Village in the Mountains

Chapter Twenty Seven

She didn't get very far.

It wasn't the shortest day of the year, but it was still completely dark outside, and the wind was like a living beast. Reaching the elevator was a struggle that almost pushed her off the side of the mountain, but it didn't matter. She had to get away.

Snowstorms were nothing new to the village, not by a longshot. Winter came year round, and sometimes it came on a little hard. Sometimes it came without warning. Now it was coming without either.

It almost didn't matter, Neci thought dazedly as the elevator kept bringing her skyward, rain or shine, it wasn't like she had anywhere to go. But still, she had to go somewhere.

If she could reach the village, she might find help there. She could climb the fence to the church, the building was often left unlocked. She could seek shelter in one of the houses by Luiza's field. Maybe Elena would sneak her into her own house, regardless of Leonardo's wishes.

The wind stung the exposed skin of her legs from inside the elevator. She wasn't going to make it to the village. But she had to keep moving. If Donna woke up and decided to come looking for her, she'd be trapped in this box when she called it down.

Ice lashed down from the cloud filled sky in sharp torrents; Neci was making her way up the path by memory. Passing it by, she wondered how the flowers and the dolls on Claudia's grave would fair in these conditions. She didn't care enough to stop and try to find out.

In the end, there were really only two options for shelter. There was absolutely no way she was ever going to make it to the village in this mess. There was no way she could even cross the rope bridge, and this was the building in better condition. So here she was.

Neci smiled wryly as she pushed open the gate to the gardener's house, skin sticking to the metal as she knew it would. Looks like she had ended up here after all.

Now, she was still there, crouched down in a ball in the bedroom, shoved into a corner with a blanket pulled off of the bed tucked around her. Scissors clutched hard in her hand and shotgun placed gently into her side, barrel pointed straight at the door. Waiting.

How could she have been so stupid?

She'd gotten caught up in things like love and sex and sharing a bed and a home that she had cast aside the rule she'd had since she was sixteen. To stay away from the lords.

She'd tried. Holy fuck, had she tried. But time and time again, there was nothing she could do. In the story of her life, she seemed to be a passive object and look at where it had landed her.

Stuck in the hut of a man who had disappeared DECADES ago (and shit shouldn't that have been her first clue) and wrapped only in his damp and moldy duvet for warmth. What had all the survival been for if it had just led to this? Going along meekly with what others wanted, trying to be a good person, trying to make it on her own in a world that seemed to tell her at every corner that it wanted her dead, what had it all been for?

This was the end of the road.

She couldn't even walk out of there and try to start anew somewhere else, she couldn't wander into the forest and try to find the world beyond the village because right now she couldn't even see the village, or the house, or anything because of all the fucking snow outside.

It truly was the end.

With a crack in her knees, Neci shot up to an unsteady standing, hands still fisted in the soggy blankets, keeping the material around her shoulders. Her legs rubbed violently together; body engaged in an all out shiver she was unaware of.