Featured work!? *happy dance* You all rock.

The boar stood leaning heavily against a thick pine, its body heaving from the effort of breathing. It had obviously been in a fight—a spear buried in its side, held there by a stout man with short-cropped blond hair. It would have been an execution, had Yazra not snuck up behind the man holding the spear and knocked him senseless with a heavy piece of wood.

Though now, face to face with the absurdly large beast, Yazra was quickly reconsidering her plan. Despite its weak state, the boar was a magnificent creature. Its coat was long and black, almost silken in appearance. Yazra wondered if this was some eccentric noble's pet, sent into the woods for execution because it had grown too wild and large to keep. Standing so close, she realized the creature was the size of a bear—and probably weighed about as much as one.

A voice that sounded very much like her father’s urged he quickly to use the unconscious man as a shield while she finished off the boar. Another, much like her mothers, told her to trust the forest. The boar’s eyes were dark, dangerous, angry and yet also intelligent.

Whether it was to appease her father, the boar, or to remove the temptation of listening to her father, Yazra kicked away the unconscious man who lay at her feet.

“Hold still,” she ordered the boar, using her mother’s commanding tone. She kept her eyes locked with the beast’s as she slowly reached for the spear. The boar growled menacingly. Yazra sighed.

“This is pretty bad, you know. The spear will slowly tear you apart, and you’ll die a slow and painful death. If you let me pull it out now, maybe I can help you.”

Yazra didn’t expect the boar to understand her words, but she trusted that it would hear her voice and understand she wanted to help. For a long moment the boar continued to growl, but the sound receded and finally stopped.

Yazra gently took hold of the end of the spear, shifting her body so the spear would come out the same way it had gone in and do the least damage. It was only a hand's width into the boar’s side, and judging from the amount of blood that stained its fur, the spear hadn’t been in very long.

“One…. two…. three…”

Yazra threw her weight backwards, the sound of her falling flat on her back masked by the hair-raising squeal the boar let loose. She watched, eyes wide, as it thrashed at the sudden pain, ripping savagely into the tree at its side. A moment later, there was a loud creaking and the tree suddenly fell to the ground. Yazra lay there a moment, hands still closed around the spear, considering playing dead for a little while to avoid it’s wrath—or she could stop the boar from battering his attacker to death.

Yazra jumped to her feet and grabbed the man’s heels, pulling him out of the injured animal’s reach. The boar screamed an objection, but every step it took towards the man was slow and painful.

“No, no, no! Sit down and be quiet,” she ordered, feeling lightheaded as she realized she was getting between an angry boar and the head it wanted to crush under its hooves—hooves she now noticed look sharp, if that was even possible. “If you keep moving around you’ll bleed to death,” she half-pleaded. “Just…lie down. He’s not going anywhere right now. You can eat him later when he’s awake to appreciate it.”

The last comment had been a joke, though who she was trying to amuse was beyond her. However, the boar seemed to understand it wasn’t going to get its hoofs on the man, and heavily dropped onto the forest floor. Yazra quickly found rope in her bag and tied the man to a tree a short distance away.

“I’m going to be right back,” she announced, indicating with her hands that the boar should stay put. It emitted a low grumbling sound and turned its head away, beginning to lick at its wound.

*^*^*^

It was past nightfall when Yazra finally returned, having hunted around the entire forest for the herbs she needed to quicken the healing. Short of a mortar and pestle, she’d ground them between two rocks and mixed them with water until it was a thick paste. By the time she’d finished, her hands stank of plants, bringing her a nostalgic memory of learning how to make poultices with her mother.

As she approached, she found the scene before her an interesting and amusing one, though the fact that she found it amusing was deplorable. Apparently the spear wielder had woken, for the round whites of his eyes were certainly visible now, and the boar had taken it upon himself to make it clear what would happen if he tried to escape. The two were almost nose-to-nose, and the man was hyperventilating.

“Please! Help me!” he cried, shrieking as the boar snarled into his face.

Yazra twisted her finger around a curl of her hair, an indication of indecision. Finally she approached and set down her bag and the leaf of poultice on the ground.

“Why were you trying to kill this boar?” She asked quietly, getting up and gathering branches and twigs as she spoke.

“I-I wanted to be famous!” He wailed, obviously terrified out of his mind.

“How would killing a boar make you famous?” Of all the absurd things.

“Becau-” The boar roared loudly, threateningly. Yazra frowned and looked up, seeing the boar had its maw open so the man could get a good look at its tusks. The man was crying now, whimpering and begging for his life.

“I’m going to let you go now,” she said, walking over. The boar growled, whipping around to face her. She willed her racing heart to quiet, and just kept walking.

“You owe me,” she reminded the boar when she reached him, biting her lip as she felt her own hands begin to shake. The boar eyed her a moment longer, then with a grunt-like sound it shuffled out of her way and sat, watching her intently from a few feet away.

