Through The Storm

t e n

Bang, bang, bang! 

I began banging on the caravan walls, tears streaming down my face. 

"Please!" Kaya pleaded, "Stop, Ashryn, we can work this out-"

"Just get away from me!" I screamed. "You're the most disgusting creature I've had the misfortune of meeting!"

Kaya seemed to shrink before my very eyes, shame weighing her down, but I couldn't care less. Not right now. Not ever again, perhaps.

Two hundred, two hundred, two hundred,

Two hundred.

Two

Hundred.

The number, her voice, rang in my ears, driving me crazy. 

Blake retreated to a corner, his head shaking in his hands in disbelief. He was too young, far too young to see just how evil this world truly was. This world where lending a hand to others only risked it being cut off. But I suppose our good-for-nothing parents had ensured he learned that lesson at a ripe age anyway. The world -our world- was full of monsters.

Kaya, one such monster, tried to reach out to me, perhaps to soothe me, but I had snapped. I had held it all in for too long and I was done. I shoved her hand away harshly.

"Listen to me, Ashryn! Please," she begged. "Tell me what you're thinking."

It was more out of surprise that I whipped my head back to look at her questioningly. "What?"

She suddenly looked hesitant. "I..."

"Why can't you hear what I'm thinking?"

Two hundred, two hundred...

She looked so relieved that I was talking to her that she said readily, "I used to think that my powers were fading the further away I went from Asten... but the truth is, even as we're going closer to Asten, my powers are still receding. I can't hear you or Blake anymore. Even the Guard... they get murkier by the day. I think... I think my father has a hand in this. Or... my betrayal, maybe."

A silver lining, then, I thought. But I was still sinking in the ocean of acid she had tossed me into. I needed space... I needed to get away from those intense eyes. I needed... I don't know what I needed. What could lull my torment. 

Two hundred deaths.

She reached out to me again to place a hand on my shoulder, but I was having none of it. "Don't you touch me, you murderer," I hissed at her. "If you come near me, I will kill you." There was a solemn promise in my low-voiced threat that stopped her in her tracks.

Two hundred.

The caravans had screeched to a halt, and I hadn't even noticed in my fury and devastation. Suddenly the door swung open. It was the man I had spoken with. "What in Heaven's name is going on in here?" he asked, looking at me in bewilderment. 

The rest of the Guard appeared, and the shortest one had the nerve to chortle, "Looks like your blossoming friendship has come to a rather abrupt end, hasn't it?" He looked me in the eyes, a grave 'I-told-you-so' in his expression.

I glowered at him. "Just get me out of here," I pleaded. I was breaking, shattering... or maybe I was already broken, already shattered.

Two hundred... two hundred.

I'd just lost everything that I had worked so hard to build after my parents' death, and I'd lost it in a few slivers. All for nothing.

I was a traitor. I was harbouring a murderer. A mass murderer, at that. And I was also the stupidest, most irresponsible sister in the history of our Bracken, Asten and possibly our whole country, Aerlyn.