Black Wisteria

An hour before the beast at last slides limp and lifeless from his blade, the sky opens up and turns the world into a sodden wetland. His breath rises like steam from his wet lips, panting and rigid from battle. From his blade—still brandished—a viscous black blood is washed to the soil with every hard shudder of the rain before he flourishes the blade clean, and sheathes it.

In similar waves, his whole body trembles. Though the beast lies dead at his feet, the fight does not leave the hunter’s body. But at least adrenaline keeps the cold at bay just a while longer though even he cannot feign exhaustion for this long. Days, is it? On the road, through many a monster and demon in his path. The weight of exhaustion drags at his already sodden clothes, and makes his bones—each and every one—feel heavy. The only town proper is close, but unwelcoming; too many generations of its people tormented by the newly felled beast and all those else who lurk these lands with it. People who no longer trust the world outside their walls, or even within it. Even them; the hunters.

He leads his horse through the black ash wood because he has not the strength left to heave himself into the saddle, nor the patience for a felled tree to climb. His thick coat is dark and heavy with the rain, and his hat feels no different, no longer serving him like before except that it masks his face from the prying, hateful eyes of onlookers as he passes through the town. Some are more curious; young onlookers vying for just one glance at the fabled eyes and markings of a hunter but they have enough sense in their heads not to cross his path lest their parents snatch them from the streets for a scolding. He, who protects them in their homes, is a monstrous plague.

With or without monster hunters, they'll never feel safe. His horse tugs the reins and shakes its head in the rain when he stops them at the tavern Inn. He hitches the dark gelding to what is left of an old hitch, and pats a wet shoulder sympathetically. No stable will take them, and surly no Inn, but at least their coin, he hopes, can find them a meal.

“I’ll be back for you,” he promises, grim voice lost to the rain but communicated in the warmth of a pale hand still rested.

The tavern is quiet, it makes the dripping of his heavy clothes sound like cacophonies over the hushed voices and dwindling fire. Nonetheless, the warmth that greets him he savors instantly, if fleetingly for he doesn’t take a single luxury in a strangers’ town for granted. He feels their eyes on him the moment he passes the threshold but they let him pass without challenge, hateful and wary but silent. The innkeeper is equally as rigid and chary. His tired, pinched eyes regard Circa unwelcomely, watching a pale hand push coin across the bar top. The haggard man casts an impatient glance around the room, and folds his arms stubbornly from across the counter. "You know we won't do that, hunter."

A long silence follows, unreadable to the man. Circa breathes slowly through his nose a steady, practiced breath and releases it only to level his soft, but solid voice. "A meal, no lodge."

The man becomes uncomfortable every minute Circa does not move, glancing around some more and making a sound under his breath like a tch. "Your coin’s no good here. It’s not personal, hunter, but the more you lot hang around here, the more trouble you bring with'ya. Bad luck, see?"

He does see, but it isn't him. It's this world and everything in it working against them. It does not make him loath the rain or the hunger any less.

Circa herds the coin from the counter and pockets it with silence. The rain is no less unforgiving than when he left it. His mount lifts his head only when he approaches, ears pricked forward like the only soul in town not repulsed by or fearful of him. Small blessings..

He leads the beast grimly around the inn and settles them both under the barren cover of an ash tree where the rain is at least lessened, and succumbs at the base of it when he can no longer hold himself upright and breathes deep to keep his body from shuddering. His sullen hat he keeps tipped down, and closes his eyes.