“Go home, and don’t ever let me catch you in a forest again,” she said, untying the knot and steadying the hysteric man as he stumbled forward.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you, thank you!” he said as he bowed and stumbled away, his stammered thanks turning to a cry of fear as the boar growled once again. He ran.

Yazra bit her lip, willing herself not to feel too happy that she’d managed to save the man’s life.

“I’m going to light a fire, then I have to apply a poultice to your wound,” she informed the boar, to which he grunted. Somewhere at the back of her mind, Yazra sensed there was something odd about how easily this boar grasped the meaning of the things she said and how unconcerned he was by her presence; it said to her he’d spent time around humans. Was that why the man had wanted to kill the boar? Was it some well-known show animal? Looking at the boar as she lit the fire with her tinder, she decided it was a definite possibility; wild boars didn’t have such beautiful fur.

^*^*^*^*^

During my childhood—which for me ended at fourteen when my father destroyed what shreds of naivety I had left—I rarely saw my father. He was infamous: The Dread Bandit. And yes, it was a name agreed on between him and my mother because they wanted to match. I don’t even want to guess what they wanted me to be called.

Having started as a humble mugger, my father had a real sense of the value of hard work. To him, everything worth having or being was best earned if you had carved a path of blood, tears and sweat with your own two hands to get it. My father could snap a neck like no man’s business, as I soon learned.

He was a good father to me, though, bringing me presents and telling me great stories of the great villains of all time. He carried me on his shoulders and he could make my mother blush like a young girl. It seemed only natural that one day he would take me out and show me the ways of the world as my mother had.

My father was over-enthusiastic, and forgot to take account of my gentle nature, so it was no surprise that when he immediately took me on a raid with him and his twenty-three man band, I went into shock. I’d never seen destruction of the kind and the screams were horrible. I cried and cried and clung to my father for days afterwards, earning myself the nickname Clingy. I never went on another raid again.

Once I got over that though, my father began teaching me about survival. Over the three years I spent as his shadow, I learned about deceit, danger, death, destruction and that the very nature of man is to, in some way or another, crush other men. My father did not soften his teaching with metaphors; when he wanted to show me how to kill a man he found a body, handed me a weapon, and showed me where to stab.

I somehow managed to push out of my mind the knowledge that freshly dead bodies were in limited supply and my father probably made his own. Those types of lessons were limited in number, but by the time the shock wore off I was well used to the fact that death was a violent creature.

Unfortunately, for my conscience, those three years were my time of realization. I learned about men and women from songs sung in taverns, and I learned about what being a villain really meant by allowing myself to lick the rabbits I should have been eating. By the time my father was done teaching me, any belief I may have had that what my parents did for a living was right, was gone. They were villains, and I didn’t have the heart to grow up and be like them, no matter how much I loved them.

Three months before my eighteenth birthday, my mother and our shack were burned to the ground by a small army sent by a nearby lord my mother had hexed. My father cremated the remains of her body and buried them in the woods, under the concerned watch of myself and the flock of crows my mother had used for messengers.

Maybe he should have mourned—maybe I should have too. My mother had been a witch, and she’d taught me about the birds and the bees; I knew death came for everyone. Besides, there was something so cliché about her death that I knew she went down cackling.

Though not sad, my father was definitely not going to live without my mother. He went on a rampage very soon after, leaving me in the care of a baker and his wife. It was a devastating thing to hear about: town after town, and finally even a stronghold, were crushed under his heel. He somehow amassed under him in a few short months over a hundred men and rode across the country, gaining infamy as he went. It was only five months before the king himself lead an army to stop him. They say he was the last man fighting and that it took twenty men at once to stop him.

I know it was the way he wanted to go.

Yazra closed the diary and finished her mug of cider, mulling over the past in her mind. It seemed amazing, how her parent’s deaths weren’t sad in any way to her. To them, it had been just another part of living. They both would have told her how pleased they were to have such dramatic ends.

Their deaths taught me the last valuable lesson I would ever need to know: fear always turns to hate, and that is when a villain’s days become numbered.

*^*^*^*

Feedback questions

1) Does the boar seem like a boar? Do boars even growl? Does it seem intimidating/dangerous?

2) Again, where do you think the story could use more description? What did you think of what description is already there?

3) Has your opinion/understanding of Yazra's personality changed? How?

4) What do you think of her journal thus far (including part 1)? Any suggestions on how it could be improved?

5) How do you feel about the plot's movement?

6) Do you think the story would benefit by spending more time on Yazra's interaction with the boar?

Comparative Feedback Questions (for older readers)

1) Bear is now a boar. Opinions? Does he still feel like a bear?

2) Having separate threads for each part is working for me (and I have lots of points I may as well use =P). Hows about you?

Sorry there's so many questions. =P Thanks for reading!