Synopsis: Watching the seasons change, the Moon and Sun circle across the sky, and your mistrust disappear, Noa waited for you to let him into your heart - just as he kept you in his from your first meeting among the blood, silence and leaves. A feeling grew between you two. Sometimes it was painful - but day by day it brought closer to something beautiful... Like the universe itself.
"Creation" Chapter 1. A scream that almost sounded
A/N: It was difficult in a good way. No more, no less
Word count: 4,2K
Warnings: Brief descriptions of murder and death, mentions of blood and injuries, swear words, child kidnapping, hints of rape and sexual harrasment (oh Jesus...)
🎧 Senn — Lone Wanderer
The wind blows the twittering of birds across the endless plain. Its gusts are benevolent, soft - but instead of bird trills, you, having woken up, hear heart-rending cries.
The ones you heard every day for almost a twelve years.
The ones in which you yourself risked losing your voice very soon.
Still not daring to open your eyes, you involuntarily wrap your arms around Noa again - after all, you have nothing else to grab onto except him. You exhale a scream that almost sounded.
If you weren't sitting in the saddle now, you would curl up into a small, unnoticeable ball.
Like that morning.
***
It was not yet dawn when they burst into your home on a hill that was probably now trampled. A dozen men in dirty uniforms, weapons at the ready. They killed your silent mother, who loved you unconditionally - and her every gesture became a voice in your ears. They killed your fearless father, who protected you with strength and wisdom - and his every word became a silent anger flowing through your veins.
But then you were too young to see your parents die. You were too young to fight.
Running to the attic, closing your eyes and curling up in a ball in the closet, in a pile of clothes - all you could do while strangers mockingly talked to the bodies of your parents.
Just a few minutes ago they were alive... And now they were getting kicked by dirty soles.
A single sob gave them away where you were hiding. The wooden closet door shattered into splinters. You shuddered as they told you in a disgusting chorus that you had a cute face. One of them twisted your arms and you burst into tears. He covered your mouth with his cruel palm and blindfolded you, ordering you to be obedient.
Even then you wanted to bite off the rough fingers that touched you.
Tied up tightly, you shuddered as one of them, then another, scooped you up and put you down in God knows where. You knew from the sound of the wheels on the gravel and embankment that it was a cart. It was impossible to tell where they were taking you. You had lost the way to the house where the memory of all the good things that had happened to you. And that made tears roll down your cheeks again. But you cried silently, so that they wouldn't hear.
In the dungeon, the blindfold was removed from your eyes - but you saw nothing more. Only blood and the glassy eyes of your parents.
There you were given to people for training.
But these people, contrary to the laws, became attached to you. And were as kind to you as possible. Your foster mother taught you to adapt to the present and the future, whatever it might be. Your foster father taught you to use your inquisitive mind and defend yourself from encroachment.
After a few months, you were given work - you sewed and patched clothes in a cramped room.
And everything you were taught came in handy.
The times of day and seasons here, many meters underground, were indistinguishable. And only by the holidays marked on the distorted calendars nailed to the walls, you could count how old you were.
The numbers were becoming increasingly frightening. Not only you. There were many such stolen girls here.
Here, working as assistants, you had no time for chirping girlish conversations. You had no time for friendship. If you managed to talk to girls like you, it was only about the danger lurking around every corner. Older and younger than you - they were all afraid of the blood that appeared on their clothes every month.
It meant only one thing - sufficient "ripeness". That's what they called it. Then they took the girls downstairs, locked them there, tied them up and raped them. Sometimes they involved their sons in this. Sometimes the girls they abused were their daughters who had been born and grown up here. When you found out about this by accident, you were bitterly glad that you had no relatives in this decaying pit.
They glorified the human race, they wanted to revive God's plan. They shouted about it through megaphones. The screams coming from below were unbearable... You don't know a single prayer, but you know - it was blasphemy.
It was Hell, depriving you of reason and dreams.
The first time you saw the red stain spreading on your skirt, you wanted to cry. But you couldn't cry. Just as you couldn't go up to the blessed world. Just as you couldn't refuse food that looked like scabs. Just as you couldn't know too much. Just as you couldn't find a way out of the iron leper box.
Having propped up the door of the sewing closet with a wooden box, you burst into tears from helplessness in the face of your foreseeable future. You prayed that your tears would remain among the needle cases and junk. But, damn, one of them heard and swung the door open.
He didn't do anything then. He just remarked on how pretty you were when you cried. You wanted to bite off his omnipresent ears.
Months and years now dragged on like centuries. They had long ago noticed you.
They circled around you like a pack. Only drool did not drip from their beards. It was scary to work and return to the assigned room, through the hooting and darkness.
When one of them sniffed you lustfully, lifted the hem of your dress and grabbed your thigh like a meaty game - you pierced his prickly, bristly cheek with a needle. Blows rained down on you.
