MARBLE & SALT (Lesbian)

Chapter 5 (Part 2) HARE HOPPING

While Mika is trying to explain something to them (she has probably already thrown me under the bus!), I am staring at the sphere. The witches who are looking into it do not notice me, being immersed in the process of contemplation. I stop not far from them too; I see something inside.

"Whom do you choose? Them or me?" The witch looks at me, smiling affectionately while the edge of her tesak is directed towards the faces of Danya and Dasha. They are on their knees; my friends are looking with horror at me and the witch; their hands are tied behind their backs, and their mouths are gagged. Danya is humming and shaking his head; large tears are running down Dasha's cheeks. "Come on, my girl, choose! Are you with me..."

"No!" I shout, coming to my senses and jumping away from the sphere.

Silence.

Everyone is looking at me.

Oh no...

"What is this human doing here?" the main witch asks menacingly and rises from the throne. Marble-eyes, who was next to her all this time, is looking at me in horror. "Who let the human in here? Is this your blame?" she gazes at my witch, who tries to stand straight and look into her eyes, but she hardly succeeds, and she lowers her head.

I can feel other witches surrounding us, among them I notice Mika who doesn't look herself: pale and bewildered.

"Get rid of her," the main witch orders sharply.

"I'll take her now, and I am leaving too. I didn't want to come here anyway!"

"You don't seem to understand me, girl. No human dares to desecrate our lands with their presence. Kill her."

She pronounces the last words peacefully and a little indifferently, as if asking to pass her a salt shaker. And my witch is just... just silent!

I jumped off like a crazy hare and rushed down the hill, hopping from bump to bump like a real athlete-hurdler. Why are there so many tussocks and bumps? The hill seemed so smooth and plush when we were ascending it, and this hill is like a hell trap! I do not look back, realizing that if I do this, I will immediately stumble or lose consciousness from fear. "Bald Mountain" is swarming with witches! For me, one half-ghost was enough to almost strangle me, but what can a witch with a body do? Even if the marble-eyed girl refuses to obey the order, then someone else will willingly obey, for example her annoying apprentice!

Several times I slip on wet sedge and on something else that is grassy-disgusting. In these moments of fear, it seems to me, I feel some kind of metallic taste in my mouth. And I also feel as if I am in a dream running away from an invisible pursuer: I often have this kind of dream, and I usually give up shamefully. The disgusting feeling that the persecution is finally over, and I am completely defeated, makes my dream be over... I now catch myself thinking that I want to stop, be caught and wake up in bed, better where my parents live. Dad will probably say that coffee is ready and it's time for his little hare to wake up, and in a warm, cozy kitchen he and I will be friendly trolling a sleepy thus poorly resisting mama...

"I'll only look back once," I say to myself. "I am sure that everyone has forgotten about me! The uninvited guest has left the party for cool girls, so why run after me in the dark? Or can they see in the dark?!"

I could not resist the temptation and turn my head at full speed. In vain: nobody really was chasing me, but I played a cruel joke on myself. Literally for a second, I lose my guard and that's enough: my leg clings to a root, invisible in the grass, and I fall, feeling terrible pain in my foot and ankle. I don't know how I managed to protect my face with my hand and did not break my nose by falling flat on the grass, but it doesn't matter, since the pain in my leg is simply unbearable, and it seems it's getting worse.

Tears are welling up in my eyes: elbows and knees are stripped to blood and sore, but nothing beats the pain in the leg. I think I heard a crunch sound when I fell... Is it broken? As a child, I broke my hand when I fell from the old, iron climbing frame, the pain was exactly the same!

Not now, please, when I'm the devil knows where! And they want to kill me, again...

I could hardly pull myself up on my hands, then slowly rolled over onto my back, breathing heavily from the fast run. For a while I was looking at the night sky, thinking how I had come to this at all (Bolkonsky under the Heaven of Austerlitz, damn it!). I sob quietly in pain when I try to move my leg, it is even hard to move my fingers. With a little more courage, I finally sit down and look at the leg. In the faint light of the gnawed Moon, which has almost been swallowed up by the black forest, I see that my ankle is very swollen.

Damn, damn, damn...

"Velia!!!"

I flinch as if from a blow when I hear my name that is breaking from her lips. Her dark silhouette is clearly visible; it is flying off the hill as if caught by the wind. Too fast, I can't run away. Even if everything was fine with the leg, a dark lake was still waiting for me, framed by a dense fence of reeds and undersized bushes at the very edge of the shore. It's too big, even being absolutely fine, it is impossible to swim across it or go around the lake quickly.

She decided to obey the order... If I were the witch, I would obey too: the beautiful woman on the throne is evoking some kind of animal horror. Looking at the approaching witch, it seems that I am not alone. In any case, the witch was extremely honest with me, warning me that she could kill me; after all, no one promised me to live this life happily ever after either...

"Velia, what's happened? Have you fallen?" gasps the witch as if sincerely, adjusting her iron tesak on a leather belt. She squats next to me and tries to look into my eyes. Her face is not visible, which makes me feel worse. She leans towards me, stretching her hand. I dodge her touch, trying to crawl back, but I grimace and moan in sharp pain when I accidentally move my leg.

"Let someone else do it! I don't want you to do it!" I blurted out hotly, "I want your image to remain in my mind as it is now, whatever it happens to me afterlife," I cannot stand it and begin to cry soundlessly; my shoulders are trembling, and I try to cover my eyes with the back of my hand.

"I... I do not understand you..." she moves closer, but no longer stretching her hand to me. She keeps quiet, looking at me. So, we sit for a few minutes listening: I – to the sounds of the night lake, and she, most likely, to my pitiful sobs.

"I would not do what she had ordered me," the girl is the first to break the silence. "Fat chance! If only I would listen to what this old woman says to me every time, pfff!" her voice is full of undisguised irritation (An old woman? The main witch looks only eight years older than I am!).

The witch reaches for me again, and I pull back again, wincing in pain.

"Does it hurt?" She looks in surprise at my bare, scraped knees and notices a swollen ankle. Now I see her face, slightly illuminated by the strange glow of her marble irises. "Oh, come here, don't cry! I won't hurt you."

For the first time, I notice that she is also embarrassed: her movements are not as decisive and sharp as usual. She kneels down and hugs me with her right hand, stroking my hair with her left one. I really want to believe her, and I silently accept her caresses, burying my nose somewhere in her shoulder.

"Does it hurt a lot?" she asks in a whisper, pulling me back a little and slightly lifting my chin.

I freeze with my eyes wide open when she suddenly kisses me on the lips; even the pain in the leg seems to have faded... Her movements are very slow: her soft lips are touching my upper lip, then she slightly sucks my trembling lower lip while absentmindedly stroking my hair, weaving her fingers into my strands.

"You are so salty," she says with a grin, finally breaking the kiss.