She had heard too late. Known too late.
And arrived later still, when the ground was whole again and the cold wind of the night was moving in. No marker, but no one had had the time to make one, and she had nothing to leave. Nothing but tears, which disappeared into the freshly churned earth the moment they touched the starving dryness, assuming they made it past the end of her chin before being taken by the stinging wind.
The sun had set pink, but was now a garish shade of crimson as it choked on the horizon. Turn purple she thought, like she could will the sky to fit her silent memorial. Turn blue.
Anything but red, god(s) damn it.
When she approached the doors to the shrine, the dust clinging to her face was streaked, but dry. She grabbed the door.. and hesitated. Froze as though the strange chill that had shot up her arm was an electric current in earnest, a charge that arrested muscles and set every hair on its end. That none of what she had been told, well after the fact, had mentioned how- who- She had suspected something. She knew, now, by the charge in her fingertips and the iron in the air, that it was so much worse than the worst that she had imagined.
She opened the door. Her chest ached, burned, as she breathed through her teeth, fighting for air that didn’t taste of despair. Of death. There was someone else there, breathing the darkness, though it didn’t seem quite capable of touching her. Tech saw only warm grey eyes, fiercely apologetic, and a tangle of black hair that hung well down her back, shot through -though she seemed young for it- with the odd flash of pure, bright silver. The young woman caught Tech’s arms and began to try to ferry her back the way she had come... but stopped. And stepped back. Away from the door and the stranger, back into the shrine.
There was a whisper swirling around in the wind, growing agitated as the night swept in through the open door.
The girl with the dark hair closed her eyes, her head tilting, like she was listening. She opened her eyes, brows furrowed, confused.
Tech flinched. The other had voiced the whisper, repeated it, and therefore it was more than imagination. Tech shook her head. No. She took a fragile step forward.. and another. She came, freely, before this devout and whomever it was that she served, and gravity took her to her knees. She shook her head again. Not today. And folded still further, so that her forehead was pressed to the ground not an inch from the dried pool of- -
She swallowed, and it was audible.
“I want to help. Please.”
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