From now on, when you heard the approaching shuffling of boots, you hid anywhere.
Under the bed, among the hanging, matted sheets. Or in the kitchen, among the pots filled with stinking brew. Or among the things that their previous owners would no longer use... Sometimes it helped against the peals of men anger. Sometimes - no.
Then only running away was your salvation.
The dungeon was a labyrinth, and as you ran away, you remembered, studied each corridor. The flickering dim light. The turns leading to nowhere. The room, from top to bottom filled with sharp objects - suspiciously clean among everything that was happening in every corner.
They found you from everywhere. But they wouldn't look for you there. Knowing their intentions, your foster mother told you about this room. She worked there with several other women - those who God did not give their own children. Those who had a lot of time for this frightening place that smelled of caustic alcohol and poisonous solutions. Children conceived on the lower floor were born there. Wounds, burns, suppurations were treated there. And too severe beatings. Entering there without orders was strictly prohibited. You understood what would happen to her if you violated this prohibition. You avoided this room.
Until the ill-fated day that crossed out everything. That day they chose you. They told your foster parents about it. And killed them, having eloquently thanked them before that for their contribution to the development of the commune.
They, these inhuman people, took away your childhood. Growing up. Learning. Twilight, glare. Joy. They took away the last thing from you.
You had nothing to lose. Except for your damn virginity, which they decided to feast on without haste. Dumb boors. You won't give it to them.
The accumulated anger that filled you to the brim finally spilled out.
Reaching the glass room was a miracle. Opening a similar glass cabinet and taking out scissors from there - not at all like the ones you used to cut the tough fibrous fabric - was a gift. Stabbing one of them to death was too insignificant. Yes, it was he who sniffed you, letting out dirty jokes. But it was not he who squeezed your body until you had bruises, who pulled the knot of the bandage over your eyes. It was not he who killed everyone you loved.
Confused tracks in the crooked corridors, you did not even notice how a sharpened kitchen knife pierced your shoulder. You did not notice how you bit into someone else's slimy skin with a squeal. You did not notice how you spat out someone else's disgusting meat and rushed into battle with a vengeance.
Desire to get to the surface was stronger than you yourself then...
***
Inside, from the throat to the stomach, it’s as if small bones are scattered, scraps of food scraping the insides - it’s so painful... You simply fell asleep from the shallow but numerous wounds eating you alive - but it’s as if you’ve returned back to the dungeon. Into the darkness.
From the tormenting memories, you almost fall off the slowly walking horse. Your stomach is twisted with a frightened spasm, horror crawls up your spine. Noa palm catches your slipped fingers at the very moment when you remember that now you will not return to the dungeon.
You convince yourself that this will never happen again, and now the past can find a loophole to you only in restless dreams - and you don’t trust your own convictions.
The horses walk slower. So, the clan, scraps of conversations about which you heard, is already nearby. Many dragonflies with bright wings flutter near the lake spilling in the shadow. Before, you had only seen them in a colourless, time-worn children's book - you had looked at the pictures so often that the pages had turned to dust under your curious touch. Now these strange insects are so close, and you are enchanted by their shimmering dance.
The apes are talking about you again. Worried about you. They don't say a single bad word about you. You try to read between the lines - but there is no hidden meaning in their actions. And you don't know what to think.
"What will the elders say? If they... refuse?" listening to Anaya's words, you understand that this is indeed an important question.
"But who else can... help this echo? And if so... What will we do?" Soona answers him, looking at you with compassion.
"Even if they refuse her to live... among us... she needs to be cured. She needs food. Clothes. Weapon" Noa's voice is quiet, but determined. You do not understand his actions at all. "To avoid being caught by them. To survive here"
An echo glides across the crystal water of the lake.
You, now an echo too, have many questions in your head. And they torture.
There must be more people nearby. Lost and wandering in the pouring rain, you came across huts and asked for help. You knocked on boarded-up windows, peered into the huts inside. You screamed at the top of your voice, you begged. No one helped. But these people are not your family. You are a stranger on this earth, so why would these people should let you in?..
Are all people like this?.. And why then did you so tirelessly cherish the hope of someday meeting people better than those who keep prisoners locked up by force and public humiliation?
What would have happened to your body and soul if you hadn't managed to escape? If they had caught you, knocked out your teeth, dragged you downstairs and tied you up? Or if death at their hands, soaked in the blood of so many innocents, had overtaken you in the ravine?.. They wouldn't have been averse to having fun with you anyway. You know that about them, too. You don't need the answers to these questions anymore.
After all, neither your lost tracks, nor the drops of yesterday's rain, nor the blood that flowed down the stones mean anything anymore. The earth has absorbed everything.
These two of them who took both your families set out to chase you. The realization that Noa killed them gives birth to gratitude in your soul. Now the impossibility of revenge will not gnaw you from the inside.
