1 The Fate of the Cursed

Amina was cursed the moment she was born. Bright white hair curled around her light, azure eyes that blinked up at her mother holding her gently, singing an old folk song that had been forbidden for years. Amina's parents lived away from the village, sequestered away in the forbidden forest of old, shunned and mocked for being nonbelievers in the sacred traditions of their ancestors. Instead, Amina and her parents lived off of the nature surrounding their humble stone cottage, practicing what the orthodox elders would call witchcraft. Using herbs and natural supplements from the mountains to brew elixirs and tinctures to cure ailments and sell in the village in secret. Amina was brought up in these practices, exploring forests and mountains, gathering from the land and taking care not to disturb nature and her patterns. But Amina was different from her parents, not normal in their sense of normal (or rather, abnormal). Her parents knew she was special from the time she could form her first sentence asking what the lights inside her parents were.

Amina could see souls.

Amina could see souls, their colors, their lifespans, and everything else connected to them. She slowly learned what the different colors and sizes meant as she watched her parents and the people of the village secretly. Souls were strange entities; one part shining in the mind, connected through a strand of light to another piece of it shining in the heart of its owner. Amina learned the length of that strand was a soul's lifespan, and it shrunk as someone approached their death. She learned this as she watched a lovely granny from the village, who had purchased elixirs from her and her parents for years, die as she sat next to her holding her shriveled, cold hand. She watched as the strand shrunk to nothing, the two pieces of the soul from the mind and heart connected and floated away, disappearing into the sun. That day changed her life forever, as she walked back home that night to find her cottage on fire and her parents' souls floating away from her forever.