Gone [Fortune Prompt]

Gone.

Danaë had come home with her chest swelling with hope, her head filled with Aleister’s promises. Lucie would be safe and maybe, maybe there was a future for her daughter and herself where they wouldn’t have to hide anymore. She would tell Dogan everything she had withheld from them for years – show them the world Aleister promised. She owed them that much before leaving them behind. She knew she couldn’t make her master follow her, but she wouldn’t leave them without answers, and without hope.

She came home, smiling and starry-eyed, but Lucie was gone.

Gone.

She found Dogan seething – Roger gone, to look for the child. But it was too late. Lucie was gone. Taken away by the very same man who had brought her home – the man she had been foolish enough to trust and call a friend, to have let him hold her charred hands after the fire.

She should’ve known better than to trust an Order mage twice. She should have known better than to let another man rescue her. Fortune knew she didn’t need to be rescued – she was destruction, pure and simple, she could scorch anything out of her way if she chose to do so and take away the sun in her wake. She should have known better than to let a man make her believe otherwise.

Gone.

Silly girl, an all too familiar, masculine voice whispered inside her head. Silly girl cannot go anywhere on her own. Silly girl vainly believed she could tame the flames – but alone, she only destroys.

Silly girl indeed. Silly of her to have thought she could outrun the fire she started herself. Silly of her to have thought Lucie was safe because she had no magic. Silly of her to have thought Namarast wouldn’t come to seize from her what it had lost. But she never expected the bloodhound sent after her daughter would be the very same man who called Lucie treasure and had promised to keep her safe with his life.

Gone.

She remained speechless in front of Dogan, the Serpent choking her every word, strangling her as it tightened around her throat, paralyzing her as it coiled around her limbs. She found no answer in the face of the guilt crashing upon her. Thus, she galloped away as fast as she could, without so much as a farewell, the smell of smoke and ash in her trail.

Gone.

She ran and ran until her legs couldn’t carry her anymore. Alone in the dead of night, she wandered in the sleepy streets of the village she often used to visit with Lucie. The mare was only full of her daughter’s absence and of the guilt that strained her breath – she had brought a witchfinder at Dogan’s door and for this, she would never forgive herself. Silly girl was oh so aware now that she was a fugitive, and that she had left behind her only home without anything. Her chest pounded and her head spun as she aimlessly wandered towards a shop she often visited – Fleur’s, who used to watch Lucie for her occasionally. She wondered if she could call the mare a friend now – she never knew she or Lucie were mages. Maybe she would have ratted them out if she knew, Danaë bitterly thought. Hell, what if she had spread rumors? After all, any non-mage held the power to denounce her, or her daughter. There was no telling who was the enemy anymore. Had she known better… Lucie wouldn’t be-

Gone.

An acrid taste stuck to her tongue as she slipped her way inside the shop in a frenzy, easily picking the lock with a couple hairpins. Fumbling around the shop in a feverish haze, she took whatever was within reach – an old cloak, bandages, herbs, change. She left as quickly as she came, only leaving behind a wide open door and the wooden floor littered with ash. She fled the scene without a second thought, galloping as fast as she could, vision blurred by hot tears. She didn’t care about what she had just done. Only one word looped inside her head.

Gone.

The rest of the night was a blur of overwhelming noises – the fast drumming of her hooves, the loud beating of her heart and her gasping for air as an acute pain pierced through her ribcage. The Serpent rippled on her coat – fire so close to her skin as blue flickers crackled in the air from her mane. Lucie was gone, she could never return to Aleister and tell this to his face. She had abandoned her master, stolen from her friend, lost her daughter. Fire built up in her chest as she remained unable to cry – the screams that were pent up inside of her choked out by the scaly beast on her skin coiling around her neck. She was all alone in the middle of nowhere, all alone with the guilt, the shame, the overwhelming, harrowing pain of having her own flesh torn away from her. In Lucie’s absence, she only had the flames building up inside of her, constantly hushed with great effort.

But Lucie was gone.

At the break of day, a forest fire broke out near a village. The first rays of sunlight had been enough to set free the inferno that raged inside the mare. As she fled the scene, two distorted voices sneered at her, wreaking havoc inside her brain. You did it again, one began.

You stupid girl.

***