But what has now been decided by the forces of nature,
who have left you alive?
What will happen where you are destined to end up? Surely, grins and reproaches? Primal hatred directed at you? Mistrust, contempt? What use could you possibly be to the apes? Do they treat people as human stories say? .. What if this salvation is just a deception, akin to human lies? Besides, now you, almost mute, dirty and frightened, resemble an animal much more than they do. So why shouldn't they eat you, their easy-to-catch prey? Or stuff you? ..
Or why shouldn't they have fun with you?.. Carnivorously. Carnally.
Just as the guards of the dungeon from which you escaped straight into the monkey's paws would have been amused.
And now, no matter how hard you clench your hands into fists, you will not be able to break free.
You are shaking as if the wind has become winter.
Noa's calloused fingers place your twitching hand almost at his heart, just a little higher and to the right. Broad shoulders rise from your coldered breath.
All this, his words and movements, seems like... a desire to protect you? But you are a human. People and apes have been feuding for so long that no one can answer how the feud began. But it is ineradicable. So why does he need you not to get hurt or trampled?
Be that as it may, you do not trust anyone or anything.
The fur on Noa's back - where you press your scratched cheek again - is wet. Probably because your temperature has risen. You don't know why he helped you. You are afraid of him no less than the men in the hopeless settlement. You look at him with gratitude, with a doubt tearing your throat... You want to believe him. Because there is no one else to trust in the world that you are getting to know anew. But you will not ask him questions that soak you with fear and foreboding. Just as you will not be able to tell him words of gratitude.
You are hot. And you are overcome by an unbearable thirst again.
The lake, reflecting the sun's rays, is left behind, replaced by a meadow, deciduous trees and fruit-bearing bushes. The berries that you tasted only in your too-short-lived childhood smell sweet. Has their taste changed as much as you have changed over the past years?
Bees scurry around, and their buzzing calms your restless thoughts.
Somewhere in the distance, where Noa directs a long glance, the wings of iron birds are visible.
They are planes, it seems. Old, rusty, forgotten. You have seen them only once. Blueprints on worn, yellowed paper. Then they were like fiction — alien, huge structures that could touch the clouds. And now these piles of metal, embraced by ivy, are like an extension of the forest. Noa looks at them as if they might one day fly again.
How long have they been chained to these ruins? Have they flown over other distant lands?
What would it be like to soar into the sky?..
You are shaking. Everything you see - trees, grass, and the sun hanging somewhere impossibly high - floats and spins. Your mouth feels like it is full of hot sand.
The glitter of dew. You think it looks like gemstones.
You're swaying from side to side, and you're clutching the fur on Noa's shoulder with cottony fingers. It's not helping at all.
Noa huffs as he realizes you might fall again. He squeezes your fingers tighter, now on the very spot where you can feel the unwavering thump. Warm blood still seeping from your hand is spreading across his chest.
If you could think of anything other than the dew scattered beneath your feet, you'd try to figure out — was it any different from a human's, beating in ape's heart?..
Consciousness is slowly returning to you. The unknown world, stretching for many miles, stops spinning.
Through the sweat running down your forehead and the tangled hair stuck to your face, you peer at each thread of the huge canvas above the horizon. With delight, trepidation and awe.
And with unspoken fear. With your last breath, you are still thinking - where to go if the apes rightly decide that you have no place among them? And how to escape if the apes decide to deal with you?.. But nothing betrays the apes's bloodthirstiness that you have heard so much and so often about.
You are just a stone's throw away from buildings you have never seen before.
Gusts of wind blow around you, embracing you. Morning flows into day, the forest flows into a built-up village humming with routine.
The beaten path along which the apes take you leads to surprisingly well-equipped dwellings, towering above the earth heated by midday. And these dwellings are not at all like the walls, floors and bars from which you emerged. There are no cages and tools designed to force submission, and there is no torture chamber.
Families live here. And these families are not molded from circumstances, as if from clay. These families — are blood families. Kinship among those who talk and those who are silent, imperceptible to the eye. It feels different.
Here the industry is seething, here and there the noise is heard. Here is unity and freedom.
Houses on the surface, life on the surface, among the clean air and the many-faced sky seems incredible...
A smile touches the corners of your lips. Your palm reaches out to outline the place in front of your eyes - but then falls back, squeezing the wool on Noa's elbow in the approaching fever.
"Echo needs help getting down... to the ground" Noa assures, freeing his long arm from your weak grip and dismounting.
His hands reach for your waist to help, and you squeal in protest and dodge.
"Is something... wrong?" Soona, who is walking ahead, turns around worriedly.
"I can do it myself" you say hesitantly in response, stroking the horse's mane. "I don't need his help"
When your body was overwhelmed by the pain that clouded your consciousness, Noa had already done so, helping you to mount. And you, unconscious, held on to him for many hours on the road. Feeling him so close was not scary. It was necessary. Like grasping at a straw. But after a terrible dream, you don't want him to touch you... No, not now.
