Tales of a Shifter (P6) - Child of Sun & Moon

Chapter 50 - A Worthless Life

The Forest, with its ashen trees, like skeleton bones, beckoned her, and Brandon's request echoed in her mind, but she had to debate her options.

Sitting in the open with the harsh wind and cold water all around wasn't the least bit appealing, but the Forest.... Ann actually feared the worst was yet to come once she entered it.

Suddenly, there was a hard shift, and a massive gust of rain, water, and ice started to slowly fall and roil, then pour. Ann looked up in misery as more condensation started to pelt the space in the fields behind her, and then the water and wind slammed over her.

I...need shelter....

So, with a hard swallow, she tightened her arms, dropped her weight onto her knees, and started to crawl forward.

Ann crawled forth, holding down a gag as the cold pooled into her back, danced over the curve of her head, and the water dripped into the big bloody gash over her left temple. Salty crimson rushed over her lips, turning her belly as her own upper forehead wound, clotted and almost frozen, was caressed with stinging cold icy pelts.

In seconds, the wound popped open, releasing nausea from the lightheaded feeling of losing more blood and its taste.

The going was slow, and only minutes later, Ann was in a huddle on her side. Despite her misgivings about the Forest and its dim interior, she could spot more and more trees clumped together further ahead of her. Above her, the thick foliage clinked and shuddered strangely in the water and wind, but only small drips and pieces of ice seemed to be able to make it past the thick heads of the trees surrounding her.

And at the base of each of the trees, she saw the tangles of sinuous roots, braided thick and piercing down into the cracked earth, with powerful determination. The determination of trees that shouldn't be able to thrive along the rocks and cement-hardened earth. With a small breath, Ann dragged herself close to the side of a tree facing back towards the wind and rain, thinking to use it to buffet her and give herself temporary shelter, but the moment she was deep enough and close enough to the tree....a strange thing seemed to happen.

The cold...the water and ice—lessened to a small degree. But by no means was it warm or wet. The bone-chilling cold wind still caressed her, but under and near the thin eerie trees, everything unpleasant was somewhat reduced, like her original estimation of the area was correct. The almost thick atmosphere was a blanket that wrapped around her and blocked out the rest....

But as she rolled to her side and clutched herself, Ann's eyes rolled around in the dim and yet she could see, nor sense nothing of Brandon anymore. The earth beneath her was wet, and cold, but unlike the area before there were clumps of soft moss, thick and grey white patched and spread all over, reducing the shallow puddles of mud by a small margin.

There were also these strange stalks, thick as her forearms, frozen and encased in a thin layer of solid ice that made the world around her seem like it had been frosted in white glass. The stillness of a world gripped by so much death made it ethereal.

Boneless, she dropped her head into the earth, and she dissolved into a ball of shivers, chattering teeth, and twitching libs, utterly spent. Her eyes fluttered up and down as exhaustion sang seductively in her core.

Her bloody arm held close, stung with every movement and breath she took. She knew that the pain of the injury didn't matter as much as the damage that had been done by the giant gashes in the muscle of her forearm from the ghoul attack. She knew she was fortunate not to have been poisoned, and yet it continued to ache and leak blood that was just as cold now as the rest of her body. She wondered if she would lose her arm....or her life first?