The Hunters

Part 38

38.

Rowan

     You know that saying ‘things can only get better’, well like most things in my life that doesn’t really apply to me. It pretty much means that once you’ve reached rock bottom the only way is up right? Wrong. For me, once I’ve trashed the bottom fate has a way of getting hold of an industrial sized drill and digging even deeper for me to fall.

     These days my misery seems limitless. Bottomless. Endless. Every time things seem like they can’t get crappier, something comes along to make that crap look like a friggin’ godsend. For most people things can only get better, however I accepted a long time ago that for me things can only get worse. Much worse.

     It is exactly this point that makes me so sceptical about my current situation. You see, nearly killing Tyler, the only person left in this world that I can trust, follows said pattern. Being approached by the man who helped kidnap me… twice, follows said pattern. Waking up after a drug induced sleep to find myself alone in a strange room, follows said pattern.  

     What doesn’t make sense is that I find myself lying in a four-poster queen sized bed with down feather pillows and a duvet thicker than five of the ones I have at home. Swanky, palace-worthy rooms do not fit in the whole woe-is-my-ever-increasing-crap-filed-lifestyle.

    The room is… well I’ll never look at my quaint bedroom in the same way. Flawlessly clean cream carpeting lines the floor, looking thick enough to sink in. Gold embellishments cover the room – enough to look glamorous without looking tacky – which complement the regal furniture. The walls are cream except a feature wall painted a deep royal purple adding a splash of colour. A window seat juts out of the far wall dressed carefully with pillows and a silk throw the same purple as the wall. 

     Tiny trinkets and statuettes are scattered over every surface looking delicate and very expensive. I’m entranced by four small glass ornaments resting on the bedside table. First of all I mistake them for large marbles but then I see the intricate designs adorned on each of the orbs. Studying one of the ornaments, in my mind’s eye I can see these motifs. I’ve seen them before. Then it clicks: red, yellow, blue and green. These spheres are representative of the elements and the runic symbols are the identification marks tattooed to each Terrigena.

    “Pretty aren’t they?” says a voice at the door.

     Unlike the last seventeen years of my life, I find it hard to recognise the woman stood before me. Hair that is used to being scraped back into a convenient ponytail is primped into perfect tumbling ringlets. A face splattered with lines and the beginnings of wrinkles has regenerated into skin as youthful as my own, as if by magic – and I’m not talking about miracle moisturising cream.

     And her wardrobe - never the most fashionable to start with - has taken a nosedive into creepily bizarre: skin-tight leather trousers with a bodice to match; crawling up her bare arms are what seems to be bindweed and ivy and her shoulders are covered by a green velvet cloak (I’m hesitant to say cape because that’s just too strange) and to top off the weird, she’s trawling bare, soil caked feet over the spotless carpet.