edelgloss,
please pray for your boy because i am drowning in the water,
I’d never understood what was so great about the woods, or the outside in general. If anything, I’d have to say the fresh air, but anything had to be better than sitting in your own juices and breathing in old book-dust for sixteen hours a day like at that boarding school. Even the psychiatrist’s office smelt sterile and white. The closest I’d ever come to good fresh air was my aunt’s estate, but it was ruined by my cousins swimming in clouds of perfume, and the moldering of algae at the bottom of one of Aunt Angelica’s too-many fountains, and the cultivated, rectangular bushes of white roses that made everything rank like a funeral parlor.
Maybe there was no good air in the world, anymore. Even out here in the Viride, under the branches covered in winestain leaves, it just smells like wet and dirt and earth. Slimy moss sticks to my feet as I pick my way around raised roots and trees tilted sideways with time. Fig-colored pricker bushes grew in great clumps, thin tendrils turning back in on themselves and looking like my thoughts, half the time. I admit, when I ran away I had a plan, but that plan had just been to run away. Now I am away, and it doesn’t really hold water anymore. No one talks about what to do once you’re away. They just talk about getting there
“Shit!” I hiss as a thorn an inch long slices a line in the white of my hock. Crimson beads there and I frown, unsure as to why I came here. The group I traveled with since running away had dispersed back at the Rapax, with half of us crossing it and half of us following it up. I didn’t know their names and they hadn’t asked mine. No one waggled an eyebrow when I burnt my journal. It was supposed to be symbolic, I think, but now all I feel is regretful.
I swung my head through a swarm of midges and pressed on up a gentle slope. I cut through more prickers and didn’t cuss this time. It was important for me to go off the beaten path because I was still in Delumine and I’m sure my family had sent someone after me. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were happy I was gone. I smile at that thought because, screw ‘em. But more than likely they sent someone to hunt me down and bring me back, a retainer or a guard or a hired assassin. My mom was messed up like that.
I’d been missing for a few weeks now and it only should’ve taken me eight days at most to make it to Dimetria’s estate so by now they knew something was up. A knot twists in my stomach because my sister’s probably worried about me. I feel bad for that bit, for Dimmy and Sazurain, because they’ve never done anything but love me but also they don’t have spines, so, screw ‘em, too.
Maybe my escape will help them escape.
I crush through some maple tree saplings that bend and snap back to whip me painfully but I bite the curse that comes to my lips because there’s someone else here; a deer with a horn. I squint, because that’s normal, deers have horns, but this seems weird. It’s only after I stare a bit that I finally ask, “What are you?” and I’m so overwhelmed with curiosity that I don’t even care if it’s rude or not.
Maybe there was no good air in the world, anymore. Even out here in the Viride, under the branches covered in winestain leaves, it just smells like wet and dirt and earth. Slimy moss sticks to my feet as I pick my way around raised roots and trees tilted sideways with time. Fig-colored pricker bushes grew in great clumps, thin tendrils turning back in on themselves and looking like my thoughts, half the time. I admit, when I ran away I had a plan, but that plan had just been to run away. Now I am away, and it doesn’t really hold water anymore. No one talks about what to do once you’re away. They just talk about getting there
“Shit!” I hiss as a thorn an inch long slices a line in the white of my hock. Crimson beads there and I frown, unsure as to why I came here. The group I traveled with since running away had dispersed back at the Rapax, with half of us crossing it and half of us following it up. I didn’t know their names and they hadn’t asked mine. No one waggled an eyebrow when I burnt my journal. It was supposed to be symbolic, I think, but now all I feel is regretful.
I swung my head through a swarm of midges and pressed on up a gentle slope. I cut through more prickers and didn’t cuss this time. It was important for me to go off the beaten path because I was still in Delumine and I’m sure my family had sent someone after me. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were happy I was gone. I smile at that thought because, screw ‘em. But more than likely they sent someone to hunt me down and bring me back, a retainer or a guard or a hired assassin. My mom was messed up like that.
I’d been missing for a few weeks now and it only should’ve taken me eight days at most to make it to Dimetria’s estate so by now they knew something was up. A knot twists in my stomach because my sister’s probably worried about me. I feel bad for that bit, for Dimmy and Sazurain, because they’ve never done anything but love me but also they don’t have spines, so, screw ‘em, too.
Maybe my escape will help them escape.
I crush through some maple tree saplings that bend and snap back to whip me painfully but I bite the curse that comes to my lips because there’s someone else here; a deer with a horn. I squint, because that’s normal, deers have horns, but this seems weird. It’s only after I stare a bit that I finally ask, “What are you?” and I’m so overwhelmed with curiosity that I don’t even care if it’s rude or not.
"Speech." | @Callynite |
