briteskies

So here it is: my NaNoWriMo project. Or at least the beginning of it. Anyone who feels the need to torture themselves by reading, please keep in mind I'm just... making this up as it comes. And it's horribly unedited, so watch out for typos left and right.

***This will keep floating towards the top as I continue to work on it. It makes it easier for me to find. XD***

She didn't even have time to scream. Instead, she just stood there with wide crimson eyes blinking from the shock; her gaze falling to her mangled hand and then back towards Issix who cowered away from her in fear.

The blood would attract attention; give them away.

"Stay here," she commanded with a rather uncharacteristic shake in her voice. Thick black blood was now splattering around her feet, soaking into the dried leaves and dead yellow grass. "I'll be right back," she gave one curt nod and was gone.

Issix made no attempts to move; just pressed his hind side as far against the tree as he could get it and continued even still. The uncomfortable scrape of the rough bark as he pressed harder and harder against the tree was his only comfort. He only wished it hurt more; more pain would be the only befitting punishment for what he had just done.

The icy bite of the water was the first sensation she felt. Skin clear to her elbow almost instantly turned bright red from the cold, but it was pale in comparison to the scarlet water that washed downstream staining the nearby rocks. All she wanted to think about was the pain; the dull aching throb that slowly worked its way from her fingers to her elbow. Every beat of her heart made it worse.

"Feel it. Don't think," she whispered to herself through a tightly clinched jaw. Her remaining hand gingerly rubbed at the torn skin beneath the water. But she didn't flinch.

After a while, she couldn't even feel her fingers anymore and the cold chill had worked its way up to her shoulder, her neck, her spine. Her pants were drenched, her boots soaked and her toes were completely numb. But at least the water that passed through here fingers stayed clear. A quick, makeshift bandage would do for now.

He wouldn't look at her when she returned. He didn't even move. But the spatter of blood that should have been there was gone, and a small fire popped and crackled just a few feet in front of him.

"Are you alright?" she turned to him after a few moments of holding her numbed fingers towards the small orange flames. Hopefully her bandage that had once been a long black sleeve would dry soon. Sunset was only in a few hours.

She knew he wouldn't answer. His expression told her enough: he didn't know any more than she did about what had happened.

"It's ok," she said through a shiver. She wanted him to look her in the eyes when she told him this. But his eyes remained fixed on the flames; his head rested on his front feet and his tail tucked beneath him just like he always would lay whenever he was sad or upset. "I know it wasn't you, Issix."

The sky had darkened, the clouds splashed with red and violet before either of them so much as moved. She was hungry and sleepy, and was beginning to seriously wish that they had been able to continue on and find better shelter than what this small clearing would provide. Nights always got so cold.

Her hand hurt. She wouldn't be surprised if she had a few broken fingers, and despite having been holding her hands toward the fire, the cloth was still damp. It wasn't river water anymore; she could smell the bitter, irony tang in the air.

Eyes grew heavy, her head began to bob and her gaze held a rather entranced and glazed-over look as she starred into the fire.

"You should... you should bind me," he finally spoke, causing her to snap back to reality.

"I'm not doing that," she said quite bluntly. Her face was serious as it ever was.

"At least while you sleep," he persisted, barely raising his head off his front feet too get a better look at her, though they were really more like claws than anything.

"I said no," her crimson eyes narrowed, and even though he was not directly looking at her, he could feel her gaze bare into him like a smoldering hot iron. "I don't want to hear that from you ever again, do you understand?"

He did not argue again. His head fell back to his claws; his gaze back to the fire. He understood, and he would do as she asked. He would not ask her to do such things ever again. If he was not so afraid to move, not so scared to sleep, he would smile. He would tell her he was glad for what she had just said.

There wasn't even time enough to steal one more glance at her before he found himself slipping off to sleep; unignorable, unshakeable sleep that , given Issix's current mental state, could only have been forced.

"I said it's alright," she whispered at his forehead. If he had been awake, he would have seen the subtle hint of a smile on her face and he could have felt her one good hand brush across his rough skin, and he would have known that she was alright too.

It was comforting to listen to him breathe while he slept. Deep, raspy breaths that would fill his lungs with crisp autumn air and then slow, somber exhalations that rustled the grass by his nose. She knew that most people would find the noise intimidating; dragons has a distinct sound when they slept.

But Issix was very small for a dragon.

In fact, she often times forgot he was a dragon. He certainly did not act like one. She supposed, under their circumstance, that was part of what was saving them. One of the many reasons they were able to keep hidden. No one could trace her thoughts of dragons when she forgot she was with one.

