Excused (Micro-Fiction Monday)

My heart beat pounds incessantly in my ears. I’m panting—no, more like gasping for breath. My lungs are desperately grabbing onto any tiny wisp of air they can, burning like fire in my chest. I’ve never ran so much in my life. Maybe if I had known I would, I would have tried to prepare a little beforehand.

                

But I didn’t know. I didn’t ask for this. As soon as the thought passes through my mind, I realize what a cliché it is. I’m a cliché. That doesn’t seem particularly fair.

                

I trip over something. A twig, a rock...hell, maybe nothing. Maybe my legs just can’t support my weight anymore. Maybe I don’t want them to. Either way, I’m soaring through the air, and colliding roughly with the ground beneath me. What little air I had left in my lungs is gone, now, rushing out as the numb pain stabs at my chest.

                

The heavy footsteps crunch through the dead leaves and twigs behind me. I gasp for breath, my lungs greedily sucking in the oxygen, but I don’t move.

                

My mother was the one who told me what I was. She told me I was the “chosen one”, that my destiny was to save the world from the evil that threatened it. I thought she was making it up. Years later, the elders of the village confirmed it. I almost warmed up to the idea, once. I thought it might be nice, being known as a hero.

                

But they were wrong. I’m not a hero, destiny or not. I’m a coward, waiting for the blade of a sword to excuse me from my duties.

~~

Until later,

- Justyne