[Trespassing] Faded to grey

Merrit · January 05, 2020, 05:08 PM

BEST PARTY CRASHER 10/10 I am excite

The child's screams hit the air, and Merrit's ears tipped flush against his skull. The struggling, a frenzy again, but the frenzy blurred to some other reality, so that every noise, every kick, every bite, seemed far distant to Merrit. Otherworldly. His eyes, searching, flicked back and forth, back and forth, from spot to spot across his brother's anguished face.

"Clay, no, it's me," he pushed the words between the boy's screams, yet his voice only seemed to overlap, "It's me, your brother, it's Merrit - "

But he had taken his eyes off the forest. And, as their voices intermingled, a deep snarl peeled from the shadows and joined their unholy chorus of screams and screeches and whispers and shouts. And he saw, from the corner of his eye, the dark mass that approached them, the sharp teeth that flashed through the thickest black, and he could imagine the gleam of blue fixed beneath that stately and wicked brow.

The fur along his shoulders bristled. Hydra.

"No!" Visions flashed before him; he thought he heard screams coming from the woods, snarls in the distance, the mournful cry of his mother. Midnight melted to day. The crescent moon seemed to scorch him, like the sun, and the frozen ground grew like prairie grass beneath his feet. Tickling his throat, his legs, and spinning, spinning. And he saw her in the air, on the ground, eyes glossy, fear-striken, turned to the sky.

"Stop!" Protector. Guardian. He had been neither. Yet here felt the strength of the ground beneath him, the stonework beneath the snow.

In this short and crucial seconds, Merrit allowed himself to collapse like that day on the plains, only now with a decisive shift. He buckled his legs and dropped his weight, and sought to tuck his brother's head into the crook of his own throat. His much larger frame formed a shield around his brother's svelte body, while the back of Merrit's neck remained exposed to the onslaught of jaws. "He's my brother, Valette's son!" he shouted in a final appeal, and braced for the impact, not knowing what to expect. He had never felt the snare of teeth against his own flesh before.