Words, and anger.
She listens as she approaches: she slows to try and comprehend; but the girl is little more able to do that than she is able to recognize the danger she wanders into. Naivety is a blessing; but also a curse.
Soft baby-hair and fuzz all coated in oil have become frosted, and she shivers in the wind as she tracks and follows after Heartfire. With wide eyes her head turns and she goes to the louder voices: steps closer and sees them… all of them.
For a moment the fever pulses and she hears the familiar voice of the King of the Valley, and he coos- chatters, and whispers things she recalls. Briella smiles, walking, hoofprints in the snow and her small body closer as she bounces the last few paces. “Aunt.” she states, though if any heard it- who knows.
Pause, and she hears yelling: hears rage and a word she knows- die.
Something inside of her stirs, something ancient and primal, something of fear and of strained contempt: confusion. Her small mind cannot fully comprehend the logic; but her body responds and she drives forward suddenly on spindly limbs and a with maddened speed.
“NO.” she barks loudly, sliding nearest Heartfire and coming to stop as the tensions start to rise. The Weanlings nose is bloody and yet, she stomps a leg, as if her small figure would be obeyed… as if she could do something.
Perhaps she imagines she can.
“No more hurting.” direct as she can be her tiny eyes narrow, and she has admittedly not heard all of it; but she responds to what she has heard and suddenly: all of her strength begins to sour.
It is not true cowardice; but rather a suddenly inflicted wound that forces her mind to open and explore itself: to be pushed into a place that she hadn’t ever wanted to go back to.
Darkness, the void.
She cannot see the end of the blackness, of the murk and gloomy- she does not feel time nor wind, and there is neither heat nor cold: merely an existence of both and neither. Shapes too perfect to be real form in the loamy swamp, and non-euclidean geometry rises in the grime. She feels spongy stone beneath her feet and hears whispers: she dreams.
Oh god how she dreams.
In the sliver of light she sees corpses, rotting carcass and bloody water: she sees bile and wound, smells the rank and festering sickness. Dovev, Heartfire, the unborn child, Expelliarmus, Vampyric… names and faces she has left behind: and they are dead, and gone.
Fear is primal and she feels it, the grief and the rage: the abandonment.
Briella strains and beside Heartfire she stares at Bruise- at the others, her frail mind forcing itself to and from- in between. “Who will have mercy on your soul.” she mouths, growling. “Monsters.”
For a moment, she sees them again: the echoes of her past, of the Chamber and of the Valley.
just gonna tag... @[Dovev] thisguy...