Time Astral | Sirius Black

||Time Steller - Part II||

It was late at night when the woman sauntered out from the abandoned building beside a bustling alehouse. 

Words kept ringing in her head, words she'd never understood the meaning of. The voice she'd never known. Never once heard in her entire life.

Her black hood was soiled and crimson and her cloak was blowing in the soft winter breeze as she strode with cat-silent steps towards the dip in the road.

It was full moon that day. The blemished greyness of the white terrene sphere was ache in her eyes, and she squinted, lowering her hood more. 

It wasn't time yet, she knew as much. She'd have to wait in the shadows. Like she always has. Even though a voice in her screamed, a voice she didn't know, screamed to refuse. To refuse to do this. 

But she wouldn't listen, just as she hadn't for years now. 

The woman squatted down, in an alcove safely hidden from where the moonlight merged with the low-budget flickering streetlight and cast a much unneeded glow on the road. 

She waited. It was the hard part, to have patience but she waited and waited until a stout man, laughing with his companions, walked outside the tavern and towards the other side of the pavement. Where a young girl in her twenties was waiting for him.

He caresses her cheek and bids goodbye to his comrades before whistling as he makes to cross the road. To round it and then to enter the flickering light near the alcove she's in. 

The woman, then, gets up. Counts her numbers and then when the laughter fades, she strikes. 

A dagger to the throat. The man's eyes are wide when she stands up, stalks over to him and watches him trying to grip his neck - trying to remove the dagger. Red blood gurgles out of his mouth, dripping one, two, three, four times on his beautiful linen shirt before more oozes out. 

He's still watching her when she kneels in front of his panicked eyes. He's not dead yet. No, she was commanded to make it slow. The dagger hadn't killed him yet, but he was going to choke on his own blood until it did. 

She removes her hood and his eyes widen more so. And then he's pleading, begging the gods, begging her for forgiveness.

She would've given it to him perhaps, or wouldn't have, she didn't know. But she would've considered, had she only known what his crime was. But he did have one, or so she was told.

And she waited, counting her numbers again, the patience stilling her heart until the last of his breaths had been halted. When his chest had fallen still, she gripped his arms and dragged.

Dragged and dragged him into the thicket behind the road. And then she wiped the blood off the pavement, removed traces before she went back, knelt in the muddy soil and started digging. 

She didn't sweat, didn't fret. Didn't so much as care about breathing wrong, so much as putting herself in danger by the loud sounds of her scratching the earth. Didn't care, she would be glad if someone caught her. 

She didn't balk when someone crossed the road in front of the thicket, didn't stop. 

Instead, she dug. She dug and dug until her hands were blistered, refusing to use a shovel. And pushed the body inside before leaping over the pipes and over the roof. Back to the hellhole she'd come from. 

And prayed she didn't have to do this again, even though she knew she would. And she would pray for it again. And again. And again.