Stepping onto the ground from the back of a snorting horse seems easy to you. But without the slightest idea of how to do it, you fail.
Anaya hides in one of the dwellings when Noa gives him a sign that seems vaguely familiar to you. Soona remains nearby, ready to help you - but she is unlikely to be strong enough to cope with this.
The sign language of the apes differs from the one you are used to only slightly, and with the help of this language you repeat that you will manage without help.
Without support, you risk flying like a tiny leaf from a branch. You grab the reins and the horse's mane in vain attempts to get out of the saddle. The horse kicks. The cape you're sitting on slips - and you, trying so hard, almost fall backwards.
Stuck in the stirrup, you don't even have time to squeak - Noa catches you, when you almost hitting the ground with your shoulder blades. He holds you almost the same way as when you were exhausted in his palms, in the middle of the plain.
"I told you. You need help" A disgruntled growl escapes from his chest.
Only now, as Noa releases you, your bare, punctured feet finally meeting the ground, you can understand what in the stories about the apes were right.
Is it how different they are in their wild nature. And their size.
Even Soona is taller than you by several inches. Not to mention Noa, towering over you like a mountain range. The wind picks up the many voices and the rattling of abandoned work. The apes emerge from their homes and stop working. Their humming and whispering makes you uncomfortable. The wounds immediately remind you of themselves with a dull ache. You look through the crowd at the neatly laid roofs, bathed in rays of sunlight.
Noa lets out a wheeze and hides you behind his broad shoulders. He asks you to walk beside him and be quiet. You follow him without complaint, and because of his furry back you can hardly see anything - except for the feathers in the braided bracelet on his forearm, shimmering in shades of blue.
Step by step, you make out the expressions on the apes's faces. Some of them are confused, some do not hide their irritation. You see a lot, but you do not see malice. Only this calms you down when you stop at a spacious structure and dozens of monkeys look at you with an unspoken question and a respectful bow, directed straight at Noa.
Now you understand that he must be the leader of this clan.
And his action is not presumptuously, but magnanimous.
An approaching hostile sounds. Noa assumes an obviously protective pose, and you press yourself into the fur on his shoulder again. This time consciously. After all, it seems that you were wrong not to see the malice.
"What is this? Another echo?.." the voice of a stocky male chimpanzee is heard, drawing level with Noa and casting an appraising glance at you. There is something unkind in it. "Did the animals batter her? Or did someone... play with the curiosity?"
"Let her go back... to the pasture" the female picks up his intonation, letting out a nasty laugh. She looks like a hanger-on, not a companion.
"True" another male grins, clearly younger and trying to assert himself in this way. "There... is her place!"
They hardly guess, reveling in their slander, but for you, everything they spew — pointless. You were never part of the whole. You shattered into pieces, long ago. You became a fragment with broken edges.
That's why there is no place for you anywhere.
A shirt, sticky with rain, blood and weeds, torn at the seams - your only refuge.
"...She swallowed her tongue?" you hear, insulting and goading, somewhere in the distance.
Soona, standing next to you, gasps at the insolence of her fellows. They laugh at your helplessness, continuing to curse. You regret that you cannot lash them with curses now.
Listening to their rumble, Noa straightens his back. You are almost invisible behind him.
"This echo is wounded. By other echoes. They wanted to... play. They lose" After Noa's short and clear words, bewilderment is visible in the apes's eyes. Baring his fangs, he finishes. "And she will not return... to the pasture. She will graze here"
The phrase is sharp. Noa stands his ground, his nostrils flaring menacingly. This, of course, silences the ill-wishers. But you feel the sediment prickling.
What if they'll treat you like a thing here too?..
You can hardly breathe. The lead of a frightening assumption presses on your collarbones. You take a step back from Noa, upset and ready to break from the despair that has washed over you. It takes even more effort not to recoil from Noa when he turns and leans towards you. He had to say this to stop the vile discussion.
His green eyes apologize to you for what he said.
Something in his piercing gaze tells you to trust. It speaks louder than his answer to the clan, who doesn't stops talking and doesn't notice.
Five baby-chimps run up to you, distracted from their game of tag.
The first thing you do — is sit down so that you are the same height as the children who are asking you questions. They reach out to you, and the pain that has been increasing with each passing second becomes unimportant. Soona follows your lead, her actions clearly supportive. The growing rebellious tension disappears, as does the hubbub that has surrounded you from all sides.
Seeing that you are kind to the clan's most valuable treasure, the apes stop arguing and return to their work. Only the adults who are looking after the little ones do not leave.
Even now, laughing, Noa is still ready to rush into battle.
The children are impressed, but they don't understand what is happening - and you are undoubtedly happy of their attack. It seems like a serene meadow in the chaos that is playing with your fate.
