wldflwers / HUNTRESS
SMALL CREATURE, NOT OF THE FOREST BUT OF THE DARK –– delicate, made of bones like glass and glass like bones. she reminds her of the charms the village folk would hang above their doors, swaying in a winter’s breeze / singing an ominous tune of the storm to come. anna observers her curiously, frost-ravaged lips drawn tight and black glittering peculiarly with the reflections of death’s moon / night’s stars.
a greeting, as if between friends. ( but carnivorous animals so rarely seek the comfort of one another. ) the top of the food chain is a lonely precipice upon which to sit, and yet it is important to remember that chains are infinite –– they can always be made longer. there can be no single hunter that sits upon its peak, for another always lurks beyond the trees, waiting to devour and to become. ( EAT OR BE EATEN, and this one appears ready for the slaughter. )
❛ what you want? ❜ she asks tersely, long arms taking root across her chest. anna lowers her head –– only just –– and lets it cant gently to the side. little one … still, her fingers know the way to the hatchet at her side well –– a weather-beaten path ready to be traversed at the first indication of danger. ❛ you are what? ❜
the woman’s words are harsh, in a language rin would not have understood, she’s sure, were it not for the misty fog that weaves around them, making so many strange things possible in this stranger place. rin’s blue corpsegirl fingers curl and uncurl, weakly, with the sound of dry and cracking tree branches. ( if she is not herself without the family sword in hand, then who is she? scholar, daughter, useless child. another body for the blade. )
“i ...would like company,” she rasps, and it sounds as hesitant and vulnerable as a plea, but dear g-d, rin is so tired of being alone with only her rage for to keep her warm.
you are what? perhaps that is the only question that matters. “a monster,” from the throat of a dead girl, cut to ribbons by the same sword that she can summon to her hand. the glass shards in old wounds ache : will they ever stop aching? “like you.”
