Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
— CORDELIA ASHTON
The flesh wounds on her hands had just began to heal when her feet touched Washington soil for the first time, and Cordelia finally came to understand the gravity of her situation.
The fifth of October would otherwise be an understated day, one that would bare no significance, but this year Cordelia was being banished, sent away to her estranged aunt Esmerelda to live in her lilliputian little shack in the middle of nowhere. And by that I mean literally, Cordelia had been dropped off in a field.
The grass felt stodgy under her boots, with every scuffle of feet cam a horrible squelching noise, and if she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough she could swear that she wad sinking. Mud pulling her down, grass curling around her laces like a hundred snakes dragging her down, a millimetre a minute. She took in a deep breath that was more rainwater than air, it smelt nothing like New York — of dirt and wet, and something a little sweet.
She curled her fingers, the bandage on her left hand was stained and damp, an her skin felt like rubber as it healed. She turned her hand around, flesh and skin fell away before her eyes and all that were left was a scarred skeletal hand, bandaged still. Her fingers were bones, locked an ivory grasp around the handle of her carry on, eyes staring unfocused at a rather dreary looking tree, leaves paler, trunk thinner and limper than any other tree around it, she almost didn't notice the beat-up midnight blue pickup truck pulling up, the wind howling in her ears — air spiralling between the holes of a hollowed out skeleton, whistling between two walls of bone — the sound of a horn blaring almost didn't get through.
The limp tree stilled, its branches stopped dancing and the world came back to her, vibrant colour and the deafening pitter patter of raindrops on her waterproof coat all at once, too fast she moved, nearly slipping on mud that was almost to her ankles at this point. The carryon took several hard tugs, tangled in grass that had twirled and intertwined itself with the wheels, determined to keep it on that side of the road. An image of a designer suitcase overrun with vines and ivy and tall grass ran through her mind, and then an image of her with a pair of very large garden shears approaching menacingly ended it quickly. The suitcase was freed, and it and Cordelia were both loaded into the strangers car.
