Lost Creek Hollow [m] psalms 91:10

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andras had waited years for this.
he healed. the man at the bypass had left him out to dry; this, he understood, but it did not make him any less annoyed. he spent his days camping, then,  searching for traces of the sweet scent and clinging to them when he found them; but rarely was she alone.
he wanted her alone.
and it was on this day, guided by the trumpeting mourning doves and the softbloom of spring dandelions, that he saw his chance.
she would know his call when she heard it.

this was not real.
her children were preparing to come earthside, and wren was beginning to feel it; she assumed her wife, too, was ready. impossibly round and gravid, it was hard to even so much as walk without feeling that pressing ache in one’s spine. it was around this time that a woman would likely be preparing a den, a place to stay for the next eight weeks.
but something was wrong. very, very wrong; she had been sensing it for a while and merely chalked it up to stress, forcing herself to swallow it and calm down. until it grew. it clung to her like a festering wound, a bulbous scab that simply would not go away. and on the day she was set to build a home, instead, she crossed the borders to search.
maternal instinct did not come very naturally to the songbird, but in place of it was a bond she had already begun to nurture. it was as if she had little friends who she carried around; little versions of she and her wife! and nothing from the farthest, most wretched depths of inferno would stop her from ensuring their safety.
she was confident until she heard it — that single, long note. it was true. she would know it anywhere.
there was a ghost at her doorstep.

he was so pleased to see her, at first.
the beautiful, fragile thing, his bird, his nightingale, his wren.
she was an impassible fortress, sturdy and unflappable in the same way that he was. two years ago, he despised this about her, but after so long-! oh, his heart flutters at the sight of it, his creation, god’s child!
she had starved him.
amore mio bellissimo, his lip curls deliciously at the putrid phrase; a token that should be reserved for shaba, but shaba was not here, was she? he saw her only in his girl. how long has it been, sweetheart? too long.
he ignores the unsavory scent of others on her pelt; and does not yet notice the plumpness of her once taut body.

this was not real.
there was no way.
she longs to holler for her wife, to disappear into the brush and gather her woman in her arms, to disappear into her tenderness like a frightened child — but she cannot.
she is a frightened child, now, staring like a deer in headlights at the withered, grayed figure of a man she once knew to be her father. she does not move, does not advance; she wants to vomit when she hears his voice. had he always looked so old?
could she fight him off, now?
shivering, wren straightens her back and stiffens her lip as she dares to ask him: how did you find me?

oh, beautiful, beautiful girl.
god led me to you, bambina, the father peels closer, looming, threatening wordlessly. i see you have new friends. have they been taking care of you, love?
he moves in to smell her, to taste her; to feel the supple warmth that radiates from her body, hear the thrum of her quivering heart. she smells of fear. he drinks from this.
and it’s then that he sees it; the swollen teats, the belly that could only mean one thing. his bliss is shortlived — it quickly turns to anger.
she has been defiled.
his face hardens to stone as he leans close to her tattered ear. who did this to you?

he notices.
every cell in the young woman’s body fights to get away, the shrill tone of warning sirens blaring inside her head as he gets closer
move move move move get away from me daddy please don’t
a knife twists in her gut as she lurches away from him, and daringly, a growl leaps from her throat as her teeth are exposed from under her lips. i’m married, she tells him, sharp in her delivery of the blow. god has led him to her? she doubts it. answer my question, dad. how did you find me?

ah, there it is. his fierceness in her; past the facade of shaba’s beauty, he sees his own mark upon her. for a moment, he is impressed.
you’re married? and you didn’t think to tell me? his pupils constrict wildly as the roar of hunger growls from his loins. i would have thought i taught you better than that, wren.
he reaches for her wrist, entangling her with him in reunion; he wishes to take her right here, right now, to show her what happens when she displeases him, displeases the god he taught her to worship;
but instead, he strikes her cheek with a blow of a hefty paw and watches as the welts form. tell me who did this, you stupid fucking—
he is cut off when all the breath is torn from him as her teeth pierce the skin of his throat.

she is not that little girl anymore.
as crimson blooms along his neck and her chin and dribbles onto the ground, she thinks back to when he had hit her for the first time. she and iris had been playing outside after a storm, and she remembers staring at the two sets of little brown prints and hearing her sister wail in horror as the strike bounces off of her face.
she thinks back to the first time he had touched her, that night she pretended to be asleep and how she had prayed for it to be over. it had to have been an accident, she’d told herself, until it happened again. and again, and again; and how her mother had turned an eye, and how she sometimes heard the same cries of pain from her sister’s den.
she thinks of the first time he drew blood.
the first time he hit her mother in front of her.
the second times, the thirds, fourths, fifths, tenths, fiftieths, hundredths;
and she thinks of the i’m sorry’s, the little gifts he’d leave at the denmouth, the stories and lies and excuses;
and when she first saw him, looked into those gunsmoke eyes, she was still that frightened little girl for a hazy moment;
but not now, not anymore, not ever again.
she is crying as she tears into him, kicks, yells; rabid, feral, feverish; she is not a victim, but a survivor. a wife, a mother, a warrior, a leader. a person.
she only wishes she had the strength to kill him.
she sends him away from her border a beaten mass of scarlet and soot, and she is trembling, sobbing; when she can no longer see him, she turns to hurl this evening’s dinner upon the tainted earth;
and she resolves, then and there, that she will take her wife and children and they will go somewhere they will never be found by him again.