MABEL
The snow crunched below her feet, and she walked. She tread over the pathways of shadows like a phantom, like a wraith, and perhaps she was – and maybe that was all could be said for Mabel. The last of lasts, though she’d yet to wholly realize it. Revenge hadn’t begun to fester in her mind. Vengeance hadn’t pooled and pulled its way into her bones, hadn’t torn apart the renderings of material and flesh.
And she moved like a ghost, quiet in the shadows, first tracing back to the old farm, where the broken vestiges threatened to topple further. Into the creaking abyss of maneuvering doors, of shattered windows, of planes and panes of glass that didn’t cut or bleed her any longer. Evelyn wasn’t there. Another logical conclusion gone and vanished; and since the cold didn’t hamper her, she continued onward, barefoot and wretched, an untidy, ruffian upholding, a wicked little creature waiting to snap.
But she didn’t, not here, not now, not with her mind foggy, cloudy, and murky, wavering on her wayward path back to familiar routes and roots, traversing right into the square. The stones beneath her feet didn’t chill her. The unearthly sway of the shadows infused her. And for once, she was not alone – eyes, clearly feral, untamed hinges, took in the others, wary on the sidelines of some bizarre tree, and another lone Ascended, one she didn’t know, had never met.
But that wasn’t strange either, expected, in the ways everything had been altered, changed, and reborn. She drew closer, and closer, and closer, not unlike a moth to a flame, though there was no fire here. Just a weird sapling, and ethereal, otherworldly components surrounding it. “What is it?” She spoke aloud, to anyone and anything nearby, a brazen, fierce notching, as if it were a demand; except the youth wasn’t one to have earned any of the entitled sentiments.
And she moved like a ghost, quiet in the shadows, first tracing back to the old farm, where the broken vestiges threatened to topple further. Into the creaking abyss of maneuvering doors, of shattered windows, of planes and panes of glass that didn’t cut or bleed her any longer. Evelyn wasn’t there. Another logical conclusion gone and vanished; and since the cold didn’t hamper her, she continued onward, barefoot and wretched, an untidy, ruffian upholding, a wicked little creature waiting to snap.
But she didn’t, not here, not now, not with her mind foggy, cloudy, and murky, wavering on her wayward path back to familiar routes and roots, traversing right into the square. The stones beneath her feet didn’t chill her. The unearthly sway of the shadows infused her. And for once, she was not alone – eyes, clearly feral, untamed hinges, took in the others, wary on the sidelines of some bizarre tree, and another lone Ascended, one she didn’t know, had never met.
But that wasn’t strange either, expected, in the ways everything had been altered, changed, and reborn. She drew closer, and closer, and closer, not unlike a moth to a flame, though there was no fire here. Just a weird sapling, and ethereal, otherworldly components surrounding it. “What is it?” She spoke aloud, to anyone and anything nearby, a brazen, fierce notching, as if it were a demand; except the youth wasn’t one to have earned any of the entitled sentiments.
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
