novelraw Chapter 1252: Extra: His Mother
Chapter 1252: Extra: His Mother
Findy Zeman was a renowned beauty in the village.
Everyone in the village believed she could marry into a good family, perhaps even one in town.
However, such expectations were suddenly shattered one day.
Findy Zeman disappeared.
She vanished while collecting firewood in the mountains, lost for three days, and when she returned, she was dazed and confused.
The villagers suspected she had encountered something terrible, and this suspicion was completely confirmed two months later.
Findy Zeman was pregnant.
Even she didn’t know who the father was.
At that time, having a child out of wedlock was considered a major moral failing.
If not for the Zeman family parents pleading desperately, she likely wouldn’t have escaped being drowned in the pond.
Even so, she was still seen as unclean by the villagers, and due to the pressure of village rumors, the Zeman family had no choice but to drive her out of the house. Findy Zeman was exiled to a wooden hut near the foot of the hill to live alone.
Overnight, she became the subject of scorn, not even knowing why she was despised.
She blamed it all on the child in her belly.
So she tried everything to get rid of the baby.
She tried soaking herself in river water, falling down the hillside, punching her abdomen, yet the child remained unharmed.
Her view of the child in her belly changed one night.
Living alone at the foot of the mountain, she became the target of a village thug.
That night, he broke into her house, attempted to assault her. Furious and desperate, she even thought of perishing together with him.
At that moment, her barely showing belly suddenly began to radiate light.
The man was terrified, shouting "Mystical Creatures" and fled, rolling down the hill and hitting his head, waking the next day with no memory of the event.
Findy Zeman instinctively knew it was the child in her belly protecting her.
Because that evening, she felt the fetus move for the first time.
Her child seemed to be telling her he was there.
He would protect her.
Findy Zeman began to carefully care for her body, and as time passed, she began to anticipate her child’s birth.
Seven months later, on a stormy day, she gave birth to a baby in the shabby little hut.
Looking at the small child, she felt the joy of being a mother for the first time.
But that joy lasted less than a day.
Because of the storm, no one in the village knew she had given birth, but the dragon that once trapped and bullied her in the mountains found its way to her.
He took her child.
Just as she had prepared to become a mother.
She was resentful, unwilling, begging, yet to no avail.
Because she was an ordinary person, and ordinary people stood no chance against Mystical Creatures.
The villagers, seeing her belly gone but no child, assumed she had given birth to a stillborn.
The Zeman family, although unable to openly accept her due to village pressure, secretly helped her a bit. Knowing her child was gone, they persuaded her for a long time, finally convincing her to let go of the past.
Initially, they intended to find someone far away to marry her off, but an old widower from the village came forward to propose.
Findy Zeman eventually married.
She got a new family and had new children.
She poured all her feelings and attention into her newborn child.
However, just when she was about to forget the child who had been taken from her, he was brought back to her.
A ten-year-old small boy, covered in wounds, barely alive.
There were no words needed; she recognized him immediately as the child she had lost.
She wanted to keep him, but merely bringing it up met with her husband’s stern opposition.
The child she had once considered a disgrace was equally shameful to her current husband.
Moreover, her small home couldn’t possibly support another child.
So she heartlessly sent him back to the wooden hut she once lived in, leaving him to fend for himself.
Perhaps due to the powerful blood of the Mystical Creatures, the child survived.
Findy Zeman told herself countless times that the child no longer had anything to do with her; ten years had changed many things.
She was no longer a lonely individual.
She had to be responsible for her current family.
She didn’t dare see him, afraid he would look at her with resentment.
She could only occasionally leave a couple of saved mantou outside his door.
She knew her husband had noticed her small actions, but he said nothing.
Just as she sometimes called the child at home Darbo, he pretended not to hear.
Days stumbled along for five years.
The villagers began to notice the child’s uniqueness.
While her Darbo grew noticeably year by year, he remained the same as when he was brought to the village.
He didn’t grow up.
The villagers began to fear him, calling him a Demon, planning to drive him out of the village.
Findy Zeman felt anxious but helpless.
Because she knew better than anyone that he wasn’t normal.
But she couldn’t let the villagers drive him away.
Thus she remembered hearing of naturally small people outside the village, walked dozens of miles to the city, and found the information she wanted.
She returned to the village with the "documents" given by a kind person and knelt before a well-informed village elder, begging him to prove to the villagers that,
"The child is not a Demon; he just has a disease that prevents growth, called dwarfism in big cities."
She knew if she spoke, the villagers might not believe, but if the respected elder explained, it would be different.
The elder was persuaded by her and explained dwarfism to the villagers.
As she wished, the villagers accepted this explanation.
The child was allowed to remain in the village.
Though he continued to face exclusion and dislike from villagers, both adults and children.
But that was the best she could do for him.
Even though he never knew what she had done for him.
In the following years, she continued to visit the hut occasionally and secretly leave something for him.
The child never sought her out on his own.
Perhaps she was ill-fated with family; her husband and Darbo both eventually died.
She could have returned to the Zeman family, but instead, she forced herself to approach the child with her belongings.
He didn’t accept her, nor did he drive her away.
They lived awkwardly together for thirty years.
She knew he always resented her.
But she couldn’t explain.
Just as she couldn’t explain why he was a Demon.
Later, war broke out.
She died in the artillery fire.
Findy Zeman surprisingly felt a sense of relief.
Her life of suffering was finally over.
But now that her life ended, what about her child?
Her child was alone once more.
She ultimately couldn’t let go, especially when she saw that small figure running toward her through the smoke, she felt reluctant.
"Darbo..."
If only I could accompany you a little longer.
She hadn’t heard him call her "Mother" yet.