02-13-2017, 04:59 PM
When night falls and she finds that she is still restless, still awake, still sorting through too many wandering thoughts, it is reflex to slip from the cave and back out into the night. Her parents lift their heads to watch her, their eyes dark and worried and maybe a little suspicious, but she soothes them with a smile, with kisses pressed to their foreheads. “I won’t go far, I promise.” The worry fades from their faces, but the guilt does not fade from her chest. She should not have made them worry like that, should not have returned to them with bruises in her eyes and a wound carved into the soft of her neck.
She is so selfish.
The night is cool on her face and she greets it eagerly, tipping her head up to the stars and closing those dark eyes. The cave has not felt like home since coming back, the rock all wrong, too small and too dry, lacking most of all the dark silhouette she wishes was still curled around her while she slept. Especially now, she wishes for a neck draped across her back to chase away the nightmares, dark lips on her cheek until she can forget why she was ever scared at all. But there is nothing she can do about the wrongness tonight, nothing she can do to forget that strange skeletal face, eerily beautiful in its sharp and brokenness, nothing she can do to forget how it felt with his teeth buried in the meat of her neck.
So she wanders, in and through the forest, through the trees and through the dark with a trail of false stars flickering mindlessly against her skin. Their light turns the blue of her skin silver, pale and watery, illuminating every dip and hollow and soft plane of bone in the hazy dark. They notice before she does, the face that watches her in the dark, not quite black but deep and rich and smooth like damp earth. She doesn’t notice until he is through the trees and splitting the dark between them with the heat of his body.
There are things that go bump in the night, he says, and his eyes are quick to explore her small figure in the dark. His words make her uneasy, prickle her skin and ruffle her fur until she notices his mouth shift with the hint of a smile that does not feel at all cruel. She settles and softens, turning those quiet, dark eyes against that rich chocolate face, waiting. Why would you venture out into them?
She considers him for a moment and that dark brow furrows beneath the tangles and currents of a dark and corn-silk forelock. “Maybe I am foolish.” She offers in a way that sounds entirely thoughtful, entirely helpful. A pause and she tilts that dark and white head at him in a quiet way, tracing the lines of his face all the way back up to eyes that are dark and brown and so much like her own. “Or maybe I am what goes bump in the night.” He takes a step closer and she takes a step back, careful to conceal the flinch that seems almost reflexive at the sudden and unwelcome closeness of this stranger. Why put yourself in dangers path? He asks again, and she can feel a frown shaping against her mouth, soft and uncertain, quiet when she asked in turn, “Have I?” A pause and she ignores the quickening of her pulse, of her heart in her chest, “Are you dangerous?”
She is so selfish.
The night is cool on her face and she greets it eagerly, tipping her head up to the stars and closing those dark eyes. The cave has not felt like home since coming back, the rock all wrong, too small and too dry, lacking most of all the dark silhouette she wishes was still curled around her while she slept. Especially now, she wishes for a neck draped across her back to chase away the nightmares, dark lips on her cheek until she can forget why she was ever scared at all. But there is nothing she can do about the wrongness tonight, nothing she can do to forget that strange skeletal face, eerily beautiful in its sharp and brokenness, nothing she can do to forget how it felt with his teeth buried in the meat of her neck.
So she wanders, in and through the forest, through the trees and through the dark with a trail of false stars flickering mindlessly against her skin. Their light turns the blue of her skin silver, pale and watery, illuminating every dip and hollow and soft plane of bone in the hazy dark. They notice before she does, the face that watches her in the dark, not quite black but deep and rich and smooth like damp earth. She doesn’t notice until he is through the trees and splitting the dark between them with the heat of his body.
There are things that go bump in the night, he says, and his eyes are quick to explore her small figure in the dark. His words make her uneasy, prickle her skin and ruffle her fur until she notices his mouth shift with the hint of a smile that does not feel at all cruel. She settles and softens, turning those quiet, dark eyes against that rich chocolate face, waiting. Why would you venture out into them?
She considers him for a moment and that dark brow furrows beneath the tangles and currents of a dark and corn-silk forelock. “Maybe I am foolish.” She offers in a way that sounds entirely thoughtful, entirely helpful. A pause and she tilts that dark and white head at him in a quiet way, tracing the lines of his face all the way back up to eyes that are dark and brown and so much like her own. “Or maybe I am what goes bump in the night.” He takes a step closer and she takes a step back, careful to conceal the flinch that seems almost reflexive at the sudden and unwelcome closeness of this stranger. Why put yourself in dangers path? He asks again, and she can feel a frown shaping against her mouth, soft and uncertain, quiet when she asked in turn, “Have I?” A pause and she ignores the quickening of her pulse, of her heart in her chest, “Are you dangerous?”