t I begin getting to know you better? Tell me a bit more about yourself, Jonah.”

  Shit… I just wanted to make her shut up, but now it seems like I opened a whole new can of worms, one that I never wanted to even talk about in the first pce. “And why should I be the one to tell you my story?”

  The nymph smiles gently. “Because deep down you already want to tell me, don’t you?” Maybe she wasn’t wrong, but I still didn’t liked how she was just reading mind like a book. “… *sigh* Okay, I’ll talk a bit about myself. So… let’s start from the beginning.”

  My family was a normal family of peasants. My father was a merchant of magic materials, and my mother was just a housewife, but she would help him with work when needed. I was the middle child of three boys, and both of my brothers and I would also help father when he needed, which was most of the time, since business wasn’t going so well. Father took work very seriously, so he wanted me and my brothers to follow in his footsteps as merchants just like him. However, I never felt connected to any of that work. It was then that I found out I have some rare condition where I’m unable to connect to magic in any way. Both my parents were obviously very surprised by that, and although they never said it aloud, I could tell they were really disappointed. After all, they wanted me to take over the family business with my brothers.

  I started to feel more and more distant from my parents, so I finally decided to move out. I went to live with my uncle, my father's brother. He was a hunter and taught me everything he knew about it. Soon he felt more like a dad to me than my actual father, and his daughter felt more like my sister than any of my brothers.

  Uncle Edward was id back and carefree, but he took his work seriously. I wanted to be a good hunter—not because I loved it, but because I wanted to impress him. But it felt like he realized I didn’t actually enjoy any of that, and that only made him disappointed in me. Unlike when my parents felt the same way, I actually felt bad for disappointing him. He would always tell me how he wanted me to do something that I actually enjoyed, but hunting was all that I could think about doing because that’s what he taught me about.

  “Your uncle sounds like a really good man.” The nymph interrupted me. “And by the way you’re here right now, I guess you didn’t really listen to him…”

  “He is. I tried to think about other things to do, other paths to follow, but all of it felt too uncertain to me. The truth is that I was scared of making the wrong decision and ending up failing at it.”

  “So you chose a path you knew you hated instead of an uncertain one?”

  “Pretty stupid, I know. But I don’t work with uncertainty. My uncle always told me that you shouldn’t go after prey you aren’t certain you know how to kill. So that works for everything else in life.”

  My uncle always said there are three rules to being a good hunter: don’t go after prey you aren’t certain you can kill; don’t use your weapon if not to kill; and the most important one, that he always made sure I understood: life is something sacred, so don’t ever kill any animal, pnt or any other creature without a good reason.

  I remember to this day when I was just a kid and he was teaching me how to shoot an arrow. I thought it would be fun to shoot a bird that was in its nest just because. I never saw Uncle Edward so angry at me before. He told me, actually, he shouted at me, that because of me the little birds in the nest wouldn’t have anyone to take care of them and would also die. I’ve never felt so guilty in my life, and never felt so much ever since. Uncle Edward forced me to bury the bird I had killed and climb the tree to pick the babies that were in the nest, and he told me I would need to take care of them until they could live by themselves. Since then, I understood that taking a life is something extremely serious. It is something that doesn’t only affect you and the animal you’re killing, but all the others around them.

  “These seem like good rules to follow.” the nymph commented

  “They aren’t good or bad, just rules. They simply exist to maintain a bance.”

  “Perhaps… and these are the rules you follow for everything since then?”

  “Yes, my uncle always said they don’t apply only to hunting, but all aspects of life. In these times, if someone wants to stay alive, they need to be extra careful all of the time.”

  “Well, I can’t disagree that they seem like reasonable rules to follow, but aren’t they also the reason you’re unhappy with your work now? Why don’t you just follow what you think is right?”

  “I’ve been living like this and I’m healthy so far. So why change it and maybe put myself at more risk than necessary?”

  “Life isn’t only about remaining alive, Jonah. Should you let an innocent person die if saving them would put your life at risk? Should you ignore others only for you to remain safe? But more important than any of that, are you, Jonah, comfortable ignoring what your heart says is the right thing to do?”

  “… I don’t know… I honestly don’t know…”

  “I can feel the conflict inside you, so I won’t press you too much on it. I think I got to know you better with this talk, but I would love if we could talk again one of these days.”

  “Sure… Maybe if I pass around this town again… I guess I should be leaving already. The sun it’s setting and I got to deal with that wood guy…”

  “Well, I hope to see you ter, Jonah.”

  I walked back the path I came from inside the forest until I saw James and the other two men alongside him already waiting for me at the exit from the forest. They approached me, clearly anticipating me to confirm the ‘spirit’s’ death.

  “So, mister hunter, is the spirit dealt with?” The slim man approached me, asking anxiously for my answer.

  “Don’t start with that with me. Did you really think I would just enter this forest and kill anything I saw moving for you?”

  “I- I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir?” His face couldn’t make the lie any more obvious. Sweat was streaming down his face and his mustache was shaking above his mouth.

  “Cut the bullshit. I met that ‘spirit’ of yours. Even talked with her, actually. Maybe you should listen to her and just go look for some other forest to cut down.”

  “Wait!” His previously cowardly posture was repced with an angry one, like he was trying to intimidate me. “I already paid you and for your stay at the best inn in town. You can’t just leave without completing your job.”