"Are you hurt?" a very small boy babbles, tilting his head to the side. You nod.
"What happened to you?" a girl who looks like this little one like two peas in a pod timidly puts her hand on your wounded shoulder.
"This echo fought... With opponents and the forest" Soona tells the curious cubs.
"Did you get a scar in battle?" an older boy looks at you with surprise.
"This battle could have been my last..." you begin your story like an instructive fairytale. "But the journey was worth it"
"So who hurt you?" seeing the sparkle of tears in your eyes, the liveliest boy asks, putting his hands on his hips importantly. "Do you want me to protect you?"
"You already have a protector, right?" a smart, dark-eyed girl looks at you and Noa with mischief.
Not expecting this, Noa freezes. He looks at you, captured by the curious crowd. He still shields you with his back and his presence. He smiles indulgently - which you can't help but notice. He is confused. But you are not taken surprise by spontaneity, but are warmed.
"Yes, and he is very brave" you agree with the girl, expressing gratitude to Noa at least in this way.
"So who did the Master of Birds save you from?" everyone is curious in one ringing voice.
When Noa sits down next to you, his weight almost touching yours for the umpteenth time in the day that has just begun, you don't move away.
"From evil, cunning... predators" playing along with the fictional plot, Noa ruffles the children's heads.
Staying with you and naive chatter, Noa still helps you tell the fascinating truth. Having plopped down nearby and forcing Soona to snort good-naturedly, Anaya returns to the company.
While you are enthusiastically answering the children's questions, you do not immediately notice female chimpanzee in venerable years approaching you. Only when Noa raises her head, still sitting on the ground, do you see that everyone is moving aside. Her robe, like the feathers indicating Noa's dominant status, is a deep blue.
"Time goes by... And you, my son, remain the same" hearing both reproach and pride in her words, you cannot help but look down.
Who else but parents could say that?..
Noa rises with a gesture that you will not confuse with anything - this is how you asked your blood mother for advice.
The children say polite greetings, holding on to you like tenacious little crabs. You don't know what to say - and cannot make a single sound.
"Nobility is sometimes worse than vices" sadness sounds in the voice of another, an elderly female chimpanzee with a wooden cane. "With her, to our homes comes... troubles. Again."
"...Is she hiding something?.." the young female asks impatiently, taking her two cubs away from you. The male calms her down in a way that husbands never calmed wives in a settlement unfamiliar to you.
The unknown frightens them as much as it frightens you. It hovers in the dying wind and the sparks from the fire crackling in the distance.
Squinting from the sun and your exhausted appearance, Noa's mother sighs.
"This soul is innocent" she looks at, it seems, every scar and every aspiration. "Come here, child... Your path has been... thorny. You need to rest"
"Thanks..." you whisper from the bottom of your heart, when her palm touches your burning forehead.
Taking Noa's outstretched hand, you rise. Your hideously cut thigh, under the equally cut leg of your trousers, pierces with pain. You whining through cracked lips. The children don't want to let you go, but you promise that very soon you will tell them an even more fascinating story.
The smell of smoking fish tickles your nose. Everything tilts and fades...
***
You dream of water dripping from holes in the basement pipes - rusty, almost red. Streams flow down the cobblestones from grinning skulls.
Their eye sockets are empty. Worms have settled in their decaying bodies, laying larvae. Their hands reach out to you. They strangle you, they tear your dress. Their toothless mouths shower you with stench and obscenities...
***
Waking up in the hut, you scream. Indistinguishable from the animal cries that echo in the twilight. Your eyes are filled with unshed tears. Dreams have been cruel to you for as long as you can remember. The dreams of future nights, you are sure, will be merciless.
And there is no way to escape this.
The bed you slept in resembles a perch. Someone is scurrying around at the head of the bed.
The woven nest creaks as you jump up, drawing your knees up to your cheeks. You are not wearing a shirt - only a T-shirt, trousers, and a viscous ointment applied to your exhausted body. And animal skins, serving as a blanket.
Turning around at the noise, you see Noa with two bowls in his palms. He places them closer to you, and you pull the blanket up to your neck. The contents of the bowls smell pleasant. In one of them the same ointment that burns and heals your injuries. In the other a lake fish, large and ruddy. Your stomach rumbles. You forgot about hunger - and now hunger is devouring you.
When Noa's large palm reaches for the blanket, you crawl away to the edge of the nest in panic.
"When they were treating your wounds, I saw you without... this" Noa admits, taking out your shirt among other things. "It will hurt, inside... Take that"
Pointing to the thin sky-blue robe, Noa explains with a gesture that it will be safer this way. Then he insistently brings the bowl with the fish to your closed lips.
You coudn't refuse food. You learned this rule over the years of life on a leash - a hearty meal was a reward for following commands and orders, and starvation was a punishment for disobedience.
You was only punished. So you use what you learned from your foster mother.
