MABEL
Mabel was tired; she shouldn’t have been, given her Ascended state, but the conversation unwound in so many different, distracting, deterring alterations that her head spun. Her head hung low and she swallowed down a barrage of selected curses, knotting together in the pit of her stomach, gnawed along the clenching of her jaw. Changes in tactics, not war for them but something else altogether, uncertain if she’s being purposefully misled or her reactions had spurred, instigated, agitated something else. Her hair fell over her face, wild and savage now, a culmination of uncertain waves, not even knowing where to go or what to say any longer.
No denial that it was coming, that something had collapsed and overrun, that the girls had seemingly chosen the wrong time to become Brightened, weak, and fragile, that choices eventually might not be left up to them – no matter what the Wraith conjured. The explanations ran over her flesh and bone, and she had nothing to fight against anymore, exhausted, fatigued, by the weight pressing down on them. “Okay,” unfurled and nothing more, nothing else, accepting the inevitable as it curled and fanned through her skull.
The youth already knew what she wanted to do, how she wanted to act, how she and Evelyn were going to move forward.
But her eyes swung back up, empty and lifeless and cold. “And how are we going to thrive?” While the world bit at them, while the Old Gods smirked and simmered, while the demons rose and they were cut down, one by one?
No denial that it was coming, that something had collapsed and overrun, that the girls had seemingly chosen the wrong time to become Brightened, weak, and fragile, that choices eventually might not be left up to them – no matter what the Wraith conjured. The explanations ran over her flesh and bone, and she had nothing to fight against anymore, exhausted, fatigued, by the weight pressing down on them. “Okay,” unfurled and nothing more, nothing else, accepting the inevitable as it curled and fanned through her skull.
The youth already knew what she wanted to do, how she wanted to act, how she and Evelyn were going to move forward.
But her eyes swung back up, empty and lifeless and cold. “And how are we going to thrive?” While the world bit at them, while the Old Gods smirked and simmered, while the demons rose and they were cut down, one by one?
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
