Yours Soulfully...

21.

Mia was walking down the stranded lane, her steps accentuating the seven notes of the melancholy running in her mind. It was repetitive, dwelling and depressing. But Mia could not help but feel empowered in the cadence of the dark ambient tunes. To her, it felt like the Lay of Death.

Tattered clothes, dry and frisky air, dirt of the earth stuck on her body through and through, Mia seemed unworried. She walked where her feet took her, she engaged where her mind took her. No thinking happened, just following. Following the beats of the funeral music, following the rough cement felt by her sore, bare feet.

Time was not a concept in Mia's world now. She just walked and walked more. When she couldn't walk anymore, she fell to the ground emotion-less. She let her eyes droop when she could take no more and when they could open again, she was back on her feet.

The concept of humanity seemed parallel to her. She did not care for their existence, and she forgot she belonged to the same race of the humans. She neither gave them any attention nor took any from them. That was why she was unusually dauntless while walking down the dark, deserted street that had not seen a proper human in decades. She felt at leisure, even.

Her uninterrupted path suddenly stopped. Her feet had applied brakes as if she had reached her destination. The destination she wasn't aware of being her final.

In front of her stood a majestic building. Well, majestic in the darkness. Mould infested and creeper - ridden, it was hardly in livable condition, but it was majestic nonetheless. Just like Mia, the building stood bother-less. In fact, the building, a forgotten palace, stood proud and prudent. It has lived and seen all there is to life. But it wasn't dying. It was nowhere near dying. Death was written on its walls, but the palace was living.

I need to get inside.

No other words spoken to herself, Mia took steps inside the palace, unfazed by the eerieness of the surroundings. Pushing past the rusted, ruined iron gates, Mia's teeth tattered from the screech the gate produced. Dead leaves and twigs crumbled under her bare feet, prickling her once soft underfoot. The crisp sounds of crushed leaves punctuated her trail. As soon as she got inside the palace, the first thing that captured her eyes was the ceiling. There hung a chandelier in the very center of the vast ceiling.

It wasn't any random chandelier. It was made completely of creepers. There wasn't as much green present as there was of fading brown, but there was firmness. It stood out strong and firm against the almost-crumbling building. It didn't provide any light, but it put forth a gesture.

There was web - ridden furniture scattered unceremoniously across the vast room and Mia's eyes followed them up to the end of the stairs. Out of all the collected dirt and disruptions of the whole palace, the stairs were the only exception. The white marble of the well - structured steps shone brightly under the moonlight pouring from the broken French windows on either side. The handles at the end were wrapped around with cobwebs and whatnot, but that was the only sign of similarity with the rest of the palace. The rest of the stairs were too clean that it was tempting and luring.

And Mia complied. She walked towards the end of the room to meet the entrance of the stairs. As her slender hand held the handle and her right leg raised in the air to set its first foot on the step, her eyes noticed something.

A rat. A dead rat. It was lying just below where Mia's feet were hanging in the air. Mia immediately retreated. She did not shriek, however. Old Mia would have, but then again, old Mia would not have survived any of this. Old Mia is but a pansy, new Mia would say. And she proved the difference by crouching down and examining the body of the once - live rat. It was lying on its stomach, eyes closed and mouth open. The teeth were out of the mouth and the skin was disorienting and decomposing by itself. The reek of mortality from the rat entered sharply into Mia's nostrils, but her face displayed no emotion. Without any second thoughts, Mia reached for the rat to throw it away. Her right hand held it in a tight grip, almost like that of a metal vice, and it made the body secrete a drop of blood from the wound in the back that killed the rat. The single drop of blood dramatically fell on the first step of the stairs with a plonk, joining the already dry stains of blood from the tragic death the rat had gone through. As Mia's unbothered eyes followed the droplet's trail, she saw it.