Kaie

Names presaged what was to come later in life, as the wise elders of Tara believed. Her fiery mother did not have faith in the myth, and defiantly named her daughter Kaie, which meant 'death'. She was of an opinion that Kaie would grow up to be more than a hundred, and did all in her power to render this so. In her eyes, Kaie was a hypothesis, but one of love.

"Father! Father!" Kaie sped across the fields of corn to find him and tell him to come eat his lunch. There was no answer. Thinking he wanted to play hide-and-seek, she giggled, shouting, "I'll catch you!" Kaie searched the fields, laughing at his childishness.

A few minutes later, she found her father lying on the ground in front of her. She stopped short. Stunned, she took a step backwards. His head was bleeding profusely from a large wound caused by an axe, which rested a few feet away.

"Father?" she said tentatively. Kaie crouched, then crept closer to examine his wound. It was so deep that she could see white bone. "Father!"

"Kaie, I…" Her father whispered weakly. He never did complete his sentence, leaving Kaie to cry so hard for the warm-hearted man that was her father. His straw hat lay on the grass beneath his lifeless body. It was stained with crimson blood, as was the axe that caused his death. Without a thought, Kaie took the axe and threw it as far as she could. Then she collapsed, heart, body and soul numb. Her mother found them two together half an hour later, Kaie holding her father and blood running over her hands…

In thirteen short years, Kaie grew to be all her mother wanted her to be. Her father had died four years ago. She was now seventeen. Her face was strong, though she was gentle inside. Kaie was not beautiful, not even pretty, but something about her made people look up and notice her. She had never cried ever since her father's death, bottling everything up. Her mother looked at her everyday, and wondered if she had made a bad choice teaching her to pretend everything was okay when nothing was. And indeed, nothing was.

Lightning struck the old hollow tree beside the farm one day all of a sudden. It was where Kaie's father died. Surprisingly, it was a sunny day when the lightening struck. Also astonishing was the fact that the old hollow tree didn't fall—but Kaie went mad…

Seeing Kaie with her pupils dilated and refusing to eat, drink or sleep had turned her mother's hair white, and her face had also aged twenty years. What made her heart break was the fact that Kaie kept calling out monotonously. "Father……Father……Father……"

A year later, on the same day of her father's death, Kaie suddenly came alive. She dressed in a length of robe, and went out to the fields when her mother was sleeping. When she finally awoke and found Kaie missing, it was too late. Kaie had killed herself, using the axe which killed her father to hack herself on the head. The robe she was wearing had turned completely red, and the hollow tree had also turned crimson.

People of Tara say red is the colour of death. And now nobody doubts that names foreshadowed the fate of the name-holder…and nobody tempts death.

In actual fact, Kaie means 'combat' in Celtic, not death. Just thought you'd want to know (: