in which a girl with a heavy burden tries to find her way through the trials and torments of the earth they've come home to.
OR
in which she must rebuild.
EMBERS
JOHN MURPHY
DEATHLIES 2016
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN T...
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S I X
Althea did not speak to Murphy on the rest of the way back. Murphy did not talk to her either, as much as he wanted to ask her what she meant. He restrained himself, seeing that her eyes grew empty as she spoke of his aura. It was like it snapped her away from the fabric of reality and took her away to a world where he was even more irrelevant.
Her hands were cold and her muscles ached with a fire unexplainably hot beneath her fine skin. Murphy was strong. He was brutally strong. She didn't care for his strength, she didn't care for him. Murphy was just a man who did what he wanted, compliance was not rewarded, and he did not take kindly to someone getting in his way.
And now, that was Althea Barnes with her words that rang through his mind, bouncing against the walls of his skull and thudding into his brain.
I've only just met her, Murphy thinks, how would she know about me or my aura.
He shouldn't care what she thought about him.
-
Althea sat beneath her tree once more with two crows on the branch not far from her head. She looks up at them with eyes that glimmered with uncertain intensity and whispers, "I see death,"
With one sharp intake of breath, she rises to her feet and saunters toward the crowd. If she was going to be stuck on the ground awaiting her death, she might as well attend the events of the hundred.
Althea pushes to the front of the crowd. Pushing past teens who did not appreciate her shoving them out of her way. With her flippant apologies and her innocent looking face, they backed off easily. Perhaps that was one of the only things she had going for her down here. Her pretty face, devoid of the scars of life.
Worming through the gap created by two teens, laughing and joking, she emerges at last. Taking in a breath of fresh air she feels it punched out of her immediately upon the sight of John Murphy fighting the Chancellor's son Wells.
Murphy kicks the boy to the floor and continues his advance. The intent burns in his eyes brighter than fire. Althea's teeth bit into her bruised, pink bottom lip as she watches him stalk toward Wells. He was the hand that brought death and she was the eyes who saw it all, powerless to change the unfolding events.
She may be powerless, but Spacewalker was not. He jumps down in between the two. "Kid's got one leg, Murphy," He says, squaring his shoulders. "Wait till it's a fair fight."
Murphy looks him over once before spinning on his heels, his sharp eyes connecting with on looking Althea. Her breath catches in her throat as he looks her up and down before holding her gaze.
Her chest tightens as Murphy walks toward her, his fists clenches at his sides and a burning passion in his eyes that unnerved her indefinitely.
His shoulder bumps into hers with less force than she thought would come from such an angsty teen. He found her more solid than he imagined she'd be. He intended to knock her to the floor, into the dirt, but she was solid in her stance.
She wasn't going anywhere. She didn't move, even after everyone else had dissipated and moved onto their assigned jobs. Althea was focused, the contact with Murphy made her head burn and her eyes water up.
Suddenly, her mind was filled with the gruesome image of Wells with a knife in his neck, bleeding out and his empty eyes staring out into the nothingness as the light left his body and his soul rose into the air, meeting the stars once more.
