Strawberries in Winter? What Sorcery is this?

Posts : 65

Teia gazed into the night‘s sky. That clear and captivating void with diamonds shining brightly. Maybe one day Galateia will become so strong that she‘ll leap into the sky and catch one or two before they fall to the ground and become „snow“. No matter how many times people told her what snow was it just shined so brilliantly in the moonlight that Teia couldn’t help but keep on believing it was pure diamond dust. It must’ve been cursed however, whenever Teia tried to pick it up it just melted in her hand…

“Silver-chan…” the gigantic man who lived alone in the woods whom Galateia kept training with this all past time called her, for some reason at some point he dropped calling her “Future Wife” and started calling her “Silver” because of the color of her armor when Galateia flashed around as she moved during battle, it all just looked like a silver blur. The armored criminal has been picking up a lot of speed lately and she was ready to travel to another Country. She spent a long time training with Yeti (the man was too dumb to tell her his actual name so she called him that), long enough for Aoi to find her if he was looking for her, apparently he wasn’t…

It all started when Galateia and Aoi – the young boy she met during her traveling and helped out with his bandit problem, got lured into the Snow Country by some guy promising Galateia an awesome fight. Teia being who she was couldn’t have been more attracted to the Country. She lived for a good and honorable fight. Either way, she and Aoi travelled all the way here only for Galateia to experience a fight for her life against a woman called “Rose”. She was some sort of vigilante of a small town in the Snow Country killing off the really bad people that oppressed the locals.

The woman was so amazing, Galateia thought of nothing else but challenging her again, the last time she only won because Rose was already pretty tired after killing 70 other criminals all around Galateia’s strength, the girl’s energetic spirit helped the girl keep up with Rose until her movements slowed down to the point where Teia could tag her and then the warrior lady took the win. The villagers however were pissed to no end and chased her out into the snowstorm, she lost her companion Aoi in the process. At some point she encountered Yeti and fought him, after beating the man Teia trained with him for a while and grew stronger.

“What’s wrong, Yeti?” the girl turned at the man who kept asking her to become his wife every time they fought. “I went really close to the town today…” the man looked really sad, as if tears had taken him over but he didn’t want to burst into tears, sometimes he was such a big silly idiot… “So, they’re still out for my head?” Galateia asked with a sad tone, sadly it was the constant – everywhere she went looking for a fair fight people hated her and wanted to kill her. Technically she didn’t want to hurt anyone, she just wanted to look for a good challenge and have a blast, everyone just hated her because she was born.

“No… They spoke of how this “Rose” woman wants to see you again. Are… Are you gonna leave me?” the man whined around, for someone almost twice Teia’s size he acted like a manchild. Galateia stood up and looked around. “I really want to fight Rose again, when she’s at full strength this time!” the lady warrior shouted out energetically and raised her fist into the night’s full moon. Yeti pouted, he probably wanted to fight again, Galateia had no problem with that so she took off her sword and took a slugging stance. She was getting too used to fighting without a sword to be honest, she needed some weight training…

Yeti shook his head and turned around sitting near the fire. Galateia did the same. For a moment silence dominated the field but the warrior killed it as she did some of her foes. Usually the lady preferred leaving her foes alive so that she could challenge them again but… At times people got hurt more than she intended, she was still young and was still learning to control her own strength. These last couple of months she was training almost naked in a snowstorm slugging it out with a man who could fit three or four girls her size inside his ribcage. Next time she’d punch a normal person that guy might be up for a surprise…

“You know I’m thankful for what you did. Healing me up after our fight with Rose and all that, showing me what is edible here and what isn’t… I can’t even begin to imagine how many diarrheas you spared me.” Teia laughed out and slapped her belly “No poison around here could kill me but it’d still be nasty… But you know I have to find that woman again, she’s so amazingly powerful and I want to fight her at full strength, I trained so hard these last months and I feel like it could amount to something.” she stood up and approached Yeti before he slapped her with a back handed slap.

“So that’s how you want it!” Teia yelled out and jumped on his head punching it several times and then biting into his scalp. Yeti flipped over and rolled into the snow leaving a pancake out of what once was a girl named Galateia. He then kicked that pancake really strong sending her crashing into a tree. The girl stood up and coughed out some blood – that bastard must’ve broken her ribs again! With a loud and powerful roar she jumped at the wrestler of the woods and unleashed a combination of blows returning him the favor. They kept punching each other and bashing each other faces in until the morning came and the puny Sun of Snow Country showed its face over the horizon.

