Lone Star Mountain you are not the sound of cannons breaking the sky open

The caves inside the mountain have a sound of their own, occasionally echoing down from one direction or the other. She’s long since given up trying to figure out where they’re coming from or if it’s someone else. It never is. It’s one of the two. Brothers, maybe. She doesn’t know much about them, most of the time sedated in some form so she doesn’t have a lot of time to get to know her new best friends.

Ocra licks her dry lips, the sound of footfalls in the distance. She can’t tell how far they are, or who they are, but she eventually finds the direction she swings her head and points where she assumes it’s coming from. It hurts to move more than an inch at a time, now, so she’s barely upright when the Other shows. There’s no blood in the air, he does not hold something for her to eat—and to be drugged—it probably won’t be long before he shows up.

Unless this is the plan? To suffer even more, feel the pain of their ire. To both live or die, she needs Him, but she can’t play along to the ploy if she doesn’t understand the purpose.

She closes her lids over new gaps in her head, unable to discern the pain of their absence and the headache crawling in her head. Pain finds the familiar areas on her form, which increases the moment he comes close, causing her to flinch.

“Haven’t I,” she says, voice low and raspy and tongue as dry as sandpaper.