Emberwood [m]Reach for light.

Too excited for words <33

She had left the coast, her pelt all static and prickling with anxiety. She would return soon; she was sure of it. Return like a dog with her tail between her legs, begging someone to comfort her and hold her like the pup she knew she really was. She was no woman, no warrior. Just a small girl playing pretend in a body that didn't fit quite right.

Why had she bitten the hand that had fed her? Pushed her pack, her family, to the point of no return? To the point where the only way to silence her was to be rid of her entirely? She had pushed them all away. Pushed them all away from the very day she arrived in their camp. Then she snubbed and spurned them, and they, in turn, pushed her away too. And she had dared to curse them there, to vow her revenge, to vow that they would rue the day they had made an enemy of her. Her the child. Her the fool.

The events of the past two weeks surged through Grackle's mind, through her body. Months of solitude, meeting Coraline in the woods, her heart pounding and dancing in ways she didn't understand, then her encounter with the man the very next morning.

When had she ever felt things like that? Felt things at all? Other than the anger that had kept her warm all those cold nights in the camp so far away. She hated the stress that coursed through her, crushed her chest, and made her hair stick up on end. That made her body burn in such a way that she was sure if someone touched her, she would scream. And scream. And then cry. Let the hot tears pour down her face, and then maybe she would feel okay. But that would not happen. They would not come. They never did.

She wanted to feel the anger again, or nothing at all. Give way to the comfortable numbness that enveloped her like a hug and silenced her screaming senses. She wanted to hunt, to rip into something living. To witness the dread mirrored in someone else's eyes, to play god. To get high on adrenaline and the scent of fear.

Her muscles tensed, preparing to spring into action and destroy, slaughter, obliterate, and forget. But instead, she froze. Face to face with a stranger who carried the same heavy, oppressive aura. A stranger of her own age but still a boy in the same way she was still a girl. In that instant, Grackle was certain that they shared an unspoken understanding, or maybe it was only her imagination. But how could they not? How could you not recognize a kindred soul forged in the same crucible, cold as stone and hot as fire?