Writing Prompt: You were the chosen one as your parents only child. You have trained for years, sacrificed your childhood and accepted your fate to destroy the evil of the land. One day your brother is born and it is discovered he is the true chosen one not you. (source)
My birth had been rather eventful for a small village like ours. The planets had aligned themselves with our tiny minuscule village the day I was born, nay the hour I was born. It was foretold that the child born when the planets aligned in such a way that he shall be granted the power of the D’heet Z’hin, and he shall finally free our little fishing hamlet of the Carnot Empire.
The night had been festive, full of prayer, love, and booze. Or so I had been told. My life had been far from joyful and festive. Czendra, the village patriarch prescribed my mother and father with a strict developmental plan, for the powers of the D’heet Z’hin was merely one piece of the prophecy, in order for it to flourish the person born with the gift must undergo many trials and tribulations. So my parents, reluctant as they were, began forcing me down a life of discipline.
Before I could even crawl my parents taught me how to swing to sword. With a stick in one hand, Nimon, the village sword smith, would be over every night drilling me with how to properly wield it. By the time I could speak I had a firm grasp of the basics of sword fighting.
Once I could walk my father began teaching me how to run, and from there climbing. From climbing sneaking and breaking and entering.
Tenimen, who served as our village ambassador to the Carnots taught me their language, their culture, and their tactics. In essence, it had been as if I were born into two cultures at once as I understood both my own and the Carnots with an uncanny ability to shift between our languages with ease.
I trained with Hinzor, the best hunter in the village on how to lay traps and capture food at age six. Thanks to him I had become an expert at the bow in just a few short months. I could snipe a hawk a hundred meters in the air with ease. Hinzor himself had begun calling me the best hunter in the village.
Because of my unusual status I had become well versed in anything and everything they wanted me to do. But I had enough of it. The sleepless nights, the aches and pains from my strength training. No child should have gone through that. I wanted to just be a kid. When I other children my age ran past Nimon’s training ground all I could imagine was running around with such freedom. And when I did have a chance to play with the other kids I could outrun them easily, or hide in the toughest of places that I could never be found during hide-n-seek.
After I turned seven my mom became pregnant with my brother-to-be. By that time I had mastered the Carnotian language and could even imitate their accents, my palms were as calloused as a horse’s hoof from the countless hours I spent sword training and climbing. None of this I wanted for myself. I was an expert in nothing I wanted to be.
The day before my brother was born my parents had been visited by Czendra. It wasn’t unusual for her to come by and check in on my progress, but the air had been different this time. She spoke with them in private, and when they returned my parents came to me with a look of sorrow. After Czendra left my father told me to sit down at the table. I did so, he sat down next to me, my mother stood by his side.
In most stories being the chosen one is what everyone wants to be. When you’re the chosen one you’re special, nobody else is like you, you get to call the shots. So you could believe how I felt when my father told me that the prophecy had been wrong, it was not I who would eventually overthrow the Carnots’ imperialist forces, but my brother-to-be.
My brother was born the next day with no unusual fan fair, probably to save the elders of any further embarrassment. But they did tell the village, and he had been crowned the D’heet Z’hin while my training had been sidelines.
At first it had been hard. I didn’t want to train in sword fighting from sunrise to sunset, but I did like how being the D’hett Z’hin felt. Over time the villagers began changing their behaviors. No longer did they smile at me the way the used to, strangers stopped pointing and waving at me, and despite my time with Hinzor, Tenimen, and Nimon they no longer wanted to train me. My brother had become their pet project, and thanks to their years with me they had grown as teachers. My brother had become a better swordsman than me by the time he could walk.
I took up painting instead. It reminded me a lot of swordplay, but instead of destroying I could create. My works became renowned throughout my village and further into our region. The Carnotian governor who presided over our region had taken notice and invited me to the capital city.
Despite the pleas of my fellow villagers, the ones who had abandoned their belief in me over a decade ago, I had taken the governor’s invitation and traveled to the capitol. There I had been treated well, the governor himself granted me a scholarship to the best art academy in the entire empire. I took the offer immediately and left without ever saying goodbye to my village. I had already broke their hearts by taking the offer, I could not break them again if they had heard the news.
I graduated with honors and moved back to the regional capitol. I had missed the beauty of the ocean, the mountainous region in which the academy resided had not been inspiring enough for my works.
Every once in a while I considered going back to my home, for all I know they had thought me to have been killed at the capitol. My brother planning his march against to the capitol city. By now he would have been the same age I had been when I left for the capitol. But I refused to go, what had happened to me would be far worse than death, I had come to love the Carnotians and even asked one for her hand in marriage.
Every morning I would begin my day sitting on our ocean side patio, sketching the sunrise over the coast, wondering if this will be the day I will finally see the D’heet Z’hin march towards the capitol.