The fish in the bowl dissolves into a scent in a matter of moments. And only now do you respond with gestures that it would be safer if Noa left your assigned dwelling the same way he came. You don't believe in the security provided. You admit that you're scared. And you ask if Noa has taken you in as a curiosity pet?..
If you said it out loud, you would cover your mouth with both hands in shame.
Noa slouches and turns to go outside. His steps are sharp. The wheezing in his heaving chest is low and abrupt. You look at his back, expecting anger and insults. He stops, looking at you and the untouched robe.
"To heal, an echo needs sleep... A lot" is all Noa says before leaving the hut.
You scold yourself. You admire the fabric of the robe flowing between your fingertips in the dim light.
The sparkling hanging lights lull you to sleep. All you want to do — lay down, as like fetuses laying in wombs, and forget about all the nightmares you've experienced in reality or in broken dreams. But you, without closing your eyes, stare at the glow.
In a small change to the masterlist, can I explain why I don't have an exact time for when the next chapter of "Creation" will be published? Okay)
Partly, it's because I'm terribly confused about time zones... But also because I genuinely never know what time I'll be done. Anyway, I'll try to get it done as quickly as possible.
Just some fun about me and my hyperfixation. To take a break from writing the next chapter of "Creation", I... watch Nomae edits and videos of baby chimps. Yeah, this universe holds me captive😅
🍃 I will appear rarely, apart from the publication of chapters of “Creation” - but these will definitely be important pieces of my life
🍃 Or Noa/reader one-shots, who knows?
🍃 Or memes about the franchise, lol
🍃 I love all ape men - but, unfortunately, I don’t accept requests. I can’t write in a hurry, and I’m sorely, chronically short of time. Maybe in the future - if I have both ideas and the strength to implement them
🍃 In the meantime, I'll be happy to answer any questions. Luv y'all ^^
Warnings: violence, mentions of blood and injuries, mentions of death, swear words
🎧 Jurii Kirnev — Prelude
Among the perennial trees with their branches reaching up to the sky, you don’t see or hear anything. There is only darkness and silence around. Clouds floating across a foggy sky. Twinkling round moon. Stars hiding behind leaves. Animal screams. The flapping of bird wings. An echo floating above the forest.
And bubbling fear squeezing your ribs.
If only they didn't find you.
It’s impossible to catch your breath or shake off anxiety. No matter how you try to calm the convulsive sighs, they endlessly escape from your chest, precariously covered by a torn shirt.
Dirty in someone else's and your own blood, you hide among the bushes, tearing the remnants of your clothes with every careless movement. You're stuck, but you're not trying to get out. After all, here you, crouched to the ground and holding your ragged breath, are not so easy to notice. Your trousers and tank top, torn by the tenacious claws of the branches, barely cover your skin stained with bruises and abrasions. Here and there, wet leaves and clods of dirt stuck to your trembling knees.
There's a knife hole in your right shoulder. There are flashes of torches before your eyes, and you don’t know where to go as the day approaches — but everything seems unimportant. After all, as soon as the moon rolls down over the hills, as soon as the first morning cloud falls along the coal sky, and there is just a little time left until dawn, you will have hope...
You're thirsty. So much so that from the temptation to stick your head out and taste the muddy water from a small puddle, you pull yourself back only when you feel someone else’s presence.
There is a noise behind your back.
The sound of cutting air reaching your ears. You don't know and don't want to know what it could be. You are just sinking into the still damp earth, after the rain that passed in the evening, under which you were thoroughly wet.
Your screams remained far beyond the forest, but it seems to you that you did not run away. And you weren't saved.
Without making a sound, you crawl deep into the thorny bushes. You cut your cheeks and neck just to remain unnoticed. With your shirt sleeve you cling to a crooked branch sticking out of the ground. Trying to escape, you tear both your shirt and the skin on your hands into rags. If they hear even one sob, they will not spare you. They were furious when you compared them to animals — but they were hardly human.
People are hardly capable of what they are thinking of doing to you. People are hardly capable of what they do to everyone who fails to escape. The wound in the shoulder stings. All you need now is to survive this night here, among the leaves whipping your face. And under no circumstances cry from pain...
You don't breathe, merging with the forest. But the noise overtakes you in your flimsy shelter.
You hope that they will not see you and will pass by — after all, they do not know this place and may get lost in the dark. You desperately praying for this. But you almost burst into tears when you immediately remember all the stories that you once heard or overheard.
What if you were found by those who know this place like the back of their hand? Those who can wander here by touch, relying on animal instincts?.. The sound that comes rips screams from your mouth.
The crack of branches breaking above your head.
It was impossible to hide here... This is truly, as they said day after day, the territory of the apes clan. Surely they prowl, around every night, killing everyone who ever wanders here.
