“ Life turns on a dime. Sometimes towards us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes: so long, honey, it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it? ”

Fire · (This post was last modified: October 12, 2018, 08:30 PM by Fire.)

“ Life turns on a dime. Sometimes towards us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes: so long, honey, it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it? ”

The cold pulls Ceara from the dark ditch of sleep. She does not know how long she has been out, but she can't recall even falling asleep. Disoriented, she opens her bleary eyes and is met with darkness. The threat of nighttime encompasses her, settling around her like an old friend making himself at home. Her pulse quickens.

The silence is vaucuous, spectral, only occasionally broken by the firm punctuations of crow-call and the branches scraping in the expansive inkstained canopy overhead. The ground is damp and frozen.

It takes time for her eyes to adjust. For some time the only thing she can percieve is the shivering that wracks her body, and the musty smell of freshly overturned earth.

Then from somewhere out of reach comes the stealthy crackle of dead leaves underfoot. Coming closer. She gathers her quaking limbs from beneath her and shuffles into an upright position just as a SHADOW emerges from the twisted black trees.

Demon.

The creature does not walk. It seems to glide, each powerful stride of its rawboned legs bringing it closer. Its eyes, once the same gunmetal grey that Ceara herself boasts, have succumbed to expressionless milky cataracts. Its blackened tongue smooths across its whiskers. The shuffle of wings echo around them as the crows flee skyward from their nests.

YOU, it commands as it ghosts closer, a wave of stench rattles from the demon's rotting intestines as it rasps. The leaves shift overhead, and the moonlight that filters from above offers Ceara a glimpse of the fat, shining bodies of wriggling maggots protruding from the hollow of the creature's rotting throat. "Oh god," she thinks, "I'm dead."

She has to pull her attention to the ground to keep from spilling her guts. A sharp, unwanted metallic taste fills her mouth.

The (woman it was a woman and you killed her) demon's bloodied lips wrinkle back from her teeth in soundless jest before it launches at the girl with wildfire fur. Its teeth rake against the top of the firebrand's muzzle and sink into the fleshy part between the bones of her bottom jaw as it yanks her to the ground.

The girl's limbs strike out against its withering form, parts of its bulging flesh slogging onto the girl, the ground. It forces her head back into the dirt, and holds it there until she stops struggling. As it pulls back, one of its rotten guests falls from the cavern of its throat and onto the girl's heaving chest.

Somewhere in her terror, she has begun to weep. Her voice catches as a pain-soaked cry in her throat. Please— she slurs, the word coming out more like blease in her desperation.

The creature does not listen. Moonlight shines off of the rounded edge of its pearly incisors before it buries its fangs deep into her throat.

BLOOD FOR BLOOD.

On the outside, her limp body finishes convulsing. She remains unconscious for some time, but when she comes to, it is too dark to see. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes as her chest tightens and heaves. Any moment now, the rotting corpse will come from the shadows; and she's sure she'd prefer that over whatever these Blackfeathers will do to her.