Maybe,

Leah Grey Eternal dramatic teen.Heavy on the drama I'll burn up, like a thousand stars and never touch the sun1x1 | active

[leahgrcy]

It's never any different. At least, that's all Leah can figure out from piecing together memories that are barely there, tethered to the high rising moon that she's always found some sense of awe in until it existed purely to pick an illness in her stomach and an ache against her spine. Never any different, because even now, seven months after the fire, Leah already feels darkened familiarity seep into her bones. A familiarity that she doesn't want, as it paves the way for nothing but pain, and truly; she'd rather be shocked by it than note the way it curls around her limbs and tightens as if to suck every ounce of life from her first, the first few drops of rain before a downpour. “Lukas, stop.” The titillated groan that surpasses grit teeth as she catches the root of a tree with a rather defiant kick is guttural, one that most definitely catches further discomfort deep within her spine, “Aren’t we far enough out yet?” Not nearly the complaint she wanted to make, but there were truly only a handful of times she could stomach even hearing herself say she couldn’t do this again. “No.” It’s rough and harsh, reminds her far too much of their father and like the creep of spiders' legs, she feels the prickle across her chest that feels something akin to guilt. 

They wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her. Here, being relative and not necessarily pinpointing Lukas and Leah, traipsing through the heavily wooded area in some effort to beat out their bodies splitting in two. Here, being, the sullen look in her mother’s eyes whenever Leah moved too quickly and broke something she sure as hell didn’t intend to. Or, the way her father’s adams apple would bobble as he swallowed back the blame she knew he felt in never accepting the idea of allowing their daughter to grow up more aware of the consequences of any choice she might make --- choices, like running into a burning building after someone who was surely, already dead. They wouldn’t be here, with Lukas casting a wary glance over his shoulder, uncertain of how much longer Leah would be able to keep her own feet before she collapsed beneath the shatter of bone and tried like hell to fight it like she had every other month. 

“Come on, Leah. We’re not there yet.” Muttered far too quietly beneath his breath to truly be intended for her ears as he cast blackened hues ahead. Sixteen years had given him as much of an edge on shifting as one could ever hope to find, a momentary familiarity that didn’t allow the venom of pain seep into bones until absolutely necessary, something only noted in the clench of his jaw and the ever-present curl of knuckles. “It’s just a little ---.” Truly, if he hadn’t been so accustomed to the snap of bone, or absolutely certain he’d just seen what looked like a shadow of another person up ahead, he might have easily written the resounding crack off as something akin to the final protest of a branch in the hefty wind. Though, when it created a cavern for the pitching scream to echo so hauntingly, even that felt impossible as he rounded just in time to see Leah’s knees buckle beneath her as her spine shifted far more dramatically than he’d expected it to so soon. 

“Leah?” His head tipped to the sky as he backtracked, the blackened abyss above barely peeking through the canopy enough for him to see how high the moon rested above. Calloused hands gripped her shoulders to keep her from the ground and Leah only saw shapes beyond the boiling beneath her skin. “You’re fine, you’re still here.” A void in time, nestled beneath her collarbone and tore the air that barely existed within her lungs with each bone that snapped beneath the pressure of balled up hands. Her own fingernails tearing the palm of her hand open to spill crimson into the air. A lengthy heave had her reaching for him and conscious thought only told her that she wished she could be six years old again. Six years old and none the wiser of how much weight the prospect of death held. “I don’t want..--” Teeth caught her lip and broke through far too quickly for her own blood to not fill her throat with a startling cough. “N-not again. I..-- I can’t. -- I don’t wanna’ do this again..” Wheezed out through the myriad of ribs that shattered under pressure, the harrowing screaming no doubt fulfilling any living rumor of a haunted forest. “Luke, make it... Make--.” It stop. +

Maybe, if she’d been listening closely enough, she might have heard the remnants of her brother's heart shatter against her plea. The living knowledge that there wasn’t a damn fucking thing he could do to help her far too heavy for one man. “Leah, listen to me,” He swallowed back, feeling the stringent burning between his shoulder blades. Time was always running out for them. “Stop fighting it, please... Just..-- give in. The more you fight it the worse it’s gonna’ be.” But, he already knew his sister, and the defiant shake of her head that buckled within the resounding sharp edges of her crying might have almost made him laugh at how utterly stubborn she could be. “Same as always, okay? When you wake up, you stay where you are. Whether I’m with you or not, do not move until I find you.” His hands lift from her shoulders to cup her face, but she’s looking through him and he knows it. There’s nothing there, the blackened state of her eyes ripping the once animated depth of her usual mahogany hues feels like losing her entirely, but he knows, with the burning up of her cheeks beneath his hands, he hasn’t yet. “Give in to it, Leah. It’ll be okay.”

+ She wished it was quicker. Though, maybe it was simply a difference of perception because she never remembers time passing so slowly. There’s a lot of things she doesn’t remember from each and every passing shift she’s suffered with. Firstly, she doesn’t remember the ice like feeling that slips across the back of her neck. Needle-like, and seeking something within the contorting stretch of bone within. Usually, everything was just, fire. Just fire. Her entire world being pulled into the flames of Alice’s home all over again as it tears at her side and rips her inside out and maybe that’s what always seemed to make it feel all the more difficult. Leah never felt the break of her bones -- the pain, of course, she never missed. But the literal snap of limbs truly never painted itself as just that. Instead, every twist and bend her body was never intended to make, simply felt as if the flames that engulfed the Miller’s front door, the fallen beam, the staircase, found more in her than the home it intended to destroy. And maybe that was simply how it’d always be; fire found a place within her bones and burnt even when she didn’t want it to because that’s what fire did. Secondly, she doesn’t remember ever hearing that voice with the exception of one awfully vivid memory. A voice that filters in and out of existence so quickly and so quietly that Leah can’t truly be sure whether it’s in her head or not. A voice that speaks her name in the same way she says it herself, and it’s enough to convince her that it’s little more than her subconscious trying to push further unwanted thoughts to light. That it’s whatever piece of her is still fighting against her body’s need to quite literally tear itself apart, begging to draw her back to the light.The wager pitches towards it being in her head, until the shifting of shadows, a man moving between the trees beyond her brother catch the final slip of lucid thought before everything in this world, and the next, goes black. 

+

The bitter taste on his tongue is something he knows he’ll never forget. Death poised on the edge of razor-sharp teeth and he knew the taste well. It seemed, the closer he came to finding his sister, the weakened scent that he could pinpoint her with his eyes closed slipping through the trees with a creeping uncertainty clipped to his shoulders, the further such a taste seeped into his system. The thick and acrid, metallic echo of blood was beyond comforting, the blackened state of memory as empty and abysmal as it ever was on the tail end of a shift. Lukas had once learned to accept it, the slope of damning things all control is lost to the second he feels the shifting of his spine, but it’s never, truly, made it any easier to swallow back the uncertainty of the damage inflicted at his own teeth. It lives in the permeated edges of everything he simply won’t ever forget, there’s just something about picking skin, grime, and blood from beneath his fingertips that simply stains. It’s the same bitter taste beneath his tongue, that tells Lukas, that no --- they weren’t far enough out, or close enough to alone, as he’d hoped they would have been. 

Knowledge of the taste alone leaves him a little dazed, picking apart what he knew with a further pressing discomfort in knowing the blood he could smell was quite literally on his own hands and somehow still, mottled with the ever familiar scent of his sister. It turned his stomach, or he thought it did. What it did, was in fact nothing short of a simple twist in his gut when the trees ahead parted and Lukas was caught on the precipice of something else entirely as his eyes adjusted to the lowly glimmer of flame. The hitch of breath that wedged itself against the near-immediate lump in his throat felt akin to a desolate plane and despite whatever desperation might have itched to claw at the rough of his palms, Lukas knew he’d choke on it before finding a way to dislodge it. + She knows this place, the space between sleep and awake that doesn’t really seem real and maybe she’s still dreaming, but she doesn’t remember her dreams and sometimes she’s convinced that she simply doesn’t. That the lull in her conscious seeps deeper than even that and has since obliterated any sense of safe haven in her own mind, created to draw her from the newly bitten horrors of her own life. She knows this place, only, never has she found herself suspended so precariously on the tipping edge of pain, and the strike of panic that carves its way through her chest curled within the realization, that she can’t move. 

Leah feels everything. Figuratively, most days. While her mother’s rather icy exterior found reflection in her daughter, Aeron Grey has never shied away from the idea that their youngest child was always something of a bleeding heart. Once the precipice of frozen and sharp icicles snapped away to reveal the cavernous pit that housed the rising tide of everything she truly felt, it was impossible to forget. The tepid tingle in her fingertips as they extend from the fists that once grew numb, the ache that presses against the cage of her ribs and every muscular shift that leaves her wincing in the comedown every shift offers her in those few passing moments. None of it shocks her, and like waking from a disturbed slumber, the groan that settles in the thick of her throat never makes it out alive, as her hands pull to press palms to her face and never once budge. But she feels it, everything, and nothing all at once as uncertainty and everything that comes with it swells in her throat; something’s wrong. There’s no rope, no chains —- not a single tether holding her in place, yet still, any want for movement proves helpless.

There’s no real decisive moment when she can figure out what she feels next — the unwanted burn of flame far too close to her face, or the heavy scent of blood that feels so thick beneath her nose she can taste it and when doe hues finally pry themselves open despite the blinding wave of heat, she’s not sure there’s a lump big enough that might have successfully sought to block the scream that splits the coming hours of dawn so vividly, so broken and piercing that time surely shifted with it. Color drains from her face and she pitches backward, kicking heels in the dirt to no avail as she remains strung up by some phantom force. “Luke!..--- Lukas!” Immediate panic settles in her bones, within the petrified edges of each cry that splits the air and the only thing she knows, is her brother is out there, she can feel him looking for her and before her, sinking in ash and darkness, it’s near impossible to mistake what she finds herself knelt before. Protruding limbs and faces, empty and lifeless, torn from their place and piled atop one another, cast aside and discarded as if any ounce of life were ripped from them purely for the sake of it —— like wolves.

There’s some weight to the passing thought that might have arisen had she even a moment to breathe, that panic had recently moved in and made itself right at home in the cavern of her chest, bringing fear with it, but the turning of her stomach is violent. The pungent smell that has long since found itself entwined with death settles within her nose and makes her head spin. The blank faces eerie in the firelight painting her world into the darkest depths of shadows, Leah’s only thought before she cast hues away and doubles with the heaving in her lungs as everything within her stomach came up, that she couldn’t do this —- nothing could have prepared her for what lay before her, even less so the mottled edges of implication that carved their way through her throat and buried itself within her chest. 

Her eyes stung against the burning, the volatile hammering of a singular thought against the forefront of her mind, painful beyond any snapping of bone. And the estranged cry that slipped between the cracks echoed so loudly in her own head, she completely missed the oncoming footsteps beyond the fire. Death was not something she knew much of -- not something she’d found a way to stomach, the pressing notion that the thing that lived within her held no ounce of the bleeding heart Leah had. It knew no mercy and offered no freedom from it. Pressure built around her wrists and tugged forcefully until Leah finds it near impossible not to look up through her own daze, the gilded wince that draws hues upwards across the bright light until the faces staring back at her sear themselves permanent into the inside of her eyelids. Haunted — red with anger, and distraught with something bruised against their soul. She’d never seen anyone look at her like that before, with all the hatred one could manage, and then some but with every gaping hole in her memory, the feverish heat that pressed against her chest, heavy and suffocating the longer it lived, Leah sought frantically to piece something together. “Please, I.. —-” A dark-haired man stepped forward, his arm shot out as he wretched the air from her lungs and curled sharp fingertips around her jaw to press so forcefully she could have otherwise sworn he could tear it right from its place. Pressure watered in doe hues and she buckled slightly beneath his hold, struggling as her lungs objected with an imminent grapple for air, nails digging into the palms of her hands in hopes it might steady the oncoming blur in her vision. “Fucking wolves.” And something spat in a language she didn't know fell across her face like acid and it jarred Leah to piece what she knew together as she looked between the strewn bodies of two boys, only a few years older than her and those stood around the firelight, falling to the reputation of words she didn't know just yet. A strange tongue she’d only ever heard her father speak in, tore the silence of the crackling fire in half. Hues widened and she struggled with invisible constraints, "No... No I didn't…" Had she done it? She could always lie through her teeth, it'd become somewhat a talent after so many years, but now… now she didn't know what existed as the truth and what she could twist to her own betterment. The painful realization that it likely didn’t matter what she did, or didn’t do useless, as far too many years had passed since her father's kind thought to discredit any sense of humanity with her own to let a passable hatred slip between myth and legend. Allowing it to become all too clear that far too many of those with magic at the tips of their fingers, only saw the animal in them, and rarity lay within those willing to accept a werewolf for everything they couldn’t control. "I didn't know. I swear I --  I didn't know!" A cold brush of air slid in against her back, the frozen press of touch gliding across the back of her neck attached to the shiver down her spine, familiar at best as her name carried across the ghost-like whisper. Far too difficult to forget the pitching details that seared like scars into the memory of one single night seven months ago. The shift of shadow beyond those chanting drew her attention and Leah dug her knees into the ground beneath, stones and twigs biting into her flesh without apology as she made some attempt to leer forward. Such familiarity jarred the organ within her chest and cast the piercing glow of the moon above as a light to lead her, only, she’d never really managed to pluck luck from the sky so easily as desperation filled her lungs in the form of words and intention that even she considered the breach of insanity. “Please..--” Russet hues pinned the flickering shadow, and she’s not even sure it's real --- but she knows there’s something in it. “I know you’re... You’ve been watching me..” The chanting grew louder and something twisted in the depth of her shoulder so sharply she cringed, “Whoever you are, you were there... In the house..-” Teeth dug into the dry, cracked spread of her lesser lip, her own blood spilling into her mouth as she bit back the trying whimper of her skin boiling. “M..--make them stop.” The same voice that carried her name across haunting winds, reverberating against the inside of her skull in a growing echo of laughter and she thought, there was nothing that could feel closer to death than that. 

Only, she’s been wrong far more times than she’s ever been right and the heat that once built within the amber flame before her dies out. Fire still flickers in the eerie glow of the moon above and a wind rips up everything until even the hollow recess of sound itself seems suspended in the haunting curvature of her screaming beyond the chanting that grows louder; as if people stood all around her now. The weight of her heated breath visible in the lowly puff of air she barely manages in the now ice like pitch in temperature, Leah finds it hard to believe that any of this is real, that this isn’t just a blindingly convincing nightmare that she can’t wake herself up from. Shadow shifts, falling to pieces in wisps of smoke and it’s all she can do to keep herself from buckling beneath the weight that she didn’t want to be alone as she pulls against invisible restraints again. Not alone, not here. “No..-- No, don’t... Don’t leave me here, don’t…---” Her voice suspends itself in her throat, caught against something she can’t dislodge and for a second, she’s certain she’s choking. Oxygen burns up replaced by flame and the idea of suffocating on little more than thin air doesn’t seem so bad anymore as everything within the petite frame of the young wolf implodes and tears the skin from bone. A reflective making of every wound left upon the flesh of those strewn before her. 

