Author's Note: This is an extract from the rough draft of my current wip. I've chosen to start a rewrite and am in the process of finishing my new outline. So yeah, this is a "darling" I had to kill.
♕ ♕ ♕ ♕ ♕
My myrtle skirt rustles along the marble ground as I greet Ella's mother by the doorway. She pulls a black shawl around me as we flitter through the hall. I haven't told my aunt and if she were to know she'd be fuming. I'm not to leave the premises until I leave Malern.
Upon reaching the outside, the night runs a cold clamp hand down my spine. Searing up an explosion of tingles. Yasmin looks at me wearily.
"I'd wish you'd worn something more suitable, but it can't be helped." she sighs taking the first few steps into the darkness.
Glancing down at the mellow greyness stretching around me, I quickly begin to regret my outfit choice. Upon noticing Yasmin quickening her pace far ahead I hobble onto the solken marsh. Silken shoes ooz dirt into my soles urging me onwards. Frozen like the snowy moon overhead. The goddess whispers a lullaby of breezes in our wake. Are you here to help me? I want to ask.
We don't go to the village the same way Ella did earlier. Yasmin calls that too risky and so we take a longer but more scenic route at least in the daytime through a squatting of apple orchards.
The Blood-lipped princess, echoes a familiar fairytale in my ear. I chew gently on my lip, recounting the many days we nestled beneath these trees, humming along to folk songs, ignoring the calls of our parents that the Blood-lipped princess would come to steal our hearts. Frightening those who had their innocence intact, otherwise the story became little to another whisper of the wind.
Ella never feared her but I did.
Plucking a small fruit from a branch, I pause to study its dying face. Not quite rotten but on the journey there. I toss it back onto the ground and hurry after the woman.
Now we're steadying ourselves, treading carefully down an uneven pathway. Each unexpected slip rips another breath from my lungs, hurling me into a spiral of gasps and shrieks but we eventually make our way to the ground. Somehow. The padding beneath my feet becomes mangled with thorns making the continuing journey arching with sharp pricks underneath. Just ignore it.
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Short Stories
Historia CortaAn accumulation of short stories and flash fiction I've written over the past few years. Most of these are unedited. I've created this to keep track of my improvement and to have a place to store all my random pieces together. I probably won't touch...
