Dust and Deity - Dear Darkness

Chapter 1.2

As the rays of light from the setting sun folded away, the facade of green was driven into hiding by the coming night. Flowers unglued from the branches, and splattered into the ground. The verdant grass slithered into the pores of the ground, leaving strange bulges on the skin of the earth. Yet, gusts of wind floated through the empty woods like sentinels keeping watch; while several owls landed on nearby trees and hooted out the rhythm of safety. It's almost as if the forest is staying strong, taking turns day and night, to shelter from some kind of pursuing darkness.

It's me, my fault. Lakric thought to himself... I am the source of all this.

The sun had set down under. The night is weeping. Lakric coursed through the skeletons of branches, where spiders dare not nest, towards old Thatcher's shop, as he thought to himself...It seems now that without doubt, that Villia isn't strong enough...The moon dangled above as he picked up pace. The poor suffering trees stood like statues on a bare ground....They looked at him in hatred, the hatred that he craves but despises... But he doesn't crave it- he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't. He ran forward semi-directionlessly.

But he does...Soon, he will have to start traveling once more...He hurdled across a root...If only he could figure out a way faster...He ran faster...If only it was sooner...His shoes slammed on the hard earth ..If only the world was brought up to love darkness... He heaved and huffed as he ran even faster... If only they loved the darkness...Sweat, tears slid across his skin...the darkness that he is...

Faster...His heart raced, if a heart it is that he had...The quietness were just muffled shrieks. Like how the silence sinks and swells...Even faster... His chest puffed up and down, if only in it a conscience existed... How the loneliness, like dust, like tides, rises.... rises... rises... and falls...The pain! Oh the pain! Let him imagine it in peace...Faster and faster... his breath flooded across his face... How the darkness bowed low in perfectly untidy rows... how it tortures the soul if it is a soul he had... Faster! Faster! Where is the finishing point? Where is the due deadline? How would he choose if it wasn't always darkness where he is at... Faster! Faster.... Is it out of the forest? Or is there more running ahead? Is there even a way out at all? Faster!-

Then at that moment, his forehead closed in on a tree. The dust peeled off the ground. The wind torched through the tranquility...his whole body crashed in. Could this... stop him?...

....There, of the dust that repelled further, of the wind that screamed away. Of the shards of life that burst apart, and among the remnants of sinful magic in the air that wavered. Of the plastics of bark of what once was; of the wires of veins of leaves that chose to stay.... There was only one...

...a disappointed Lakric remained.

While Lakric is "wasting time being up to some sort of mischief again" or "busying himself with dawdling around some unlawful place" (Yes I know what boys like him do at his age), Madam Beau was wrapping her "special remedy" around Avian's frozen leg; that is, if you asked Villia, just a bandage soaked in old vinegar.

Villia squatted by a large pan next to her, with gloves on. She was squeezing out strips of bandages one by one and passing it onto Madam Beau, being extremely slow-and-careful every time she thinks Madam Beau might be looking at her. But often the Madam just comes over and grabs a whole bunch of the cloth out of the vinegar, wring it dry, slaps it onto his leg, and then tie it up in an almost irreversible knot, as if indicating "there's no-nonsense under her watch".