+

Certain sounds can never be unheard, never be forgotten and exist years later to echo the shifting change of time and space unlike any memory can hold for too long. Lukas is sure he’ll never live long enough to draw the shrill scream that tears through the forest so violently he’s certain it’s formed a physical presence and ripped through the canopy above to leave its mark on everything it touches. But he can’t move. He can’t will his legs to do what he knows they’re perfectly capable of to draw him into the light as he watches, frozen; petrified in the wake of his sister's torture. Dark matter shifts from its place among the dead at his sister's feet in trails of mist, slipping through every well-worn curvature of spell work that he has no idea how to circumvent until it disappears beneath Leah’s skin and bleeds black from every wound that slowly tears at her body. He knows what guilt tastes like. It’s metallic, thick, acrid, and bleeds crimson into his mouth. There’s no doubting what he’s done --- and there’s even less doubt suspended in knowing his baby sister doesn’t have reason to be caught at the tip of his own consequence. Though, perhaps, the cruel makings of the world they knew had painted such consequences in the most torturous manner as the impossibility of Leah’s survival dawns on him as her bones snap and shift. He knows illness, but nothing like the turning in his stomach, as the raging war of successfully shifting a second time in less than three hours becomes all the more improbable in the torment of the small circle of witches far more powerful than he was on his own. The pitching sound of his name ripping through the air as black blood slips like tears from the corners of Leah’s eyes, cracks, morphing into the guttural growling as human becomes animal. It’s unlike anything he’s ever seen as her body contorts in a splatter of black liquid that burns up in the flames and he stumbles back into the uneven makeshift path and struggles to find enough air to fill his lungs. He knows what guilt tastes like. It’s metallic, thick, acrid and paints his hands red for the two boys he could still taste on his tongue. It’s black as night, poisonous, and pools at his sister’s feet. The strings of his greatest mistake tie a noose around his throat. He knows he can’t stay -- can’t face their world knowing this is his fault, and that he can’t stop it. 

 +

She always thought agony was that feeling in her chest, the hollow in that cavernous hole that followed her everywhere she went once the flames of the Miller home had long since died. Smoke still rose from the wreckage and the world seemed to spin regardless. She thought it existed as something almost, figurative. It couldn’t be touched, wasn’t tangible enough to tear it from her own chest, neither palpable enough to taste, but she knows she’s wrong before she even opens her eyes. The gentle touch of cool hands that trace the raw red markings around her wrist draw her closer. Her mother’s weeping, she’s angry and Leah can feel it against her skin like wildfire, it’s hot and dull in the same breath and she can feel the unforgiving split of her lip that spills blood against her chin, even as the welcoming feel of cold hands lift her head from it’s hanging place. “Lu..” Her voice is ash, nothing but ash as she rasps out something barely coherent. “It’s okay baby,” Her father’s voice --- strong, present, and undoubtedly shaking despite the careful and steady shift of his hands as he breaks the metal chains that hold her now. Arms encircle her and she whimpers beneath the agony her body burns in as she’s suddenly all too aware of how heavy everything feels. “We’ve got you, you’re okay. -- Anna, take her for me.” 

Careful hands draw her in, carrying the weight of wounds visible and hidden, the permanence of every ache she felt grew in the socket of her shoulder as it popped back into place and ricocheted throughout her frame as her mother lay her down against her lap. The steady tremor of uneasy breath and tears that made no sound spilled across Anna’s jean-clad thigh, lithe fingertips smoothing matted hair out with the lowly soothing sound that carried with her mother’s heartbeat. “Lukas... Where..--” Barely managed as brittle and barely pieced together fingers curled into the dirt below. “He’s gone, sweetie. He’s..” Annaliese Grey was always hard. Like worn marble, a sight that was almost far too noble and yet didn’t often crack beneath the weight of the world, but she felt it now. “He’s gone, baby.” It’s heavy, and somehow Leah knows what she means; he’s not gone. Not lost. Part of her knows that perhaps, she might have felt that far more violently but then again, she’s not entirely sure if anything could truly pierce her anymore. It’s heavy, and it doesn’t hurt yet, but it presses tightly within her throat and the whimper that finds her is a resounding scream for what she knows now. She hadn’t been alone, she’d felt him. She’d never put much weight in the idea that they could do that, feel each other when they were around, but it’s unmistakable now. She’d felt him, needed him --- and he’d left her. 