She hoped that the scent of blood on the air would not attract much attention from their surroundings. She'd never been in these woods before, so there was no telling what could be lingering along the misty edges.

Night soon settled in; black shadows swept over the world choking every last bit of light and left nothing but a few frail stars to hang in the lonely sky. Brittle leaves shivered on their branches, clinging on for just one more moment of life before they would fall to their death and become part of the forest floor. Their decaying sent was almost overbearing as she lay among them, watching the weak flames of the neglected fire struggle to survive.

The entire world seemed to be dying.

“Trees, protect us,” she whispered to the wind with her last awakened breath, and they would obey because her voice would remind the trees of her mother. She would never say it aloud, but she was glad that they were trees and wouldn’t know any better; she wasn’t very much like her mother at all. br />

*****

They were kept in towers with only windows, but no doors. Trapped in their tall, simple prisons to watch the world pass them by, they were feared to the keys to the end of the world.

When the last of them had been found, hidden away in the mountains by her mother, many had feared the worst. She had been nothing but a child then, with hair and eyes as black as a starless night and skin as white as the moon. For miles people had heard her desperate screams as she was placed in the last tower; The Tower North that overlooked the grey and endless sea.

A child she may have been, but she knew her fate as well as anyone: that she would spend her days in that prison just like all the others. She was not the demon child or a harbinger of the apocolypes like many would call her. She was just a girl.

Over the stretch of many years, she lived there, alone. Black eyes watched the waves smash against the rocky shores and she would wonder what it would be like to feel the salty water crash into her skin. It had been so long since she had spoken with another person; since someone else had called her name. And as the years passed by she forgot what it was her mother had called her when she was small.

She was almost nineteen when he came to her the first time. She watched in silence as the caravan made its way into her valley, the creaking wheels of the heavy wagons and the buzz of human chatter sounded foreign in her ears after listening to the sea and the wind for so long.

He called her Wynter when he arrived, and although she could not remember her own name, she was quite certain that it had never been Wynter. But it was a pleasant sounding name so she did not argue. She was simply glad to hear someone else’s voice, they could have called her Demon and she would have smiled.

Giant bests with rough brown wings had lifted him into the air and to her window. She had never actually seen such creatures before but she had known of them, and yet she was not afraid.

He smiled at her and said hello, and introduced himself as Lord of the New World as he offered a slight bow to her. She noticed right from the start that his face betrayed anyone who looked upon him; he was far older than he appeared and his eyes held a great many secrets even she dare not gaze into.

After so many years locked in her stone tower, she had forgotten why she had been brought there in the first place. “The Demon Girl with her all-seeing eyes” was a bad omen on the lands. People did not like when you could see their secrets. When you could see their futures as plain as their touchable faces. So she had pushed it from her mind as she kept seagulls for company and wished that the world didn’t hate her for a gift she did not want.

She had no interest in seeing the futures of others. She just wanted someone to talk to.

“I have a gift for you,” he said with a smile that could not be trusted. And from the black leather pouch around his waist he pulled a white globe that shimmered as though it were made of a thousand pearls and held it for her to take.

Unaccustomed to getting gifts, she stared at it awkwardly and poked at it with a single, frail finger.

“You must hold it,” he smiled again, though it was a much more pleasant look this time. “You will understand what it is when you do.”

So she did.

In an instant, they were there beside her, or she was beside them - it was hard to be sure at that moment. Together at last, the Five Witches of Time looked at one another with soft, unspoken smiles and knew in a moment what they had found: each other, as companions to break through their shared loneliness. A happiness she had never known crashed over her with a force stronger than a storm at sea and she no longer wondered what it would feel like to have the waves caress her skin.

“They have been waiting for you for some time now,” he said. “You are the last, and now you are finally ready to join them.”

Warm, soothing tears spilled from her infinite black eyes and she smiled for the first time in her memory as she clutched the pearl white globe to her chest like the precious jewel that it was.

“It will be yours to keep if you agree to help me.”

She did not hesitate. She would do what he asked so long as she could keep the globe; so long as she would be able to see them again, whenever she wanted.

His price for the globe was that he would come to her when he needed, all she must do was answer him honestly with any question that he might have; she would read his future and the globe that would allow her to see and speak with her fellow sisters was hers to keep.

She could not remember ever being so happy.

(Word Count: 2,056)

.... why is this turning out to be so dark!?

P.S. I wish we ran Firefox at work!