APPLE WITCH (girlxgirlxgirl)

12. Rabbit hole

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⚠️ traumatic experiences, mentions of violence, processing abuse ⚠️

Some days are better than others.

Had Melora known this, leaving would've been a harder decision. It was easy to manipulate herself back then. Manipulate herself into thinking that leaving would fix everything. Every problem, every bad memory. Everything would just disappear. It was so easy to think that when she had nothing else to hope for.

And for a while, it was true. After using that apple to escape, Melora entered what she would like to call: 'the honeymoon phase'. A phase in which she was truly and blissfully happy, being able to live without unhappy memories and bad thoughts. Almost like her time at the tower never happened at all. Almost like she was free. But no matter the outcome of her escape, Melora would always have come crashing down eventually. Bad memories don't stay down forever. They resurface and haunt you, they plague you and eat at you from the inside.

And being around these three vampires isn't exactly a healing environment. On this particular day, when rain is pouring down from the covered, gray sky, and the animals are all hiding except for them, Melora can't help but remember. Remember and recall all the bad times. Rain was as frequent at the tower as any other type of weather, but rain was always more prominent. With a small window in her room, rain was the only type of weather she could hear, the only type she could acknowledge. It drummed against the tower roof and sometimes got inside her room. Melora remembers it all so well.

Now it drums against her clothes instead. Melora would relish in the way it makes her feel free, feeling the water against her skin instead of hearing it against the roof. She is free from the tower walls and its people. But she doesn't feel that way. Instead it only brings bad memories, from the tower, and from the other witches. It's raining very heavily, pouring down so harshly that it's hard to see anything around them. A heavy fog like mist spreads over the road and forest, forcing them to slow their pace and act carefully on the muddy road. Melora, now seated behind the princess Seiran rather than Astra, is losing focus by the second.

But it's not sleep that she is approaching. It's a state of reliving the past, her mind growing foggier just like the air around them. Seiran, the cold hearted vampire, has her eyes trained on the road and isn't picking up anything. Astra is riding way ahead of them, checking the road, while Saint and Adar are right behind them. It's been five days since they left the mountain where Adar was held prisoner by his own family, and the excitement of this mission and their new member is slowly dying down. The bad weather plays a big part in souring their moods, but also the tenseness of the vampires, which neither Melora or Adar can explain.

They seem to be waiting for something, anticipating something. Melora isn't entirely sure what it is, but the vampires aren't happy about what they are waiting for. It seems like the slower pace is only aggravating them further. They have grown more quiet and snappy, not tolerating any small-talk and constantly fighting amongst each other with hushed voices. Adar and Melora have grown quite close in the progress, tiptoeing around their captors while sharing their life-stories with each other during camp. If they get caught they get yelled at, but Melora isn't keen on stopping. Adar is her first and only friend, and this far her only distraction to the growing headache of bad memories and sour thoughts that keep popping up at every drop of the rain.

Whenever they stop to rest, which is not often anymore, Melora and Adar take the opportunity to talk. When traveling they barely see each other, forced to sit in silence in front of their captors. But those moments of camp are their favorites, when they finally feel like they are alive and free again. Melora knows more about him than any of the others do, and he knows more about her than the vampires. Still, she can't tell him everything. Some memories are too terrible to share. And whenever they get back up on their horses and start traveling again, it's like she falls into another world. She would much rather hear the vampires talk than fall into that rabbit hole, because whenever they are silent she is plagued to relive the past in her own mind.