09-09-2021, 02:15 PM
My heart pulses faster as a rustling announces the presence of another. Ears twisting to catch the fleeting noise, I stumble back a step and hope there's nothing to trip my feet as I do. The spike of fear catches in my throat for one sharp moment.
Then, strangely, it ebbs away. The anxious feelings siphon away like water sucked into bone dry clay, leaving me hollow and peaceful as they go. When the sinuous voice comes, the jerk of fear it summons flows away with the rest. I am not a terribly brave creature, and to have this detached curiosity in place of nerves is unsettling in its own way.
"I think I might die," I answer, and facing that thought shakes my bones a hair harder. I haven't been alive all that long. I know that, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm alone, lost, and clueless when it comes to surviving cold and hunger. It's not a very promising collection of truths. Even I can see that.
Terrifying realities that I've cried over before, but today they feel like distant things. Less pressing than the voice of a stranger who decided for whatever reason, to talk to a wandering fool. The truth is that I am still afraid, moreso with this voice prodding at me in the dark. He is absorbing the fear as quickly as I make it, as hungry as I am even if his diet is a stranger one.
"Strega," I say in that same dull note, fearless, but without any other emotions to replace it with. "What are you doing here, Nazghul?" A pointless question, when I don't even know where "here" is. I don't want to end the conversion so soon, though. Not when this is the first voice I've heard in days, the only one acknowledging I exist.
@nazghul
Then, strangely, it ebbs away. The anxious feelings siphon away like water sucked into bone dry clay, leaving me hollow and peaceful as they go. When the sinuous voice comes, the jerk of fear it summons flows away with the rest. I am not a terribly brave creature, and to have this detached curiosity in place of nerves is unsettling in its own way.
"I think I might die," I answer, and facing that thought shakes my bones a hair harder. I haven't been alive all that long. I know that, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm alone, lost, and clueless when it comes to surviving cold and hunger. It's not a very promising collection of truths. Even I can see that.
Terrifying realities that I've cried over before, but today they feel like distant things. Less pressing than the voice of a stranger who decided for whatever reason, to talk to a wandering fool. The truth is that I am still afraid, moreso with this voice prodding at me in the dark. He is absorbing the fear as quickly as I make it, as hungry as I am even if his diet is a stranger one.
"Strega," I say in that same dull note, fearless, but without any other emotions to replace it with. "What are you doing here, Nazghul?" A pointless question, when I don't even know where "here" is. I don't want to end the conversion so soon, though. Not when this is the first voice I've heard in days, the only one acknowledging I exist.
@nazghul