T
Today had been a bad day. They were all bad days really but when one had nothing but bad days, a new way of charting bad had to be developed. Under this new system, this had been a bad one. It had started normally with a quiet breakfast and running in place. Ardent was no fool, she knew one day she would have to run like hell from monsters. Like her father told her, on those rare occasions when she saw him, that it was not the monster one had to outrun, but your allies running in a similar fashion. Thus, she ran in place until the air burned in her lungs and the sweat stung her dark eyes. Then she would lay on the straw and rest.
She did not make it to her next portion of the day.
They came out of the walls.
They were not the little girls anymore but they were her friends. They were dolls and she had not saved them. Each to his own ways, each to his own form. She swung fists at the air to keep them away, pressed tight against the cold stone of the cell to attempt to keep them from grasping her clothing, touching her hair. Cecil was armored and even his armor was separated into portions with his limbs and his corpse was strung with chains to connect it. He was a large man, a powerful man. Now he was parted, disjointed, and decorated, and she felt that up welling of emotion at his beauty.
In turn, she was tormented by a cadre of allies each mutilated in their turn. Each to remind her of the depths of her new found depravity because she knew these phantom lived only in her head. She was doing this to them, there was no demon or magic to blame. Sirion had tried, he had tried with such a desperation and insistence that it ached her heart to see him fail. There was no one to blame but herself.
Victoria was next. Beautiful flaxen haired Victoria with her white clothing stained with blood. Victoria who was too gentle to harm, to cause pain. It was then the figure spoke out of a cut open mouth and the words startled her.
"Remember, you need to get your house."
It was like a stage rushing toward her, like a scene out of a book thrusting itself at amazing speed. The images were gone, the horrific figures, and this was a true memory. Light lanced through a brilliantly green canopy like the pillars of the sky. It alighted on abandoned spider webs and fallen leaves, off the bird's nests with their crop of pleading young. This was the gypsy cliffs, her lovely little home. The pass beyond where she slept in the hollow of a tree near the stream. She felt so happy, she could remember every detail.
She had fished a crawfish from the stream. With a length of string and a bit of kebab, she had pulled the small morsel forth, claws and shell dripping water on the moss laden bank. She set it on a bed of leaves and turned to find a rock to crush it with. Then she heard and startling crunch and turned to see the beauteous white stage standing on what remained of her crawfish. She wanted to cry out in complaint but it looked at her with a kind of mischievous knowing and wandered off. Within moments, a badger stole the remains.
She laughed gently in her cell, remembering how indignant she felt at the time. She blessed Victoria inwardly, even not here she was aiding someone in healing. The puppets were gone, if just for a moment. She dwelled in that happy memory, in resting there with Sirion and Victoria and talking about the house she would have here. Under green trees and next to sparkling streams, where the badger and the deer conspired to steal her crawfish.
