Hushed Willows [m] But I keep crawling over you for now

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Mentions of SA

The days slid away from her. She slept; she woke; she slept again. Only once had she crawled from her den, overcome by desperate thirst, to gulp down mouthfuls of fresh snow that left her throat aching and her gums bloody. Then she'd fled back into the darkness.

Perhaps she should have died there.

But in her dreams Marina had seen the child again, her child, no longer smiling but weeping and crying out. As terrible as that sharktoothed smile had been, this was worse, and with sudden fearful clarity she knew that even if she bore a devil of the same make as the man who had done this to her, that devil would still be her own; loved deeply, as all of her children were.

So it was for her cursed child that she finally lifted herself when the haze of her season died, finally slipped from the makeshift den and left with it any hope of finding relief in death. She thought at first that she might find @Athens, but as the days wore on she began to doubt that he had waited for her. Marina passed by the ridge where they'd stayed, her path veering north as if guided by some old instinct.

The willow forest was a beautiful reprieve. A quiet place to mourn that nameless part of herself that she'd lost to the grasping ambitions of a stranger. For a few days, at least. Marina wandered, sniffing here and there, in search of a place to claim as her own for a night or two. At every sound she flinched; at every shift in the wind she stilled, testing the air.