Move.
“Tell y’fuckin’ cause to deepthroat a bullet.”
Cauterization. She hated that word and all it encompassed; the singed hairs, the warped flesh, the noxious stench… it was enough to make her gag, and the woman felt the first traces of bile coat the back of her tongue.
The knife in her hand fell to the ground in the wake of a hiss. Immediately, Marley’s fingers –– drenched in the red viscosity of her lifesource –– fluttered delicately across the skin that had bubbled to seal the wound he had left behind. Such a memory, triggered by touch, made her sneer.
“Nothing will stop me from getting to you.”
Golden hues flashed like the malleable metal that coated her canine as she bared her teeth, her upper lip curling from the contempt that settled in her bones. The situation she was in was unpredictable at best; with nothing learned from the interaction shared between her and the ren’dorei, the Tirasian hadn’t the slightest clue what path to pursue. But she wouldn’t be backed into a corner, she wouldn’t be played like a rat –– though in the face of the cat, the rat bites back.
So, she pulled down the loose-fitting shirt over her tender stomach and collected the bottle that rested atop the bathroom’s counter, her leather boots rebounding off the floor as she turned to move through the little house upon the hill. It was exited swiftly, the door left open while she joined the waiting northerner.
“Y’got th’plan memorized?”
“Aye,” he answered, a gaze reminiscent of the ocean flicking from his friend to the house he had stayed in for the past few months. A coldness slipped into his voice, as icy as the winds that plagued his homelands, “Split off. Head t’Booty Bay. Make a livin’ there until th’coast is clear.” The echoed instructions were nothing short of forced and Erik resisted the urge to snarl, his left fingers coiled tightly around the straps of the knapsack thrown over his shoulder.
Marley nodded with callous determination. “A’ight. Let’s do this,” exhaled the woman, biting back the pain that came at her from all sides. She fished for a lighter kept in her pocket and rolled her thumb across the flint wheel, the elicited spark setting the waiting wick aflame. It was held beneath the cloth that had been stuffed into the bottle until the fabrics, too, caught fire, the blaze flickering as the malicious cocktail was thrown through the building’s doorway.
They watched it burn from a distance; one spark turned into a full-blown inferno, and that inferno spread to engulf it all. Smoke rose to fill the Barrens’ humid air, a thick black presage of what would undoubtedly transpire. It wasn’t unsettling, not to them –– this was what life required of the pair no matter what shoes they filled. And they’d burn every home, they’d evade every threat, they’d wear every pair of shoes a thousand times. Whatever it took, they’d do; a life on the run would always be better than a life in a cage.
Fingers curled into fists and their knuckles touched in solidarity and farewell before the headed off in opposite directions as home was reduced to a house that slowly became ash.
mentions: @musings-ofa-madman, @hollowpointtruth
