Calista was born with a wound that marred the left side of her face as she grew, blackened and wet at the edges, a living thing that drank warmth and left rot behind. The group looked upon her as if she were cursed. Her mother said nothing. She fed Calista when she could, when the mature women brought back dinner from their hunt, when there was enough to go around. As Calista aged, the responsibility fell to her and others her age. The food grew thinner. The wound deepened. Infection crept inward, soft and patient, until the dark spread behind her eyes and the world went out.
One day, the blindness fell upon her. The fire made no sound. The sky had no warmth. Voices thinned into echoes. People stopped touching her. The young ones stopped whispering and began running. When she stretched her arms out for food to eat, she only reaped the bite of the winter chill.
Her mother left her to ensure her own survival. She was too old to hunt, however. Her body slower than most, instincts not as urgent as before. Calista’s mother sought refuge on the mountainside, where she rested permanently.
Calista was on her own.
Hunger was her only companion in a world that had otherwise left her. Flesh and blood nourished her, but it was scarce. The carcasses were mere litter when she tread the trails.
With nothing to feast on, Calista was approaching the slow agony of death in the same way her mother did.
Then one day, a voice rang out to her.
“Are you hurt?” the voice asked.
It was low and steady, close enough that she could feel breath against her cheek. She reached out and touched cloth, then warmth beneath. He did not pull away.
“I need to eat,” she said.
“Wait here, I will return to you soon with food,” said the man.
He brought bread from his house, then came back to her and watched her eat it. When Calista’s stomach churned, the man was sent back to gather fruit. When Calista’s body remained unsatisfied, the man went back to his home, then gathered roasted meat wrapped in leaves. He handed it to her expectantly, and she devoured it because she could tell it was meat. It was not enough for her, though. The food betrayed her every time.
The man stayed anyway. He cleared the path of the wilderness for her and led her to water. There, Calista could receive a drink.
“I will clear the way for you. Look, there is a stream that shall give you life.”
The man spoke of roads, stars, and a village where the embers burned all night. Where the warmth of peace could never leave.
“I will guide and deliver you from this wilderness that has remained upon you.”
Calista’s chest felt heavy, and she finally spoke.
“You should not follow me.”
He said, “You should not walk alone.”
He led her to his village when her steps began to falter. She smelled it before she heard the inhabitants communing. Her hunger sharpened, but she did not pounce yet.
“Wait here as I will show you to one of the town’s meat carvers.”
“There’s no need,” she stopped him.
Her eyes fixated on the soil. The hunger rose like a tide. It burned. It demanded. The man was confused, for all he did for Calista did not work.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “The food I gave you could not fulfill you. The bread I’ve offered before was not enough. The fruit I picked out from the eldest trees could not please you. The roast I gave you could not even satisfy you. Now you say that you do not require feast?”
“I do,” she said.
When she turned to him, her teeth sank into his arm and shredded flesh from bone, limb by limb, into mangled pieces to feast on. Warmth flooded her mouth as the man screamed for his life. The hunger did not stop. She felt his hands claw at her shoulders, felt them weaken, felt them fall away. When she was done, the world returned, and Calista regained her sight. A crimson pool sat beneath her, what was left of the man she once knew. His kindness left him as carrion. Blood slicked across her body, her hands, her chest, her face. The deep wound still marred her face as blood and saliva oozed from it. Her eyes, crimson red but hollow.
Calista could not return to the land of her kind, for they long abandoned her. Beyond her feet, she saw the town where the man once lived. Warm embers glowed in hearths. Figures moved behind walls. Life continued, unaware of what had been given so that she might see. Calista stood at the edge of the trees, seeing the world, finally visible, and it was full.