Nothing within the anger of her father’s power as it tears at what’s left of the building and brick by brick casts it aside until he can pick apart the echoes and tether a curse of its own to what remains of it. The familial power that burns up in the palms of his hands an eternal promise to the lineage of those that thought to harm what was his that they’d never rest again, not until he found them. But there was no stopping it as the ache within her chest grows cavernous again and the dirt caught within her hand doesn’t tether her to this form as well as she might have hoped it would. The warmth of her parents permeating the air around her with more stability than she thought she could swallow back. He was here, and he left me alone. It spins, screams and etches itself permanently to the inside of her skull, pierces tired, doe hues with a splitting headache that traverses across the back of her neck like a needle and leaves her with trembling lips as her grip tightens around her mother. The jagged edge of that which broke within her drawing her closer to the newly forced inevitability. “Dad..” She choked out, the objection within the sound that builds in her throat is unforgiving, and in that moment, she’d rather burn in flame than boil from the inside out. “It’s happen--..” It’s hidden within the twist of her heart and buried beneath her father’s anger as ribs already aching and bruised snap again and she almost lurches forward to vomit the pain out. “-- happening again.” She didn’t know how many times it had happened since they’d left her there. How many times she’d ripped herself apart beneath the weight of every cataclysmic emotion that stirred within her as the dark carried her screams to no avail. Too weak to grasp at any sense of distance between herself and her mother, Leah clung tighter as the heaving of her chest tethered to the crack her brother had left behind within the cage of her ribs split open a little more. Aeron’s voice stilled, his fury caught within the thick of his throat as watched the inhuman tremor beneath Leah’s collarbone. Already so weak, there was no running from this, no turning away from the inevitable as every echo left behind told him of what’d been done to her as he sank to his knees beside them. “Aeron,” her mother’s voice fell quiet, far sturdier than her heart beating within her chest, “--- the chains.” she started, shifting slightly to pull Leah from her lap, “Pass me the chains and stand back.” It’s within the crack -- the one her brother created that she feels it. Ice and fire, entwined as if they belonged together. Existing purely to satisfy one singular purpose as it swept to rattle itself against every brittle and already broken bone she held. Deep, within the recesses, left behind like a sharpened blade forgotten on the ledge of a countertop as the sound of chains tore across the dirt and a pained and begging whimper drew across the trembling of her lesser lip. This won’t ever end.

[w4lkingdvad-blog]

[leahgrcy]

Her mother was going to kill her. 

A fact that Leah became all the more aware of the longer she looked at the tear in the dress that she hadn’t wanted in the first place. It would never seemingly matter all that much how many times she told her parents she didn’t need another, that she’d just ruin it like she did the last --- which, of course, never sat well with a woman who wanted nothing more than for Leah to just *look* as much a proper young woman as they could manage, yet that was merely one more thing that Leah and Annaliese Grey would never see eye to eye on. The main reason for her stripping down to her undergarments and leaving the tattered dress a puddle on the floor of her mother’s sitting room, was done almost purely to prove a point, already twisting her arm with some effort to pick apart the ribbon that held her corset together as she pressed on through her home.. Yet another thing she’d been forced into hours before dinner. One could barely comprehend that her mother wanted Leah, of all people, to sit still long enough to learn some other god-awful skill , she already knew how to play the piano, painting was a lost cause and she honestly had absolutely *no* interest in joining her to entertain whatever guests Leah might deem unwanted in the first place. She could read, and really, that was about the full extent of what she intended to meet her mother on for compromise. The way she saw it? If Lukas could do as he wished, Leah would do the same.

And her mother really was going to kill her. If not for the former, then most certainly because she’d slipped through the side entrance of their home well past the gleam of lights through the window, looking as though she’d crawled through a thicket -- and she might very well have at one point, but who was to tell. With any luck, her mother would be far too distracted by some stuffy guest to notice that after never showing up for dinner in the first place, she’d finally returned; a mess.

It was near impossible to grow up in a house deemed haunted, merely by it’s current inhabitants, to piece together some semblance of a normal life, no matter how hard her werewolf mother and witch father might have thought to try. For anyone looking in, Leah painted a picture of a rebellious --- difficult daughter who’d likely never grow to be anything but, when in reality, she was only trying to break the cage that her mother's heavy shadowing cast over her shoulders. That, was exactly how she’d managed to pinpoint the floorboards across the hall that would creak beneath her weight long before she’d ever snuck out the first time some years before her twelfth birthday. What she’d never known, was that her father, once figuring out what his daughter was doing, had left it near impossible for anyone outside of his study to hear her, his wife so often hounding Leah for undivided attention he knew his daughter simply didn’t have in her, to further entice his little girl into believing that nobody ever knew what she was up to. That, and he’d never wanted to suffocate her with their own pressing disagreement, that neither could find it in them to come to  level ground on how they wanted their spitfire daughter, to grow up. It might very well have been his knowing that caught the rather loud conversation echoing off the walls of his study to something more akin to heated whispers. The unmistakable voice of her father's best friend far more erratic than she’d ever heard before. The slight shift of the wooden door on its hinges clawed it’s way across her spine as it shifted and drew Leah back into the shadow of the opposite doorway; partly because she didn’t really want to be caught by either man. Standing outside her father's study wearing little more than her mother's timely heart attack stitched to the seams of her underwear if she was seen, *mostly* because she was far more curious than her caged heart could settle with. “---- how is this enough for you?” It’s sharp and even she can pick at the disbelief in Nathan’s voice with two fingers. Her father's silence, she could read far too easily, the passing few seconds that slipped between the other room enough for her to paint a brilliant picture of her father's face. “More than enough. You’re playing with dangerous things that neither of us truly understand and I’m not willing to pay the price of that.” A heavy sigh that didn’t belong to Aeron clipped her father’s pause, “You knew that well before we got here.” Something slammed down against wood, her father's desk , she isn’t sure what. “How can this be enough? We made this possible, didn’t we? Think of what else we could do.” Leah had no doubt that there were a great many things within these walls that she didn’t know about, but something about the conversation she was overhearing seemed… far deeper than that. Daunting, even, that she was eavesdropping in the first place. “You're not talking about more power. More power, we already have. You're talking about taking control of an entire species,” Unbeknownst to Leah, *her* own kind beneath the burning microscope of possibility. “Surely I don't need to tell you how insane that is.” It’s a sharpened hiss that tacks itself to the edge of his tongue, and Leah can almost surely imagine him standing taller than any man she’d ever seen now. “I don’t need anything more than this, which part of that do you not understand? We did what we wanted to do, we have it, enough is enough. The further you go with this, the more we risk..” There’d only ever been twice in her life she’d ever heard that tone in her father's voice, and she’d stood on the receiving end of it *once*, “Trying this on your own will get you kil---.” She'd never quite seen rage before, unkempt and unchecked, but something about what followed struck her spine with shock. “Which is exactly why I need you in on this.”  such demand felt almost guttural, and the silence alone that followed cast an eerie chill across the hall. 