Screaming when the sharp blade almost cuts off a strand of hair stuck to your face, you crawl on all fours, feeling your way. You grab onto the grass and tree trunks to escape pursuit, but from another blow from the blade, you fall into a ravine strewn with cobblestones.
Lying on your back, punctured by stones, you see your tormentors.
Unable to move, you bleed and cry. It would be better if it were the apes from all these stories.
Cause, they'd would kill you quickly.
"Good job. She doesn’t need legs anyway, but she won’t be fussy anymore"
"But it would be better to knock out this little bitch teeth, just to be sure"
Voices that make you choke with blood filling your mouth. Vile, deafening laughter.
They found you.
You're scared. Despair covers your barely beating heart, and the salt of flowing tears stings the scratches on your cheeks.
Blood is gushing from a fresh wound on your thigh, and you try to touch the cut flesh — but your hands are limp, like a rag doll.
When they descend into the ravine, grab you and pull you up by your elbows and ankles, almost tearing you to shreds — you squint and scream from the unbearable pain piercing your entire body. You are trying to free yourself, to slip out of the hands that cripple you. Your wrists crack and break just like cut branches. There is no escape from this trap, from these snares. You want to die here.
You want to avoid giving them disgusting joy.
Because you know what they want to do to you.
You saw and heard what they were doing in the now foreign settlement with all the girls. You grew up and realized that they had all come to terms with it. They all accepted their fate without even trying to change anything.
People, generation after generation, living, begetting other people and dying without any meaning.
Locked iron doors. Men's blows. Women's screams. The cries of newborns, children deprived of love and care. A dungeon with blackened walls and no chance of seeing at least one more sunrise... That's all that will happen if their hands grab you now.
But it cost you too much to escape for your story to end like this.
Wasting your last strength, you kick one in the groin with your health leg. He yells, cursing you and grabbing the bruised body scarp with both hands.
Dust gets under your nails and falls on your face when you almost get out of the ravine and see the sky again.
But the other one immediately throws you back onto the cobblestones, hangs on top and strangles you. With all your anger, you hit him with a sharp stone clutched in your hand, turning his grinning face into mush. You spit in his face and hiss, but his dirty, slippery hands only tighten on your neck. You are suffocate, beads of cold sweat glistening on your forehead. Scatterings of stars in the waking sky blur in your eyes.
And you think that all this, all the years of miserable life filled with beatings, insults and abuse, is finally over.
Trying to exhale every nightmare moment, you come to terms with your death. With probably your only freedom.
You imagine where you will go when you fall asleep forever...
Suddenly, the grip on your throat weakens in an instant. The sounds of brutal fighting and incoherent swearing. Wheeze, full of pain. Your lungs take in air again and you cough. Two dull thuds. Silence reigned. It’s so quiet that you can hear the blood spreading. Not yours. Raising your head and looking around, all you see is the men who tormented you lying among the dirt, earth and stones. Motionless, breathless. A trickle of blood and a quiet laugh flows from your dry lips... You notice a shadow in the grass surrounding the ravine.
Holding your throat with a weak hand, you peer into the rustle of steps and movements.
This is not a human.
But you don't care anymore.
The shadow mounts the horse. You climb up. You shiver from the cold night air, piercing to the bones and eating into your body, riddled with cuts. You stand on your feet, unsteadily. You look at the shadow, taking a step back. Small pebbles search your bare feet. You listen to the breathing of the shadow, hoarse and echoing. You feel a shadow looking at you. You back away.
Limping hopelessly, you try to run away.
Pulling on the reins, the shadow gallops on horseback behind you —and in the pitch darkness you see the green of the ape’s eyes.
With tormented palms, clutching the moss on the trees and their sharp paws, you run, not making out the road. You stumble, spitting saliva and blood, but don’t stop.
You can't hide from the ape. More are trotting in the distance. The clatter of hooves sounds ever closer as you scurry helplessly along the path.
When the sun rises, illuminating the visible plain with its rays, the earth disappears from under your feet and you fall. On your back, again. Curly shoots entangle your palms, making their way to your forearms - and it suddenly seems to you that your skin is not dirty and cut, but smooth and untouched.
But the pain returns, intensifies.
Your body seems like a sieve smeared in blood. Your heart is pounding as if it’s about to fall out at your feet. You don’t have the strength to run away, you don’t have the strength to breathe... The ape — must be a chimpanzee, if you correctly understood at least some of the stories about these animals, — dismounts, standing up to his full height, approaches you with wide steps and bends over your scratched face, knitting his eyebrows.
Right now you can't see the thoughts in the ape's pupils.
All you can see right now — is a male. And you're scared again.
Where the wound gapes on your thigh, only threads remain of the fabric of your trousers, exposing your vulnerable skin.
All you can do now is desperately cover yourself with what's left of your shirt. So that he doesn’t see how the blood flows from your neck to your collarbones, and from there to the valley between your breasts. But he sees. And his gaze is almost no different from other men predatory gazes.
