Renaissance of Chaos

XVI

Warm sunlight bathed the fields beyond the village in their golden embrace, flowers and animals alike, greedily seeking the place where it shone brightest to take advantage of it. Cows grazed peacefully on the succulent grass, while around them, children were playing, laughing, and screaming, chasing each other through the fields, trying to avoid crashing into the animals or the many trees in the area. Some were not so lucky in that regard.

"Watch out!"

Buff!

A loud thud resonated in the air as you fell to the ground, a trickle of blood dripping from your nose and down your chin, forehead red and scarred from the impact. It took everything in you not to cry and trying to blink the tears out of your eyes did not work as intended. Bent over you, a girl stared in amazement at your new scars, at the thin bits of woods piercing your skin. The two of you locked eyes for a few seconds, before she sucked in a deep breath and spoke:

"Guess that tree was not into you, huh?"

She helped you get up, taking out whatever bits of bark she could find, the tips of her fingers turning crimson in the process.

"We better get you clean before our moms see us like this or else, they're going to fight again." She continued to talk, while you were wincing and crying from the burning pain that pulsated every time a woodchip was removed.

"S-stop it! It hurts!" you shouted and pushed her away. "I'm going to find Mother. She'll know what to do!"

"Mother? Oh! You mean the deer." She replied, her hands clasped together as the realization hit her. However, her expression immediately turned somber, and she looked at you with curious eyes. "Are you sure though? Mom said they might actually be bad people, especially since they live in the forest."

"Mother and Father are not bad!" you stomped your foot on the ground, fists clenched tight. "Father is only mean to Randy! But he is an idiot, so he deserves it."

The other girl listened, but her pursed lips let you know she wasn't convinced.

"Ok! Fine come then. I'll introduce you to them. Mio will be so happy to have another sister!" you said and grabbed her hand.

Before she could get another word in, you began to drag her behind you towards the forest, towards your secret home. You were running fast, faster than you ever did before, heart racing and pain growing numb, despite the blood still flowing down your face and staining your sister's old dress. Your continued to drag the other girl behind you, and though she was bigger than you, you could barely feel her, her very presence fading in the great existence of the woods which overcame your senses. Slowly, but surely, something within you began to awaken, a primal urge, an ancestral desire, tongue, and teeth hungering for something scarlet and warm, something rushing through tunnels of tissue and flesh with each beat of a restless organ. The shadows whispered, the stories of ancestors you'll never meet filtered through your mind, congratulating, encouraging, telling you "It's the best thing in the world. Just try. Don't fear. You're a Vileblood. It's only natural."

You turned around, ready to tell her, to share with her this joy, knowing, convinced she would understand. She understood everything because that's what friends do. The listen and believe, not like the adults who think everything is but the sweet dream of a child with an overactive mind. But she wasn't there, taken, stolen by the beast which had been faster, and greedier than anything else could have been. To you, it left only her arm, the one thing it could not take, for your claws had dug too tightly within the white flesh.

℘◆℘

"FUC-*buff*-KKKKKK!"

The thud reverberated loudly in the darkened bedroom; your tailbone screaming in pain. You got up on your rear, grimacing and muttering curses after curses, enough to make a sailor blush. Your head was still flooded with vivid fragments of the dream, was it even a dream? you just had. In your throat and on your tongue, a peculiar sensation lingered, a thirst so foreign yet familiar, begging for neither water nor tea to quench it. You tried not to think on it too much, sure that it was only fatigue that might be causing it. Perhaps, it was mere hallucination? Your mind was rich when it came to ways to mess with you.