Exquisite Poison (Original Draft)

Chapter 49 - Ravenous

She wanted to know how he meant to take her to his temple - clear over in Europ. When she asked, he instead tugged her further yet down the pathway deeper into the woods, not saying a word to her.

Along the way, he abruptly pulled her off of the trail, into a shadow in the wood that took her heart and seemed to throw it out of her body.

Still, they walked through that shadow in silence. She knew that no matter where he was to take her, it would be far away from any safety that she could hope for.

As they exited the shadow, Netta took a few steps, then discovered that she was indeed still in woods. Only they were not the same that they had been in only moments before.

She gasped, felt herself being pulled along unerringly by Ash as though she were in a state of surrender to his will.

She could return back now, surely, and find comfort with the Witches of her new home.

Instead, she allowed him to continue pulling her and they found a new path. As they walked, Netta recognized where they were, more as a sense memory than anything. it was something that resonated so deeply within Netta that it was akin to instinct.

Indeed, as they took steps, Netta thought for a moment that she surely was in a dream, as she was walking a path that she had walked down weeks' time ago and had numerous times in her dreams.

The wind blew against her uncovered head, blasting cold and the pure scent of snow across her. The boy's hand that she clasped onto was, in comparison, not unlike touching a stove's door while it was on at full blast.

The weight of that hand in hers was like an old friend that she had never ever truly lost.

And, she supposed, unconsciously tightening her hand around the boy's, she, in all actuality, was.

The temple was where she knew it would be.

A place that felt more a home to her than her childhood room, it was a place where she remembered playing jacks on its marble floor and being crowned with a garland of wild flowers whose colors bloomed more brightly than any natural flowers had any right to.

It was where she had first brought up the question of them being together in a whisper that carried on the wind. She had not had the courage to ask him to his face, had waited until the boy had turned his back on her to fetch something from the ground.

She could still remember how he paused, motionless as she waited for his answer.

She followed, for once these memories not caused her pain. Her hand encircled his smaller, child's one.

They walked into the temple. Netta looked around her and realized that there was something to this place that was alien to her memory of it.

Then she placed it.

A brazier, a large, gleaming gold thing, blazed with a flame that cast the interior in a barbaric, red, almost strobe-like flicker. In contrast to eh pure, wintry darkness beyond the columns of the temple, it was like a welcoming - engulfing - beacon.

There, too, was incense had been lit on an offering stand that was never there before.

When she turned, she was shocked to see that a table sat near the stone slab that she knew all too well (although it looked to be whole, almost new, as opposed to the crumbling, partially destroyed one that she knew all too well).

On the table were jewels, horns, teeth of animals, scattered amongst fresh petals that did not seem to be harmed by the cold.

She finally spoke. "Ash - what is all of this?"