@littlemonstcrs:
“Scream to your heart’s content, Princess. No one can hear us out here.”
Part of her was still convinced this was part of the act. That she was playing the victim and could turn things around when it mattered the most. It was true that she was dirty and hungry, her defenses depleted bit by bit over the days (God, it felt like weeks) since she’d entered the forest. Her bullets had been wasted on 3AM encounters with jagged-toothed shadows, stores of food intended for a fraction of her current need slowly whittled down to nothing. Yet, even like this, she was a hunter.
(―Right?)
Claire had to blink through the stinging heat of her tears to see the woman THING clearly, breath catching in the jagged spasms that wracked her chest like unwilling jolts of hiccups in the wake of the collapse of composure that had finally beckoned the beast out into the open. Eerily, she was less than sure just how long she’d been curled up there in the dirt and cold dampness of fallen pine needles and moss, and it took trying to stand to remind a scattered consciousness deprived of nourishment and sleep what had brought her into such a state in the first place. A sprained muscle panged in protest as she scrambled to sore and blistered feet, dirty fingers finding purchase on the craggy bark of a nearby tree for support. Blue eyes ringed by the ugly redness of freshly shed tears stared out from a face darkened with grime and untended scratches from the jagged boughs of dead trees, the blonde’s chapped lips offering only breathless gasps to preface the words that fell from her labored lungs in a rush.
“ ―Y-You. Those kids who went missing here before, it― it was all you.”