If there was one thing she understood very clearly, it was that her father wasn’t a man easily persuaded, lenient --- *sure*, but convinced of anything beyond a decision he’d already made? Like prying teeth. Voices died beyond what she could make out and out of frustration, or vying curiosity she stepped forward, the floorboards beneath her feet creaking and stilling the air in her lungs until she heard the shift of footsteps beyond the opposite door. “I thought you said we were alone." The door shifted further closed in the breath of air that Leah held onto. “You need to leave, we’re done here and I don't need to hear about this again. I’m trying to help you, Nathan. For once, just listen to me.” Perhaps, if she’d been paying closer attention to everything she heard, added to the lengthy list of conversations she overheard within the walls of her own home, she might have stood a chance at steeling her own resolve the second the door to the study flung open and Nathan Rhys stepped out into the hall with her. Despite the shift of her features that surely pitched an image similar to her own father's indifference, she’s not able to bring anything close to words up through the sudden tightening in her throat. “A little late to be playing out in the woods, don’t you think, Leah?” Truly, she’d only ever met the man a handful of times, and never  had he cast such an unwelcoming feeling in the pit of her stomach as right now, with his hand lifting to pull a small broken twig from the tresses of her hair, the sharp tweak of hair pulled from her skull barely noticeable as it came free, and the bare bones of a smile that somehow, didn’t hold any warmth.  “Leah, go find your brother, your mother is about to come looking for you both.” The short jolt between her shoulders that came with Aeron’s hand against her shoulder, a necessity in drawing her attention, doe like hues previously fixated on Nathan. “He’s not--.” “Lukas is picking your dress up off of the floor, as we speak.” It’s little more than the tightening of his fingertips that draw Leah back a little way, and really, the fact that Aeron seemed to *know,* everything was more than enough to break any sense of focus she might have fixated on her father’s closest friend. “Another one, Leah? Mother’s going to kill you.” The sound of her brothers heavy footsteps might have cast something far lighter in the depth of russet hues as he came upon the three of them in the hall, “I’m sure your father would have no trouble at all fixing that up, we all get a little..-- wild sometimes.” And maybe there’s something more spoken between adults, but Lukas’ has his hand curled around the crook of her elbow and is all but dragging her further down the hall until it’s impossible for eyes to linger on a man that makes her skin crawl for reasons she can’t quite put her finger on. And maybe, if she’d been even a little more perceptive than she’d ever been, she might have picked apart the undertone that held nothing but warning and sickly promise. 

Impossible to know what woke her beyond the realms of a world she didn’t particularly want to be in, an echo of amber glow that flickered across flesh that felt far too real to be burning up like it had without the pain that should have flourished, or the sweat that pooled in the small of her back and pressed discomfort across her spine. Or --- the raspy, dark voice that cast her name across the back of her neck with the press of a breath that might have belonged to another had they stood at her back. It caught in her lungs as hues adjusted to the lowly light of the rising full moon and she noted that it was not yet late, just as surely as she sought to confirm that nobody had spoken aloud. Such impossibility proven by the fact that she was undoubtedly, alone. 

