Running Against the Wind | Open
The pounding of her feet seemed to match the drumbeat pounding in her ears as she ran; she wasn't sure what she was running away from, especially since she was never the running away kind. This was nothing like her. This was nothing like the woman who lit fires with her mind and let the chaos and madness of the world envelope her. In her neon blue and pink sneakers and hair swept into a ponytail, she looked less like the woman she'd always been and more like a scared little girl running away from monsters. But the monsters were in her head, and she couldn't escape them.
Something was wrong; she could shake this, but something was wrong. She couldn't get the words out of her mind; he'd told her that her anger would destroy her, as if he had any idea what it was like to be burdened with nightmares washed in blood. What right did he have to tell her what to do with her emotions? This was why she hated empaths even more than the mind readers. They knew too much; it was too hard to keep them at a reasonable distance.
She reached into the hip pocket of her yoga pants and changed the music playing in her ear from Florence + the Machine to Stevie Nicks, who sang 'Rhiannon' loud enough to drown out the rest of the world. Her feet never stopped moving, and she paid no attention to where they carried her. It didn't matter so long as it wasn't in the house where her parents had died or the shop her mother loved so much. So she kept running, heart pounding and mind racing; it didn't matter that it was late or that it wasn't safe for a woman to run alone at night, especially a witch. She kept running until something got in her way.