A Flurry Of Crimson

Chapter 15 | Red Ice

I walked barefoot on an iced pond, snowdrifts licking at my sides. As I let my fingers brush my surroundings with an untangled focus, my tactile sense failed to recognize the reality of the scene around me, yet the sight of the Douglas fur and red oak trees carpeted in whalebone and the relentless hush that cloaked the land made it seem too real.

Dread and cold twisted my organs into a series of knots as I glanced at my side, facing a tall ice wall.

I squinted my eyes at my reflection, shame lacing my entire body. My clothes were stripped off, and I was standing alone on ice that might have to crack.

My teeth were chattering agonizingly and my hands were shaking as I slipped them down my bare body, but instead ended up touching the borders of a strapless dress falling loosely over me.
Yet my reflection remained of a naked woman in which distress and weariness chiselled the circles underneath her eyes and the heaviness inside them. She looked a couple years older. My body held a steady posture while the girl looking back at me crouched onto the glass, hugging her knees tightly to her chest.
It was me. At I don't know what time, but she was, most definitely, me. Or maybe just an illusion.
I flinched.

"Who are you?" My voice stuttered a little as I brought my touch to the clear wall. It was impenetrable. My gaze solely examined the girl with narrow eyes.

"Surely you wouldn't recognise yourself anymore. It only took a few years," her tone trailed off with a dry, woeful scoff.

"Show me your left arm," I insisted as I blinked a few times. She folded out her arm to me.
It had the faint trace of the Dark Mark. Scars. Blood.

She had turned her back to me when my brows sewed together in confusion. Was this move even necessary? I asked myself as I let my eyes adjust a little through the air bubbles trapped inside the wall, being more than just parasites to my sight.

Scars marked the sides of her- or my waist down to my belly. Irritation crawled under my skin as I shut my eyes close. I even refuse to let my own eyes lay upon them, thus I haven't checked how bad they became in a while. But now, my own reflection was talking to me, showing me my biggest miserables.

"What is happening?" My voice had a ring of distress.

Her gaze held my eyes as she explained to me with a muffled voice. "A worse time. A worse condition. Do you think you'll be able to survive this sinful, vicious world? If you escape the Dark Lord, will you be able to escape the war?" She shook her head dreadfully.

Silence rang in my ears for a few minutes that passed by, each with a warning alarm.

I shook my head as she added, "You're going to become dark," she gave me a deadly look and pierced me with another fake smirk. A scandalous smirk.
My eyes shivered with cold tears as I brought my focus back to her, darkness becoming a veil over my head. She studied me with a predator's unwavering attention.

My heartbeats pondered behind my eyes that grew impossibly wide in fascinated horror. The woman's stare became agonizingly disturbing, and nothing stopped me from refusing that she was me.

My fist went breaking into the glass as I expelled a breath with a shrinking scream tearing into it.
As my mind drifted to the exit of the frost enclosure, I stumbled on a knob of ice, the corners of my eyes spreading black into my vision.
Air abandoned my lungs which were now screeching for oxygen with a burning sensation.

A hand seized my neck and I winced as I attempted to drag myself free from under the heavy body that imprisoned me.

My red hands sank into the mound of snow, screams and whines slipping throughout my sore throat to my parted lips. The snowy ground felt like a hard stone rolling over my chest as raw pain erupted everywhere inside me.