08-03-2020, 11:48 AM
It's the rustling that gives him away. The dry rasp of dead leaves brushing against each other without wind to move them. My subconscious realizes I'm no longer alone before I register it, freezes my hooves to the rotting mulch without warning.
My skin twitches with the weight of unseen eyes. Always I am followed, but now the Watcher seems closer than they've ever been. In a gust of hot breath, I release the air I've been holding, my chest pinched with ramping anxiety. One way, then the other, my skull swings from side to side to catch a glimpse of the one following me. He's here. I know he's here, I can feel it, I can sense it, he won't escape me this time.
Eyes rolling in their sockets, the leaves shuffle at my feet, whispering their death words beneath me. The glassy pools of my eyes skitter over the shadows, frantic. They skip and slide and then. Slowly, slowly, until they land on a shadow unlike the rest. Darker, or paler, the vaguest gleam of moonlight reflecting from its depths.
"Luck has nothing to do with me," I rasp, mouth dry as ancient bones. Trance-like and shambling, I take steps until the figure is solidified, a horse of night against the blacker earth. Cold fear trickles down the base of my skull, along my limbs, until it burns hot at my core.
I've been waiting to find him. The shadow haunting my every step, taunting me and biting away at my sanity. It doesn't matter that this voice is not one I've heard before. That the one's that usually hound me have gone ominously still. There's only my heart pounding, the steady drip of blood down my chest, and him. Always him.
My patchwork wings spread wide, filling the space and revealing the cobwebs of lightning scars that map out my sides, my throat. Decades of abuse and bad decisions made into a flickering, cracked painting on my skin.
It's my own light that illuminates us now.
I can see myself reflected in his eyes, a shabby, electric skeleton. A vicious grin splits my lips at his suggestion. "I thought you'd never ask," my voice is the crack of distant thunder, and then the lightning strikes. My yellowed teeth reach for the gaunt planes of his face, snatching for any scrap of flesh that I can find.
He will destroy me, I'm sure of it. But I will get my pound of flesh before we're through.
The Voices crow in delight.
@[Balto]
My skin twitches with the weight of unseen eyes. Always I am followed, but now the Watcher seems closer than they've ever been. In a gust of hot breath, I release the air I've been holding, my chest pinched with ramping anxiety. One way, then the other, my skull swings from side to side to catch a glimpse of the one following me. He's here. I know he's here, I can feel it, I can sense it, he won't escape me this time.
Eyes rolling in their sockets, the leaves shuffle at my feet, whispering their death words beneath me. The glassy pools of my eyes skitter over the shadows, frantic. They skip and slide and then. Slowly, slowly, until they land on a shadow unlike the rest. Darker, or paler, the vaguest gleam of moonlight reflecting from its depths.
"Luck has nothing to do with me," I rasp, mouth dry as ancient bones. Trance-like and shambling, I take steps until the figure is solidified, a horse of night against the blacker earth. Cold fear trickles down the base of my skull, along my limbs, until it burns hot at my core.
I've been waiting to find him. The shadow haunting my every step, taunting me and biting away at my sanity. It doesn't matter that this voice is not one I've heard before. That the one's that usually hound me have gone ominously still. There's only my heart pounding, the steady drip of blood down my chest, and him. Always him.
My patchwork wings spread wide, filling the space and revealing the cobwebs of lightning scars that map out my sides, my throat. Decades of abuse and bad decisions made into a flickering, cracked painting on my skin.
It's my own light that illuminates us now.
I can see myself reflected in his eyes, a shabby, electric skeleton. A vicious grin splits my lips at his suggestion. "I thought you'd never ask," my voice is the crack of distant thunder, and then the lightning strikes. My yellowed teeth reach for the gaunt planes of his face, snatching for any scrap of flesh that I can find.
He will destroy me, I'm sure of it. But I will get my pound of flesh before we're through.
The Voices crow in delight.
@[Balto]