The sparrow and the soldier

Suzu opened her eyes with great difficulty. Her entire body felt like it was on flames, just as if it really had been hit by that missile. At the same time, she felt a little chilly.

“I-I’m…n-naked?”, she muttered to herself in confusion.

Disregarding the waves of pain radiating across her body, she lifted herself up and looked down on her body. She was laying on a large, brown cloth that someone had spread on the ground. From the quality of the cloth it was obvious that it didn’t belong to someone wealthy.

Her body was covered in bandages and the more important wounds had been treated with some sort of herbal concoction. Thanks to that and the amazing healing abilities of a goddess she had already begun to heal up despite only a relatively small amount of time passing since she had been injured and taken away by that strange solider.

But this wasn’t what perturbed the young goddess.

What made her blush and grit her teeth was the fact that both her breasts and her lower body were entirely uncovered. And since she had been treated that person, in other words the soldier must have seen her entire body.

For a moment she felt defiled and ashamed. Some unknown man had seen her shameful places.

Then she remembered that she had no idea where she was or what was even going on. Her eyes darted around, and she surveyed the area to get a grasp on where she was.

The blanket she was laying on, was located on the edge of a grand forest with tall, ancient tree’s. The sun was slowly setting on the scenery of a small village located in a clearing. Smoke was rising from destroyed cottages and the smell of burned flesh and death was in the air.

She could faintly hear the sounds of a last, desperate fight, followed by death cries.

Turning her head, she instantly knew where the fighting was going on. Despite being a few hundred meters away she could clearly see what was going on. The soldier had unsheathed his sword and fought with a small group of lightly armed villagers.

The poor farmers only had simple clothes and farming equipment on their bodies, yet they faced a professional killer, armed in steel-alloy armor and wielding a beautifully crafted sword. The outcome of that fight was already decided, yet it was impressive how the simple villagers vigorously fought against the superior foe.

On the other hand, the soldier displayed amazing swordsmanship on the level of a true warrior. Each and every strike was not only beautiful but also effective. To him, killing those villagers was no challenge and he did it as effective and quick as possible.

This in itself was also a kind of mercy. He would rather give them a quick and honorable death than play around and disgrace them.

Suzu’s sharp eyes could tell that the soldier’s technique was almost on the level of becoming a master capable of using the world’s laws in his sword style. This sort of masters could even fight weaker god’s and were valuable to any clan in the wildlands.

“What an interesting young man.”, she quietly muttered to herself. All the anger and shame she had felt from him having seen her body was already forgotten.

In fact, she now remembered her last words before she had fallen unconscious.

“I… will repay him…

I guess this should do right?”, thinking this her face turned scarlet, but at the same time she felt a little excited. After all she was completely unexperienced in those matters and had never had any sexual contact. Even thought this sort of things seemed a little much, she did find it to be very exhilarating.

Unbeknownst to herself, the young and unexperienced goddess had come to a very uncommon conclusion.

While she was occupied with her shameful thoughts, the fight in the village had already ended and the soldier- Tye, was the only remaining survivor, surrounded by four rapidly cooling corpses. He swung his sword to swipe the remaining blood off the blade and sheathed it. Then his gaze wandered to the location where he had left behind the sparrow goddess.

As he saw that she had woken up and was curiously observing him, a slight, relieved smile appeared on his lips. He swiped off the blood that had splattered on his face and walked towards the edge of the forest.

“Your awake.”, he stated as he came closer. A stupid and obvious statement, but he didn’t know what else to say.

Suzu tilted her head and lifted her right eyebrow.

“Yes I’m awake, did you hope I would die on my own after you treated my wounds?”, her tone was joking, but there was also a hidden message contained in those words.

‘Why did you safe me?’

It was completely incomprehensible to her. This soldier would have received tremendous rewards if he just killed her on the spot. There was no reason to leave her alive!

Furthermore, it didn’t seem like he wanted to hand her over to his superiors alive. First of all, it was far to dangerous to leave a goddess alive. After all he never knew when she might regain her powers and just kill him. Secondly, there was no sense in doing so. The rewards stayed the same either way.

In short it made no sense for him to keep her alive unless…

He wanted to let her go.

Of course, Tye understood the hidden message in her words and he also knew to what conclusion this young goddess must have come, but the truth was that he himself did not know why he hadn’t killed her.

She was right though. Having come to this point he was planning to just let her go.

He sighed and shook his head, confused about this whole situation he had gotten himself into.

“I honestly have no idea why I didn’t just kill you.”, he said with a slightly dark tone.

“That said I won’t harm you know it’s gotten to this point.”, realizing that he should mention this too, Tye also reassured her on that point.

Suzu mustered him curiously.

Once again, she wondered just what kind of strange person he was.

“You did kill those villagers.”, she pointed out and pointed towards the destroyed village.

Tye’s expression turned serious and his eyes became cold.

“I have my orders. If I did not do it another soldier would have done it. This land has already become the Han-clan’s eitherway.”, it seemed like he was reciting phrases and in a sense, this was truly the case. These were the words he told himself every time he questioned his orders.

Suzu continued to observe his face.

“You didn’t kill me though.”, her expression was strange.

Tye didn’t know what to answer. The calmness of his expression disappeared, and she could clearly see how he slightly panicked. From this she could tell that he was truly just a soldier that followed orders.

He had gone against his orders for the first time and now he didn’t know how to cope with it.

Realizing this she felt a little sorry for him.

“So, what’s your name?”, she suddenly asked with a smile.

Tye looked at her, surprised over the sudden change of topic and made a tired laugh.

“I’m Tye. Leader of the thirty-sixth elite unit of the Han-clan.”, he jokingly saluted towards the still laying girl.

Suzu giggled a little and nodded.

“I’m Suzu, goddess of the White Sparrow tribe. I guess it’s nice to meet you.”

Both were silent for some time. Neither had any idea what to say and the longer they stayed silent, the more awkward it got. At some point Tye’s eyes began to wander and fell on Suzu’s youthful, naked body.

He suddenly felt ashamed.

“Ah! Em… sorry for taking off your clothes. I had to treat your wounds.”, it wasn’t that he wasn’t used to see naked skin nor that Suzu’s body looked rather young, he felt ashamed for doing it without her consent.

Suzu could see his troubled expression and for some reason she found it sweet. Once again, she felt a little embarrassed about her naked state, but she did not show it.

“Don’t worry about it.”, her expression became weird as she thought about what she was going to say next. Her lips quivered as her cheeks turned red in embarrassment.

“I-i… already told you that I would repay you…”, despite trying to remain cool, Suzu couldn’t remain calm and her voice began to tremble.

“Y-you can… look at me as much as you want. S-since my forest was taken by your tribe I don’t have anywhere to g-go and my clan also needs a home… S-so… I’m going to f-follow you from now on.

In exchange…”, despite having thought it through she still couldn’t bear to say it.

“You… c-can look at m-me when e-ever you want to. J-just tell me and I-i will take off my clothes.”

Her face burned as she said this, and she wished to just turn into a little sparrow and fly away, but in the end, she forced herself to remain. Despite also being a little bit of an excuse, her words were also the truth.

Her homeland, the ancient forest had been taken and both she and her tribe where now homeless. The competition for land was harsh no matter where she went and the chances for a small tribe like hers to survive in these brutal fights were miniscule. Truthfully it was truly the best option to seek shelter from Tye who was protected by the behemoth that was the Han-clan.

At the same time, she also thought she would also be able to repay her debt this way.

Tye stared at her, dumbfounded.