Excerpt: working title : HUBRIS or Loading the Dice

Hubris

'We accept the reality with which we are presented.' The Truman Story

Prologue

Brehana turned her body before hitting the ground with the full force of her weight. The baby in her arms looked up at her in surprise but stayed quiet, amused even. Bre cupped the small head and rolled herself onto her bruised side and a small yell issued from her cracked lips. If the baby would have looked at her now it would have seen the mask of a woman in pain, but Bre was determined enough not to let the injuries slow her down. She had to reach the clearing. The baby had to be kept save even at the cost of her own well-being, although her mind had not formulated such complicated thought constructions: Bre was on auto-pilot, completely running on instinct, fear.
The beginning of another shower, pounding its way through the amber foliage of the birches, came almost as a relieve. Bre shielded the baby with her shoulders and pulled the blanket over the tiny bold head. She realized she was listening to her own stubborn breathing while making only slow progress through the undergrowth of the wild forest. Behind the misty-white curtain of raindrops Bre anticipated the shadows following her, the voice reaching her first, then the fist... But the forest stayed her haven, silence, only accentuated by the gushing in her ears. She couldn't distinguish whether it was the rain or her own blood pulsing in her ears.
The golden leaves of the light forest had collected on the ground and made it slippery. Bre added a r few scrapes from the barks to her old ones as she stumbled forward. The other side of the clearing was planted up with different species that would give her better protection from the elements, Elms and Acers had been the favourites of Liam's ancestors. Now the stranger would find refuge in with them until … Bre started to think clearer. What was she waiting for. Was there a real chance of change, of ever being normal again? What was normal. Bre smiled to herself and instantly stopped as the raw flesh of her lips send the painful message: for her there would never be anything normal, anything usual or ordinary, not here.
Nevertheless Bre trudged through the sodden undergrowth. Only a short while later she reached the clearing, panting with exhaustion, but relieved. Cracks from the heavy laden branches let her spin around in terror, but she couldn't see anyone, no movement behind the stumps of fallen giants or thinning shrubs. She turned back, just in time to evade a meter of rotten branch-wood hitting her squarely on the head. The dull thud emanating from her shoulder resonated into every tip of her hair and she felt her arms and hands going numb. Together with herself Bre felt her baby sliding to the ground. The rain falling on her face and neck. Tears blurred her vision as she observed a shrouded figure releasing herself from a tree trunk from across the clearing, slowly walking towards Bre and her daughter.