Even knowing as much, Leah drew herself from beneath the covers and tore open the door of her closet, only to come face with .. fabric, with the dresses her mother continued to plague her with. And maybe, it’s enough to draw some sense of relief back into the edge of her spine, or it was until amber glow that surely didn’t follow her from her dreams bloomed in the very corner of her vision. Cast eerily across the glass of her window as pieces from a burning dream sear into the back of her eyelids as if perhaps she wasn’t really awake yet. Eyes closed tightly and she wondered how much it would take to wake herself up out of a dream. Though, she supposed in some sense, had she been dreaming, she likely wouldn’t be able to piece together a thought about herself being stuck in a dream in the first place and really, it was all a little confusing considering she was yet barely awake. Yet, even as she sought to open her eyes, a world forgotten beyond it in the mess of her own thoughts, there was no possible way that the heart in her chest could have stilled any more abruptly in the realization that, not an ounce of her dreams had seeped out into this reality, rather, her dreams might have painted reality instead. For as long as she could willingly piece together in memory, Alice Miller had lived exactly three houses down, on the opposite side of the street and when she was eight she’d begged and pleaded with her parents to move her to the upstairs room at the end of the hall. So, even when they were separated, they could still see the window to each others bedrooms. A window that now, shattered under the heated pressure of flames that seemed to tear like claws at the structure of her best friends home. Fear didn’t exist within the wild bones of a girl that sought to challenge it at every turn, however, the bristle that pricked the back of her neck and pitched her stomach into the floor below caught her so forcefully within her ribcage that Leah was convinced she’d never breathe again. Yet lacking air in her lungs was a fleeting thought, and not nearly enough  to stop bare feet from catching every creaking floorboard of the hallway, and the staircase two steps at a time, knocking over a vase on the landing below ---- never hearing it smash across the floor; before she pierced the world beyond her family home and came face to face with the sound and smell that had been void in her dreams. “Leah!” This time, it didn’t stretch across the back of her neck like ice, her brothers voice booming as he threw open the front door too many paces behind her for it to matter. “Leah, stop!” Small as she may have been, Leah had made a point of being fast from the moment that Tommy Kennedy had claimed that no girl could beat him in a foot race, but perhaps now, she wasn’t quite fast enough. Those that had already spilled out across the street before the Miller’s home crowded by the front garden, several of them clawing to hold both of Alice’s parents back from the blaze despite their harrowing screams that filled the air for their daughter. The very same that turned her stomach and tore open the seams of every vital organ that Leah needed just to stand on her own. “Where is she? Where’s Alice?” Impossible to miss the pitched crack in her voice as she rocks against the heels of bare feet, “Where..-- Where is she?” It breaks and topples from her lips in something akin to a scream of her own above the raging sound of wood cracking inside the flames. And one could very well argue that perhaps, Leah Grey simply didn’t possess the sentiment of a flight response, but truly, she was just far too proud to ever admit that she just as surely felt the tightening in her chest and the defying tremble in her fingertips as she hooked the small picket fence, tripping in any attempt to land on her feet as loose fingertips that sought to grab a hold of her, slipped. “Someone grab her! Lea--” There was no way to explain it. The deafening sound of roaring flames that surround her the second she slips beneath a fallen beam and into her friends crumbling home. She can feel the air burning up, feel it crackling and screaming beneath the pressure of the flame itself, but it’s quieter than she expected it to be. The kind of quiet that finds a home inside a hurricane, only, the eye of this storm is flickering across her ankles and scorching the skin across her arm, and it breaks the breath of air she holds and twists it until she screams into the harrowing oblivion of this particular nightmare. “Al..-Alice?” Smoke doesn’t feel weightless in her lungs and she imagines, for a brief second, that this must be what drowning is like as her arm lifts to cover her mouth, just as another window explodes and showers the outside terrace with glass. 

And, maybe there’s no fire. A thought that only transcends her own panic as the same, cold, prickle slips across the back of her neck and has her stumbling in the opposite direction, deeper into the house, as her name drifts between the dancing emblems of hell itself and ripples a chill in her spine that might just be enough to challenge the burning, bloodied bottoms of her feet. And maybe, she’s still dreaming, because there’s no telling whether the darkened silhouette that stands feet from her, towards the kitchen, is even real. It holds no real sense of tangibility, but the flames seem to slip right through it as it calls her name --- she swears she heard it.. Her eyes are burning, and that has to be the reason for it. That and the heave of lungs that can’t pinpoint anything of worth being drawn in through haphazard breaths, she’s not sure that anything before her is real, at least, until she sees blonde locks splayed across the floor. It takes a whole two seconds --- one, of her head spinning near uncontrollably, and two, for Leah to lose focus as a chunk of the ceiling falls through and rips down across her side, tearing open skin and burning it all the same as it knocks her from her feet. There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing, in this world, or the next, that Leah could ever think to compare the actual taste of flame against her skin to. The wrought smell of burnt flesh growing all the more pungent as her hands blister while she stifles the flame that seeks to engulf her clothes and sear itself as a permanent reminder. “L..--Leah.” It’s perhaps akin to a shot of adrenaline that digs itself into her chest at the faint sound of Alice’s voice fills her head, even if it’s the sole counterpart of an even smaller final breath that Leah doesn’t hear as she crawls across the floor towards her. Never knowing that the voice she hears has been gone for minutes now.

