04-17-2020, 12:55 AM
She has avoided the forest.
If only because it is here that the memory of that terrible dream is most vivid. She can almost smell the blood. And when she closes her eyes here she can see that vicious glint in her sister’s eye. At least, she had called her sister. In the dream, she had merely been a viper. And Prayer didn’t know she had a sister.
But there is some burgeoning curiosity in her now, as she picks her way through the dense underbrush to find the place where she woke from that dream. Gasping, sweat-slick, the breath coming quick and hard, as if she might swallow the whole world.
What she does not know is that it had not been a dream at all. No, the viper had sunk her teeth into Prayer’s neck and there is still a scar there on her neck, though she cannot see it and no one has ever asked about it.
It is here, at the height of summer, that she sees him. And the sight of him and all that blood stops her heart just long enough for it to slam back to life in its ribbed cage.
“Thorn!” she gasps and rushes toward him, the eyes wide with panic. “Thorn,” she says again, the voice strained as she reaches for him, stops just short of touching him. “What happened? How can I help?” He looks different, so much different than she remembers him, but she’d recognize him anywhere.
If only because it is here that the memory of that terrible dream is most vivid. She can almost smell the blood. And when she closes her eyes here she can see that vicious glint in her sister’s eye. At least, she had called her sister. In the dream, she had merely been a viper. And Prayer didn’t know she had a sister.
But there is some burgeoning curiosity in her now, as she picks her way through the dense underbrush to find the place where she woke from that dream. Gasping, sweat-slick, the breath coming quick and hard, as if she might swallow the whole world.
What she does not know is that it had not been a dream at all. No, the viper had sunk her teeth into Prayer’s neck and there is still a scar there on her neck, though she cannot see it and no one has ever asked about it.
It is here, at the height of summer, that she sees him. And the sight of him and all that blood stops her heart just long enough for it to slam back to life in its ribbed cage.
“Thorn!” she gasps and rushes toward him, the eyes wide with panic. “Thorn,” she says again, the voice strained as she reaches for him, stops just short of touching him. “What happened? How can I help?” He looks different, so much different than she remembers him, but she’d recognize him anywhere.