To Feel The Rain: Chapter One

--- o For the Spooktober Prompt #20: Memory o ---

   She hates the rain, not the tactility of wet and cold, rather the feeling her own energy being sapped away with it, dissolving what abessive resolve was left within. It was not the beating of heavy droplets upon her that enticed such things, but the gentle pitter-patter that one may otherwise brush off as nary a trifle, or at most, a nuisance. The fog was the worst part, to live under its embrace for so long mudded both heart and ground, harkening to half remembered promises and unspoken lies come to pay their dues. It felt lonely —isolated —forgotten. Intimate, but suffocating.

   It was the turn of seasons, where the leaves began to fall and sour in the procession bitter cold and famine. The quiet was damp and cloying, worsened by dull grey of barely broken skies above, obfuscating bleak shades of dim lifelessness. The numbness was already setting in —both in heart and body as fatigue and hunger invited her into its cold embrace.

   The warmth of lingering embers had been silenced by the rain, but the permeation of decay remained, not long after their end, but long enough for the rot to begin. Any fleeting hope she had finding likewise survivors had long since solvated as was her own hope of survival. She made sure to check everywhere, even if such sights shall haunt her dreams for as long as she draws breath. And she forced such stifled breaths despite the burning in her lungs from sickness and soot, aware of the absence of ambient life around her.

   The small girl peered through the edifice of a fallen building, tucked away but mostly unsheltered from the storm overhead. Held close was the tattered remnants of a scarf, design masked by trembling hands and torn rags. She stood within an enclave hidden in the rubble she sought sanctuary, but curiosity kept her away as heterochrome eyes set intently upon another.

   If it weren’t for the periodic clicking of tongue in mouth, she may not have noticed their presence, but she did. And she knew that sound well. A hunched silhouette stood in the open, focused on something strewn about on the ground before them. If her memory served her right, it was where an old statue once stood, now among the rubble as was the rest of the village. Her village. Her home —At least what little was left of it, a place she shared with nobody.

   She bit her tongue as if it would help to stymie the need to cry out for help. The knowledge of what happens when one does so prevents her, a swift bayonet or bullet for those lucky, a prison of burning homes or the chase of wolves if they weren’t. She didn’t want to think about what happened to the women. And for what? The heresy of praying to pagan gods and false idols unbeholden to the finality of their raptures?

   Alas, it wasn’t so trite, they were merely unfortunate enough to be on their path. Of where the strange masks and regimented boots came, she did not know, but they left nary a scrap of life behind their wake. It hadn’t been long enough for the scavengers to come, but she didn’t want to linger when they arrived, lest she join the spoils whether for beast or man.

   Were they of the same cloth as those who came before her? She pondered but discarded the thought as there were little similarities. They lacked the airs of vicarious savagery she oft witnessed, but the scent of death precipitated upon their surroundings was just as heavy as her heart. But for what purpose drove them here, so far from the throes of the world yonder? Was the stranger here for her? A pitiful and pointless question she already knew the answer to. Perhaps they pursued them, the men with the masks. A specter of sorts that dogged their every step, for reasons she knew not, and had no intention of finding out.

   The figure was still, facing adjacent to where the girl stood, so she saw the brief show of vague memories beneath tattered hood. It was familiar, though scant comfort subsided nostalgia for growing uncertainty. Her newfound wayward traveler housed a set of piercing blue eyes, as cold as the air around them. Set in with a permanent scowl, knitted brows and hints of despair and fleeting determination betwixt locks of faded dirty pink and careworn face. Her own was a pallid mint, offset by the contrast of red and blue eyes. A rare thing, a novelty of sorts, made all the more peculiar by the gentle shade of hair. Yet she could tell the stranger mirrored not the color of her eyes, but the tacit emptiness within.

   ❛ If I don’t move, I won’t be seen. ❜

--- o ---