𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬. sam uley

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐲-𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞

She shook it off, but a howl still echoed through her mind, so heartbreaking she had to stop and rest for a moment.

She closed her eyes and willed the tears to stop, willed the pain to stop.

She had made her choice.

So, why did she feel so empty in this paradise?

❧

She slept sometimes, in her endless paradise. No one else did, and she found it odd, but she slept. And it was the worst experience of her life.

In her dreams, there was a black wolf so large it could have taken her head off with one bite.

In her dreams, the wolf stared her down, the both of them in a dark forest, her barefoot, only a gown to cover her, and the wolf massive and inquiring. It stared and stared at her and she felt something sharp shoot through her chest.

It did nothing else. Only stared, perhaps whined, but she still woke up with a bitter ache in between her ribs.

❧

The howls haunted her. The dreams were her demise. They happened often and with fervor, and she could do nothing about it. She felt as though she were losing her mind.

The scent of ash came back, permeating her senses. She closed her eyes, burying herself in flowers and hoping that it would drown itself out soon.

(It did not.)

❧

Crimson swam in her vision and it looked like blood spilling on the floor.

She stopped sleeping, in hopes that it would ease the panic creeping in her, but it only seemed to make it worse. Her vision swirled with people falling at her feet, an angry set of red eyes drinking her up as she drank from them.

She felt phantom touches in her hair, malicious with their softness and angry with their kindness. She felt the caress on her cheeks, ice cold and bitter as words echoed in her mind.

My love.

My greatest creation.

You have done so, so well.

Drink up, darling, do not be shy.

They were spoken as promises but meant as threats. She winced away from them, shying into the corner and picking the blossoms off the flowers until the stems broke and she wept silently. She knew this voice even in death. She would never forget the one who ripped her life to shreds.

But to be tortured now, when she had done what she could to stop his reign, to bring him down from the pedestal he held himself on? What had she done to deserve this?

She just wanted to be free from her choices.

❧

Demons haunted her even here, where the water ran clear and the meadows were luscious with flowers and blossoms and trees of fruits.

She saw children of many ages, most of them brothers and sisters. She saw a pair, once, when she was picking apples with Ezra and he was rattling about his endeavors with someone named Delilah. They were hand in hand, identical things with faces, their hair stark contrasts from one another. One day, one night.

Shadow and light.

Sun and moon.

They laughed at something frivolous, happy in their death, perhaps even unaware of it. Certainly, not haunted by the demons that she was seeing in her head at that moment.