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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F O R T Y T W O
All around her, darkness breathed and icy white crows soar. They circle her and caw as they fly by, telling her to rise.
So she rises to her feet, as they command, and slowly looks all around, but there was little to see. Althea was stood in the middle of a forest on the end of a bridge looking across it, into the gloom of the forest that sung to her in a symphony unheard of. It vibrated through every ounce of her being, through her veins and around her skull.
A single white crow hovers beside her before landing on her shoulder, its talons grip into the skin of her shoulder but she bites back the hiss of pain, fearful to make a sound into the dead of night. Blood swelled to the surface, soaking into the ancient cloth of her jacket. A stain that could never be removed.
Althea looks to the crow upon her shoulder, her lips parting in awe of its presence, but the sound of war drums brings her attention right back to the darkness that seemed to be closing in on her every time she breathed.
Even the air was cold.
From the dark, emerges several grounders. They do not walk with power, they walk in pain and their groans were haunting as they attacked her ears and bounced within the marrow of her bones. They were covered in blood and the furthest one away had an arm missing.
More emerge and the groans only grow louder. She turned away, but they were surrounding her and closing in. They eyes screamed with agony and their moans of burning pain as they lumbered towards her were deafening.
Frozen in fear, Althea watches them in their dead march, barely breathing as they come closer and closer.
Her veins ran cold.
Only an arm's reach away, the lead grounder reaches their hand out to her, blood covered and mangled. It grabs for her arm and she jolts away, her eyes wild with panic.
The next noise is shattering. An explosion.
An explosion of light and fire, warped by fury and hate.
Althea screamed along in the chorus of the doomed as the fire overwhelmed them, shielding her eyes with her arm, fear was thick.
A pair of hands clamped down on her shoulders, halting her trembles where she stood. "Thea?" The voice said. She moved her arm from her eyes, but she didn't have to do that to know who was before her. "Thea, you're ok."
She curled into the arms of John Murphy and wept into his chest.
"They all died except me," She said between hiccups, begging herself to calm down, but her heart resisted. "Why didn't I die, Murphy?"
"Because we're survivors." He rubs her back, soothing her pain. "And we can't save everybody."
"We can try," Althea objects, pulling out of the hug to look into his eyes as she spoke her next words. His eyes were as electric ad ever, pulling her out of the depths like a beacon. "I want to try."
