Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Prologue

Picture a road. Think of it in anyway you choose, cobblestones, pavement, dirt, but imagine a single pathway.

The rain creates a blur, but there are trees. They grow in clumps: pines and birches and firs spread drunkenly by a crazed Demeter.

Now a girl; a young woman, really. At least she seems to be young. She gives off the aura of being an old soul, shrewd. Conniving.

And a group of young men. In a different time, one might say they were all football players, judging by their builds. They should walk with confidence, but their shoulders cringe and their hands shake.

The girl marches in time with the guards in the rain. Her clothes are soaking, but no matter; the rain doesn't bother her, not anymore. She raises her head to the rain, feeling the transparent drops bounce off her beautiful face.

She hears them, too.

The very stones appear to shrink from her boots, the trees from her hem. When she tosses her hair, the rain looks as if it falters in the path it drives towards soaking her uncultivated mane of golden fire.

Knowing the guards will carry her to her destination if they have to, she closes her eyes, picturing her revenge on the ones who have escaped her. She opens her gray orbs and looks at her hands, her lovely hands. The stocks aren't on her. She knows that if they were she could tear them off like picking grapes from a vine. The guards' fearful expressions reveal that they too, know that too. She sneers at the naked terror in their eyes. Humans are so much softer than wood or steel.

They carry on past the tiny forest and the nature relaxes, letting go of the nervous breath it had been holding. But even after the group is no longer in sight, a tension is felt in the habitat. It will be days before the tableau is back to normal.

She can escape from them easily, but she won't. She knows where she is going, and she has no objections. No objections at all. She smiles grimly into the opaque haze created by the rain and laughs darkly to herself. She is ready for them, whenever they come.

And she knows they will come.