Her body protests, every second of the way and the smell turns her stomach like nothing she’s ever known. But as fingers entwine with those lifeless it pitches a knife of defiance into the small of her back and though she’s certainly not strong enough to carry the other out, there’s no single piece of her that’s so willing to claw her own way out of here without her. Tears mottle with the ash building on her cheeks, leaving streaks behind as she coughs so violently she’s almost sure she blacks out for half a second before the inferno that screams to tear life from their very bones returns with vengeance that Leah doesn’t pick apart until the back door to the Miller’s home is being kicked in and the oxygen that bleeds through enrages flame all the more. “--- Leah? ” Her hand curls around Alice’s wrist. There’s no pulse, but her own beats for too rapidly to fit that piece into this puzzle just yet. Time doesn’t exist, oblivion has snuck up, sought to dig it’s claws into her shoulders and pick apart whatever else remained of her own ticking clock as smoke that filled her lungs charred the inside of her throat and maybe..--- maybe she’s not so invincible as hands far stronger than hers curl around her waist to haul her to her feet. “No..-- No, Alice! She’s here! I can’t..-- we can’t leave her.” It’s raspy, and filled with the ache of her lungs as bloodied feet kick at her father’s form, and then her brothers there. Hands not marred by flame or ash seeking out her face, “We have to go, go with…---” Lightbulbs shattered, Lukas’ arm thrown up to cover their faces, as the whine of peeling paint and wood grew louder, “Go with dad, I’ll get Alice, okay? I promise.” She can’t breathe. That’s all she knows. There’s no air, even when there is air and through blurred vision she’s watching the door as her father places her down on the grass that feels something like glass beneath her knees, only, it’s digging in against her spine and she’s not sure when that happened --- how that happened. Fire, she knows --- now she’s felt it melt her skin, char her lungs and rip every sense of what might have once been comfort from her, but this.. She doesn’t know this, as fire that feels.. Black, tears across her knuckles and scatters every sense of relief she could possibly feel in seeing her brother emerge the flames with Alice cradled against his chest to the wind. “Leah.. Leah, listen to me.” Her hands sting as she lets go of chunks of grass and dirt, pitching herself forward to steady against Aeron’s lowered shoulder, “You gotta breathe.” But it’s otherworldly, and as Lukas places Alice’s lifeless body barely a foot away from her, the crack she feels inside her chest doesn’t… feel right as her body succumbs to everything that should have killed her. “Why isn’t she breathing..-- Help her. Dad..-- Do something!” Pain, begged to be felt. That much she knew, but this…-- this wasn’t begging, this was ripping her ribcage open and forcing blood down her throat until she could taste the guilt and anguish that painted the inside of her body like a tragedy. Something shifts, and suddenly, everything feels more vibrant, and heavy, and painful all at once as russet hues flicker to black. “Lukas, you need to take her, now.” There’s some sense of certainty that blooms within every blister that rises against porcelain skin, the same kind that tells her she’s wrong, but there’s no mistaking the lacking rise and fall of her best friends chest, even for a heaved breath. It’s the kind of certainty that lies within the skeleton of an echoed cry that Leah isn’t sure she’s ever going to stop hearing as reality peaked; Leah Grey wasn’t fast enough, and Alice Miller was dead.

“Lukas.” Their father’s voice sharper this time, demanding almost as he reaches out and grabs his son by the collar of his shirt. She doesn’t see it, she sees nothing but the lifeless blonde in front of her, shaky hands curling into the charred fabric of her clothing as her own body pitches forward until Leah’s tears can fall but an inch to Alice’s body beneath. “No..-- no, there’s.. She can’t..--.” Her brother’s hands tremble just as surely as her own, though, not for the senseless life lost --- but for the one about to crack in ways none of them ever wanted to see. “You take her and get out of here.” And maybe, death would be sweeter than the way her spine seems to split open and every hallowed breath she might have barely wanted to take if Alice couldn’t have just one more, contorts, until a scream that shatters the very stars in the sky into a thousand more scintillated lights tears through the petite brunette so violently, it doesn’t even feel human anymore. “Shit.. -- Shit, we’re out of time.” Aeron shifts forward, slipping his arms beneath Alice’s body and hauling himself to his feet. “You get her as far away from here as you can before it happens. You hear me? Anna will find you both.” Even beneath the haunting sound of the fire, there’s no mistaking the snap of bone and unearthly cry that morphs into a ghost all it’s own. Maybe, it’s poetic. That the moon had risen to hang in the abyss above, bright and beautiful --- and daunting to those controlled by it, in just the same moment that Leah’s heart stopped for the first time as every bone around it shattered. The last thing she knew before the world went black, was her brother, with his arm clinging to her waist, dragging her back towards the woods, “You’re okay.. You’re okay, Leah.” Yet, whatever bottomless ache she feels within her chest far outweighs the panic in his voice, even when every neuron within her feels like it’s still back there, being burnt alive, every mottled cry that sinks itself deeper like claws a harrowing promise that Leah suddenly knew what might be worse than death. “Whatever happens, we’ll find you. Stay where you are, and mom and I will find you, okay? I promise, you’re gonna’ be okay.”

The first thing she remembers when she wakes up, confused, naked, covered in blood and with the echoes of unbearable pain still ricocheting against her chest is that her heart broke well before her body did.