"You will sit here until the earth eats away at your bones, and for you, my dear sister, that will be a very long time indeed ..."
*
After the use of dark magic, Liro is outcast from the sisterhood, stripped of her immortal grace and lifespan. Lef...
Terror clawed its way up her throat as her sisters stepped closer. They invaded her space, pushing her limits purposely. Dark eyes and hair as pure as night, twins to her own features, had her scrambling backwards. The flecks of gold down their arms and along their collarbones, shimmered in the gray lighting. Malice glowed in their gazes, and it was effort to pull together the sounds to form their names.
Her tongue was so useless in this body, so unbelievably ungraceful. She cursed it with ever fibre of her being.
"Yasri," she breathed. "Emina." Her chest moved up and down rapidly, giving away her fears.
Involuntary, her hands shook. Her fingers mushed together soil in effort to get them to stop. Every thought was portrayed upon her features, and every movement of the eyes and pulse of the heart was something her sisters could read.
And manipulate.
Yasri grinned, twirling the knife in her palm dangerously. "You remember us, baby sister."
Emina strutted forwards, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "Please, like we're anyone she could ever forget." She crouched before Liro and took her sisters jaw in her hand roughly. "We're flawless."
They came closer, circling like collection of birds on the hunt. Liro curled into herself, realizing how soft her skin was, how new and vulnerable. Her sisters eyes were calculating and cold, their gazes filled with a sort of knowledge that only came with age.
They had been meant to grow old together. The Sisters of Ruin. Their age rivalled those of anyone on the earth, their experience was unparalleled. It was devastating that they'd broken the cycle and turned her young once more.
"Look at you, fresh as a dewdrop," Yasri crooned. "Would you like to see how soft that new skin truly is? How weak those bones are?" Her lips barely moved as they uttered the threats. "Why don't I show you ..."
She advanced, lashing out with her knife, slicing long and shallow across Liro's cheek. The sting of the blade was too familiar for her to even react, and too expected to feel outraged. All she felt was hollow defeat. Yasri snarled, denied of her entertainment, eager to watch blood fill the soil ...
"Stop, sister," Emina hissed, stepping in front of Liro. It wasn't a protective stance, and Liro knew that her sister wouldn't hesitate to slit her throat. "We've banished her for her betrayal, freed her soul and caged it once more." When Yasri didn't lower her knives, Emina pushed further. "We do not want to anger the Mother."
Liro shook. The Mother. The woman she'd always despised, the one who was new and young and fresh and whose power challenged her own. If she hadn't hated with such passion, perhaps she would be in a very different situation at the moment.
Perhaps she wouldn't be hunted.
Emina turned, her eyes filled with her own constrained rage. She wanted Liro to suffer, more than anything on the planet. But she would wait, patiently, whilst the darkness grew and gathered, and guards were lowered.
When the division between worlds was thin.
"You are human. You have no place in the forest, sister," Emina hissed, bringing herself closer. "Leave. Or we will chase you out like the animal that you are, the Mothers wishes be damned."
Liro stared ahead blankly. Leave the forest, her home, her sanctuary. Go where her sisters could not find her, where the Mother would not punish her. It seemed impossibly freeing, and impossibly difficult. One of them could never be free, not truly. Her name would be stricken from history, the only memory of her being a cautionary tale passed down by mouthes.
"Must we tell you twice?" Yasri snarled. "Run, baby sister, or my knives will find their mark." She was done with watching Liro cower like a lesser being. It made her sick, made her want to end her in that moment, without waiting.
Liro spun, digging her fingers and toes into the dirt as she propelled herself forwards. They were letting her run, giving her a chance before her life ended, however unceremoniously they planned to do it. It felt like breathing underwater; knowing you had to try for survival, yet knowing that it would be futile.
Mud, sticky and thick clung to her heels while she ran. It seemed to take forever, the endless span of trees flashing past her at a dizzying pace. Everything but the sound of her own ragged breathing and her feeling smashing the leaves had dissipated. No birds chirped, nothing living crossed her path.
It was endless sprint, conveyed from the prey's point of view.
Her foot hooked on a root, launching her across the ground. Her elbows sank into the forest floor, and she used them to haul herself forwards. As nauseating as this body was, she was adapting to it, realizing that learning how to operate it was her key to survival.
She wanted desperately to survive.
The ground bottomed out, and she curled in on herself as she barrelled down a steep incline. Thorns and mud and twigs marked her body and tangled in her hair. She wanted to scream, to unleash every bit of her frustration upon nature, yet her tongue refused to move, to shape the sounds and release them.
A rock slammed into her back at the base of the hill, thrusting itself beneath one of her shoulder blades. Her spine arched as she hissed, recoiling at the sharpness. But it was better than her sisters blades, and she would take that rock any day. Liro rolled onto her side, preparing to run to the edge of the forest and escape.
Ready to take her first breaths as something that was not hunted.
She drew herself up, scanning the woods, breathing in deeply. Her muscle strength was waning, giving out already. She let out a whine and clutched her stomach, her fingers smearing dirt across her skin as she worried at her fingers.
She was lost.
She turned and sprinted in the direction she'd been headed. Anything was better than going back, risking her new and fragile body.
Risking her soul yet another time.
Liro ran, using every last ounce of her energy and pushing it into her legs, willing them to move faster, become stronger. Her nose stung as she took in air faster and harder, the burning spreading across her chest and into her arms.
The pain intensified as something solid connected with her collarbone. She jolted backwards, stumbling for a few steps before landing on her rear rather unceremoniously. Out from behind the tree stepped a hunter, his bow trained on the pale girl sprawled in the leaves.
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