What have you done

Her escape was a blur.

The alleyways, the people who meandered out into the streets to see what the commotion was, her footsteps, her breathing. Her skirts tangled with her legs. She lost a shoe at one point to a pothole. She could feel warm, sticky red pouring from her heel.

But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even recognize her own hands as they grasped at the reins of a horse that was tied to the outside of a little rundown tavern. The shouts of the presumable owner fell on deaf ears as she swung herself up into the saddle, sloppily clinging to the horse’s mane as she kicked it forward.

And they ran,
And ran,
And ran,

Until the forest swallowed them whole and the horse steamed with sweat under the moonlight. Mairyn’s entire body trembled as she dropped the reins, allowing the horse to slow as they both huffed and puffed. The tears had long since stopped streaming silver down her cheeks, but her eyes burned and her head pounded. She looked to her bleeding foot with a sigh, unsure of where Basileios’ blood ended and hers began.

She needed a drink.
She needed to wash the blood from her skin.

The pair picked through the forest slowly, her tangled hair spilling over the horse’s neck as she laid against him, her eyes closed and fingers tangled in his hot mane. It all played over and over in her head… Floren’s hand at her side, the cold gun in her grasp, the shot as she tried to stop it, the mage screaming in the dirt, blood… so much blood…

The sound of trickling water caught her attention, and she slowly pushed herself up in the saddle just as the horse heard it too. Carefully, he carried her down to the small stream, where she kicked her feet free of the stirrups and slipped to the ground.

A sharp hiss of her breath escaped her teeth as she waded into the cold water, red pooling from her legs and her skirts. Her foot throbbed, the wound burning, and her breath quickened as she lowered herself to the water to scrub it. Tears spilled again, her teeth digging into her tongue to keep herself from crying out.

How was she ever going to explain this? That she attacked her own brother with her magic - her curse - and left him… He was still breathing as their driver dragged him off, and Mairyn wasn’t sure if that was comforting or terrifying. He was going to come after her. She had her doubts that he cared too much to kill her.

Her hands shook at the thought as she continued to scrub the blood from her skin. From her foot and her knees and her hands. Some had even smeared on her face and dried in her hair.

Crawling back to dry land, she tore a bit of her skirt and tied it around the wound on her heel. It ached as she limped to a tree, leaning her back against it and slowly lowering herself to the ground. She tried to call to her magic, to urge the bleeding to stop, to close the wound… but each attempt was met with a wave of nausea and swimming vision. If it hadn’t been so long since she’d had lunch, she might have tossed it three times over by now.

Her head leaned back against the tree trunk and her eyes fluttered closed, fighting sleep.

But she had never been much of a fighter.

When she woke, it was slowly, her head swimming and vision blurring. Her hands reached for her face, pushing matted hair from her eyes as shivers wracked her body. She was cold. She was numb. Everything hurt, but felt so, so far away at the same time…

The horse-
Her eyes snapped open, wide and frantic.
She had forgotten to tie up the horse.
Stupid, stupid, stupid-

Panic tightened her chest as the creature was nowhere to be found, and she pulled her knees to her chest as she continued to shake. What was she going to do now? Where was she going to go?  Talaus would know what to do, but they had agreed it would be safer to never see each other again… Was this how she was going to die? Freeze to death in the middle of fortune-knew-where because she was too stupid to tie up a horse?

If she had just followed her brother’s wishes to begin with-

Snap.

Her breath caught in her throat at the sound of branches rustling, creaking, moaning. And she was sure she was just seeing things as the trees around her started to slowly shift… crawl… walk.

Until branchy fingers grabbed her shoulder.

With a shriek, she lashed out of the creature’s grasp, a sickening crunch echoing in her ears as the arm snapped from the impact. She stumbled and flailed, falling once, twice, three times before she managed to find her feet. All around her, they circled, reaching forward with spindly fingers, eyes merely gaping dark holes in the twisted branches that made their very bodies.

And she wasn’t about to stick around to see if they were a figment of her imagination.

Nearly losing her footing again, she pushed through the pain on her injured foot and ran, her hands held out before her as she pushed through the thick foliage of the forest. She could hear them pursuing her, more emerging out of the trees at every turn. Their fingers scratched at her skin, tore at her clothes, threatened to pull her under…

She nearly missed the shed the first time she passed it, the soft flicker of candlelight catching her attention last minute. With a single glance over her shoulder, and every fiber of her being protesting the need to run further, she dove for its door. Slamming it shut behind her, her breath heaving in sore lungs, she squeezed her eyes shut leaned against it, listening as she waited to see if the creatures would pass her...