(no healing hand for your disease)
Characters: Luna Chatelain Word Count: 228
She is no stranger to blood. Staining her clothes, staining her skin, it’s all familiar; she’s walked away from more than a few scrapes that had left her bloodied and bruised. Still, she’s never known it like this—she understands blood spilled, a fight won or lost. For fun or simple self-defense.
This is something else entirely. This is death, and it’s entirely bloodless for all its violence, and she doesn’t know what to do with that.
There’s no mark on her clothes, on her skin, beyond the scratches and scrapes of her own recklessness. But when she catches her reflection in something that glitters, she can see it, soaking her through.
She is untouched, and yet she is drenched in that invisible blood, burdened so heavily by the weight of a death she blames herself for.
When she had stumbled home, bloodied and bruised and sometimes defeated, her brother was there—her mother too, sometimes, but the disappointment in her expression was almost as painful—to help her clean up. To help her wash away the blood, and bandage her injuries, and lecture her with a mixture of exasperation and genuine concern. She scrubs at her skin until it starts to turn red, but the stains that no one else can see are clear as day. She slips on a pair of gloves—pure, glittering white—and it’s like they’re tainted, too.