Imagining Frost

(15) Hailstone

            Julia frowned. "What was at your house?"

            "Shadowy, scary looking things. Shadow Gypsies, or something like that. I'm sure some of them are still there! I have no place to go, nobody to contact." Then quickly, as if I realized I had put an idea in their head to kill me and leave me to die, I added, "But please, don't kill the Gypsy that was with me, I just want him to stay away from me. And don't kill me for knowing what you people are, like in those really twisted movies--"

            "Him?" Aaraign smirked down at me. "Those things are nothing more than 'its'. They're monstrous, heartless, wild things that need to be put in their place. If there's a bunch of them by your house, they must have needed a place to hideout and you were just very unlucky.'

            They're after me, not my house.

            "And we don't kill people for knowing what we are," Julia added. "It's not every day you meet another believer."

            "What about the Gypsy? The one I was with before you came. Promise me you won't kill him? Please, I just want my life to be normal again. If you kill him, I'll think it was my fault. I don't want to have any blood on my hands."

            Julia coughed, covering an obvious laugh. It was then I realized there was no possible way these people had ever sparred a Gypsy's life.

            "We can try to help you, but I can't make any promises about not killing it if the thing comes at me," Aaraign continued, giving Julia an odd look. "Right now, let's focus on your health. You have frost bite. It's pretty bad, your hands are getting purple. You're lucky you found us. I'm going to put this cream on your hands. It'll feel uncomfortable at first, but trust me, it'll feel a lot better than losing your fingers." Aaraign took out a jar of some sort of cream and rubbing it on my hands. It smelled like ginger. Within seconds, it began to miraculously heat up, spreading a thick layer of warmth throughout my entire body that was so intense, I started to sweat and shift in my spot. He rubbed the lotion on my feet as well, then slipped socks and what I expected were Julia's sneakers onto me.

            "Not that bad," I said, feeling as though my words were slurred out.

             Suddenly, the heat escalated and I started to scream. The fire behind Aaraign leapt alive like a Dragon's exhale. Aaraign moved towards me and pressed his hand firmly against my mouth, securing me against his body. "Shhh. Don't scream, relax. It's the only way to get rid of this kind of frost bite. Julia, get the rag. She's giving away our location."

            Julia rushed to my side, gently putting a clean rag between my lips. "Bite down, honey. Our campsite is invisible to the supernatural, but not if we make too much noise because then they'll realize something is up."

            Nodding my head, I bit back a scream, biting down on the rag as the heat all over my body licked painfully at my skin.

            A branch loudly cracked in the distance, followed by an inhuman noise. Aaraign, Julia, and I all went still for the longest time, listening.

            "Has it marked you?" Aaraign asked once the warmth had subsided, then instructed towards Julia, "Add to the barrier. Whatever just made that noise is close, we need a thicker dome around us, more protection from anything above us." He turned back to me. "I appologize if I scared you, but like Julia said, you can't scream like that. I need to know if you're marked by it, the Gypsy. Did it bite you? Scratch you? Do you feel like it has control over you right now? Try and focus, Heather."