  I couldn’t care less about his attempt to intimidate me; however, the two men behind him would be more trouble than they’re worth, so I just threw the bag with the money he had given me and started to walk away.

  “No, wait! I still paid for your stay at the inn… I’ll pay you even more to kill the nymph.”

  “This city is practically falling apart, James. The ‘best’ inn here is any one that isn’t filled with rats and drunkards. And I’m not interested in your money anymore.”

  I started walking again, and this time just ignored anything else he might’ve been shouting. It was only when I got inside the inn and got my things ready to move that I noticed I had left my sword and the bag in the forest. I got the rest of my things and made my way to the forest so I could grab my stuff on the way out of town. It was already evening, close to sundown, and with me there was only my bow, a quiver with a few arrows, and a hunting knife. I marched to the pce I had left the rest of my things, but as I did, I heard a loud commotion and moved closer carefully.

  Deep into the forest is where I saw it. James and the two lumberjacks, both holding an axe, stood around something that I couldn’t see, but I feared I already knew what, or who, it was. I sneaked closer, and my concerns were unfortunately confirmed. Laying on the ground, surrounded by the three men, was the nymph. Red blood flowed down her green skin and I could see she was still alive but panting heavily. There was a big wound in her stomach, probably from one of the axes. One of the lumberjacks was about to hit her again with the axe while she was still on the ground, but I managed to grab my bow and shoot at him. Even with the low lighting, the arrow hit him in the chest, and he dropped to the ground. The other lumberjack noticed my presence and lunged at me with the axe in hand. He was much taller than me, but still moved quickly, so much so that I almost couldn’t dodge when he first charged at me.

  I saw my sword leaning against a tree, so I waited until the man attacked so I could sidestep and grab it. With the sword in hand, I just waited for an opening, but the man got more careful once I had a weapon, and wasn’t charging at me so mindlessly like before. He moved and swung his axe at me, but his weapon was too heavy, so his movement became slower and he became visibly more tired. When he lifted the axe above his head, I stepped in his direction and sliced him in his stomach. The man then fell, and I approached James. “H-Hey. Wa-Wait. Why would you do this? I’m sure we c-can work things out. Once I start operations here, I could pay you as much as you want.”

  “I told you before, James. I’m not interested in any more of your money.”

  “But… Wait just a second, sir. Just please… don’t hurt me…”

  The man was trembling with fear. His voice was quiet, and he had fallen to his knees. I felt only disgust and pity for him at that moment, but even if that wasn’t the case, I doubt he would be any threat, especially in this state, so I just signaled with my head that he could leave, and he ran away from the forest.

  “James!” As I shouted, he stopped running and slowly turned to face me. “You won’t cut any tree in this forest, and if I get to know you did, I’ll cut your legs off. You hear me?”

  He simply nodded with his head and started running again. I ran to the nymph and got on my knees to check her wounds. She was still panting, her eyes were half closed, and that weird aura of hers was weaker than before. I knew there was not much I could do in that situation, but I gently lifted her and held her in my arms.

  “Those bastards… Don’t force yourself too much, I’ll try to move you to…”

  “Don’t worry, Jonah… I had this coming for me for some time now… You were right… I grew distant from humans… I couldn’t tell what is best for you anymore…”

  “Shut up. Don’t talk anymore, or you’ll waste energy.”

  “You got into a fight… just me? I thought… you shouldn’t get into fights you don’t know you can win... Or did you already know the outcome of this?” She said smugly even with her tired voice.

  “Are you really talking about this now? Just remain quiet so I can move you.”

  “I already told not to worry, Jonah… There’s really nothing you can do now.”

  “But…”

  “The only thing I ask of you… Bury me in this forest… amongst the trees…”

  She said this and went silent. Her eyes went bnk, and she finally stopped panting, but most noticeably, I felt her aura fade away. She’s dead, right in my arms, and just like she said, there was nothing I could do. I carefully lifted her and walked deeper into the forest with her in my arms. In the center of the woods, there were the bigger and older trees, so I decided to bury her body there. For the next two hours, I dug a hole big enough for her and id her there.

  When her body was completely buried underground, was when it happened. Many animals from all around the forest drew closer to where I was: deer, rabbits, doves, and even a bear and snakes, none of them even acknowledged each other or me. At the same time, a weird light came from underneath the ground, where her body rested. The light was bright but not blinding, so I could see a rge flower bud form there, and once the flower opened, there was a baby inside that bud. A green baby that had this aura that brought me a feeling of dread and comfort at the same time. I knew for certain that was a nymph that had just been born out of the body. I slowly reached my hands to the baby nymph, trying to grab her, but as I was about to, a deer moved closer to her and grabbed gently her with its teeth.

  “Hey! Wait!” I tried protesting, but all the animals ignored me and moved in unison following that deer that had grabbed her.

  I understood that this was probably the way they behaved to take care of newborn nymphs. I reluctantly left the forest, unable to do anything but hope for the best. I wondered if the first nymph even knew what would happen if I buried her, but wondering this now was useless.

  Once I left the forest, I walked to a man offering carriage service. “Hey, I have 30 pounds. Where is the furthest you can take me?”

  “That would be in the neighboring town, sir. Do you have any business there?”

  “I don’t know.”