MABEL
The looming silence thereafter told her everything she needed to hear, well before the words revealed truths, the sentiments she’d been reeling and feeling. The emptiness in her heart, in her soul. The wallowing shades and trails of loneliness. The notion that the other half of her was simply not there any longer.
Gone. Dead.
She hadn’t seen her.
Mabel stilled, frozen, transfixed for a moment, cold, cold eyes darting to the floor. To the structure that housed them all.
And she was the last.
She wouldn’t cry here. Not in front of the Wraith. The only emotions snapping in between her ribs, her lungs, her ichor, was a sudden, blistering, infernal rage – turning, twisting over the fragments of the words the Queen offered. They revolved over and over again. She was murdered. Found with a slashed neck. She was murdered. And then it would cycle back through, terrible and overwhelming, until her hands trembled, and she motioned towards the table, stiff, unyielding, for a piece of paper, some stray charcoal.
There was half a moment where she wondered why she shouldn’t just wander back into the woods and let the world take her again. The only reason she’d returned at all had been for Evelyn. What kept her here now?
The sparks of derision, of vengeance – kindling, stoking, fueling in her movements. And she tried to ensure her voice didn’t shake, didn’t quake, didn’t slide apart in the crackles of all the ruminations mauling her entity. “Tell me,” quiet shackles, but dominating in their space, in the hollowed proportions of the chilling abyss of that damned house.
Gone. Dead.
She hadn’t seen her.
Mabel stilled, frozen, transfixed for a moment, cold, cold eyes darting to the floor. To the structure that housed them all.
And she was the last.
She wouldn’t cry here. Not in front of the Wraith. The only emotions snapping in between her ribs, her lungs, her ichor, was a sudden, blistering, infernal rage – turning, twisting over the fragments of the words the Queen offered. They revolved over and over again. She was murdered. Found with a slashed neck. She was murdered. And then it would cycle back through, terrible and overwhelming, until her hands trembled, and she motioned towards the table, stiff, unyielding, for a piece of paper, some stray charcoal.
There was half a moment where she wondered why she shouldn’t just wander back into the woods and let the world take her again. The only reason she’d returned at all had been for Evelyn. What kept her here now?
The sparks of derision, of vengeance – kindling, stoking, fueling in her movements. And she tried to ensure her voice didn’t shake, didn’t quake, didn’t slide apart in the crackles of all the ruminations mauling her entity. “Tell me,” quiet shackles, but dominating in their space, in the hollowed proportions of the chilling abyss of that damned house.
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
