Brink

 I woke up in the morning to find my mother bending over my brother, pouring some liquid into his mouth. I stretched and stood up, walking over to my sleeping brother.

“Hey, what’s that mom?” I asked her as I looked down at my brother's stump of a leg.

“This is some hot water mixed with herbs, hopefully, it will ease his pain…” my mother said, her voice cracking.

“I’m going to go get some more water and wood for a fire,” I told my mother unable to look at my brother anymore.

As I walked to the forest, I thought of how I could have saved my brother if I had been a bit faster. If I had looked around and helped my brother instead of ignoring him and running to fight more enemies. I picked up a few thick sticks and walked back to the edge of the forest to leave them there. I turned around to head back into the forest to find more sticks when I heard my mother calling my name from the direction of the seashore. I turned and ran, fearing the worst. “What is it ma? Is anything wrong?” I asked her, a cold feeling growing in my stomach.

“Chenzi, there is a spearhead stuck in his leg, and if I pull it out, he will die. The only way to save him now is to get a anseitp bush. We can put it next to the spearhead and pull it out with him barely feeling anything. Sadly we cannot get the anseitp bush as it grows in the middle of the ocean on a remote island,” my mother said slowly as if still trying to make herself believe our current situation.

I looked at my mother’s sad weather-worn form silently sobbing, to my brother lying on the ground without his leg and a small shaft of wood sticking out of the stump.

“I will go ma. You stay with him,” I told my mother making up my mind at that moment that I could not live peacefully until I got the anseitp bush and healed my brother. My mother looked up at me, shock showing on her face.

“No, Chenzi, it is too dangerous for a child-“

”No! I will go get it, then come back here and watch my brother laugh and smile again!” Saying that I turned on my heels grabbed my brother’s hammer and my spear and headed to the forest to make something to get me across the ocean.