“I’ll miss you, let’s meet again and fight a hundred, no a thousand more times!” Galateia laughed out like a baby raising her beaten up and covered with scratches, bite marks and blunt force trauma limbs. Yeti flipped on his face, from his twitching back the girl could tell that he was crying his heart out. The man’s face lifted as he revealed his face full of tears and slobber. “LET’S MEET AGAIN, I’LL BEAT YOU THEN AND YOU’LL BE MY WIFE!!!” the man cried out into the sky with such force that snow fell off the trees, right on top of Galateia. “You idiot!” she yelled as her frozen body shook the snow off, now she’ll be walking the whole distance to the town completely freezing her butt off!

Galateia started walking back to where she remembered the town being, she knew that the people would hate seeing her but… What did it matter? Meeting Rose was all she wanted, these people could curse her and throw things at her and punch and kick her all they wanted. Hatred was Galateia’s constant of life, her parents hated her because she was a failure and didn’t want to become an assassin, choosing to have her shit kicked out of her by stronger and older boys and becoming a warrior instead, everyone else hated her because she was the criminal known under the nickname “the Silver Sunshine”. People really seemed to stick with the silver part…

As the girl stepped her first couple of steps into the little town and looked over the people there she could already sense the fear and hatred coming out of them. Her face didn’t change, usually her emotions ran wild, her face was like that of a young child but now she had an unintelligible and shamed expression, people showed fingers and her and spoke what seemed like weird and bad things. Most of those words Galateia as a lady warrior would never dare to say. They still were angry because the girl fought for the criminals – against their idol Rose so they wanted to see the girl beaten and humiliated. The fact that she beat Rose only made it all worse.

“There you are!” a loud voice reached Galateia’s ears as the girl lifted her head up to meet the owner of that voice. It was Rose: the red haired woman with a red leather jacket and a snow white blouse underneath, that strange domino mask on her face, that weird hat on her head covering up her ponytail and that trusty pointy sword she called “rapier” by her side. “I barely recognized you with that sad face, a warrior such as yourself deserves to walk proud!” she said as she drew her rapier and swung it around, thrusting the point into several points and making some impressive swordplay tricks.

“That’s right, kick her butt, Rose-chan!/Beat her up, that’s what she deserves!/Little criminal bitch, I think I saw living in the woods!/ What do you want from us? Just go home to Kumogakure you little brat!” the villagers started to become more daring before Rose jumped in front of Galateia and sheathed her sword. The woman gently placed a hand on Galateia’s shoulder and prevented her from running away. “I wanted to see you, Galateia. I’ve been thinking about you and… I want to train you! You’re so amazing so let’s train together and when you’re strong I’ll give you that another fight you always wanted… Or… Excuse me, perhaps you will grant me the honor of a rematch!” Rose laughed, she wore this strange thing on her lips that made them red as if they were bloody. What was that? Galateia’s finger rose and touched the woman’s lips, she took some of the lipstick off and tasted it.

“Where did you find strawberries here? I couldn’t find any fruits or berries, just the deer I hunted down and wolves.”

Rose laughed out loud, grabbing her gut with her arm so that she didn’t crack up, she then wrapped her entire hand up on Galateia’s neck and pushed her closer to herself as if the two were friends. “I like you, please consider my offer.” the woman spoke as she kept struggling with laughter. Galateia nodded “Fine, I’ll train with you, I would really like to learn from someone as strong as you, but if you dishonor me by holding back or refusing to fight me when I challenge you… I’ll beat you up pretty bad, no matter if you kill me!” Galateia yelled out raising her fist in front of Rose’s face which must’ve looked funny because Rose’s build was much more mature and refined as that of an athletic woman instead of that of an oddly shaped and tall teen.

“Splendid, it’s decided then! Let’s go to the Garden of Roses!” she yelled out as the woman started dashing forward, Galateia quickly jumped up and started doing her best not to get left behind by Rose’s impressive speed. These next couple of months, or maybe even years are going to be amazing!

[EXIT]