You look up at him and press yourself into the tree trunk. You look like a small cornered animal.
“I won’t hurt you...” he says, sitting down on the ground and extending his hand to help you up. "Who are they? Why are you... in blood?"
Huddled in patches of wet grass, away from the outstretched hand, you tremble.
Even your eyelashes, which have absorbed the moisture of the coming morning, tremble.
“Noa” he gestures to himself, looking at you expectantly. He sighs as you curl into a ball, tucking your knees to your chest. "Do you have a name? Home? Family?.."
He saved you from a long and inevitable life similar to death - and it seems that he does not intend to kill you... But why?
How could your deceased parents, who protected you from all evil that exists, be mistaken in human actions? Could a woman who protected you at the cost of her life lie about ape's earth? Could the legend passed down from mouth to mouth be just a fiction to keep women within the walls of the dungeon? Why he help you now?..
And is this help? He killed them. This means that he can easily kill you too if he feels like it.
His hands are just as stained with blood as yours. One of them pierced his palm with a knife, which remained in the ravine. His fingers almost touch your languishing in pain shoulder. Why would he, ape, help you, human? Why is he still holding his long, furry hand outstretched?.. Closing your eyes and biting your tongue so as not to answer his questions, you shake your head.
You will not say a word to any one of the men, or any one of the males.
After your silence, that ringing louder than chirping insects, calloused monkey hands lift you from the damp ground. You fight back, squeal, scratch in frightened agony... He growls threateningly, but holds you carefully. His fur is soaked with blood from your wounds. You whine in despair.
"You have a strong spirit" his chin ends up on the back of your head as the ring of his arms wraps tightly around your shoulders. You try to free yourself again, but he is strong and stubborn. "But the body... is weak. Need help"
You feel the words he said on your tangled hair.
You can hear two more apes riding up on horses, talking about something with the male who holding you. You can see, this is also a chimpanzee. It looks like they were here for no reason. But at night?.. You try to listen to what they are saying, but you feel that you are about to lose consciousness, that you are about to fall into the abyss.
Only fragments of phrases reach your ears.
"The echo only brings danger... Destruction"
"Should I have left her? To be eaten by scavengers?"
“But why is the echo here?.. How did she escape from them?”
"And why did they want...?" the alarmed question hangs mid-sentence, amid the dawn and dew.
One of the apes — is female. And you look at her while a barely audible rustle sounds on your lips.
"Knock my teeth out?" you asking, continuing her question in a whisper. "Because I bit off the finger of one of them, and the ear of the second. I can also bite something off for them inadvertently” you assure her, shaking from fear, cold and the grip on your shoulders.
Your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth after the words are spoken. The sound of your voice makes the male who won’t let you go hooting. You feel the muscles in his neck move.
Water, at least one sip of water — is all you think about...
"Why does the echo speak to Soona and silent to Noa?" asks the third ape without any malice, only with curiosity.
The pain beats in your temples without stopping. If they are talking about you, then why do they call you "echo"?..
“Stupid Anaya,” the female shows an unclear gesture, slowly approaching you on all fours. Almost the same as you did when you were hiding. "Don't you see? She's scared"
"I saw... their faces. Without pity. They would have killed her... What else could I do?" you feel how the hands of the male holding you cover your body, stronger than before. "I don't know who she is. I don't know where she's from. But how to help her if she... Is silent?"
The annoyance in Noa tone is almost as palpable as the welt that will soon appear on his palm. But you keep your mouth shut.
"So what's your name, echo?" Looking into your eyes, swollen from tears, Soona asks.
“...Y/N” You answer her. Although you still apprehensive.
They're, surrounding you worriedly, say a lot more. They apparently intend to take you to their clan - while you rest your humming head on the ape's fur and watch the clouds change colour from purple to yellow and scarlet.
The fear and ignorance of having nowhere to go disappears. All the colors of dawn fade before your eyes, turning into ripples.
The morning light doesn't help with the darkness and fog in your eyes. At this moment, you are grateful that the ape's hands are holding you, and you will not have to fall again. You smile at the sun's rays, unable to object and almost no longer feeling your numb leg.
Taking your hands in his, Noa helps you to your feet. He grabs you by the waist, placing you on the horse. His movements are gentle — you hardly feel any pain, even when he holds your still bleeding shoulder. You can barely keep your balance, so as soon Noa sits in front, you unconsciously wrap your arms around him. Soona and Anaya are still constantly discussing something. With arguments and gestures whose meaning you don't know.
Why do you remember ape's names?..
Behind the lush crowns of trees you can see a flowering valley, which seems like paradise to you.
The last thing you hear before you close your eyes from fatigue — is Noa's voice. In the thick fur on his back you sleepily bury your nose, when he says that the road will be long, and tells you to hold on tight.
