Netta blinked her eyes opened and watched as the first soft fingers of sunlight peered through the shadows of the forest. Somehow, unbelievably, after a long, cold night, the day was starting. She had somehow fallen asleep atop the stone slab.
Grunting, Netta sat up, stretching. It was when she happened to move her hurt ankle that she realized that the pain that had been there, before, was gone. Had disappeared.
Startled, Netta grasping along the length of her ankle. She was astonished at the lack of pain, swelling, or discoloration. Anything that could have shown that there had ever been an injury there to begin with.
Turning slowly, Netta found that the Witches on the ground were asleep. Sometime in the night it seemed that they had forgotten that they were supposed to have been sleeping in shifts.
Netta had been a little worried about what was going to happen to her, if and when Ash showed back up. Just one thought that had crossed her mind was if Ash would even remember her. Would harm her or, much worse, the Witches who had accompanied her here.
She certainly could not recall much - if anything - about him.
Netta was broken from her reverie when she heard a great, sudden crashing - through what sounded like the underbrush.
Startled, Netta turned and tried, desperately, to peer into the darkness. When she couldn't see anything, a wave of anxiety started, low in her stomach, then swept through her, a terrible fear of the unknown.
She turned to her right, for a moment glancing down again at the two Witches on the temple's floor. Netta examined their exposed faces, saw that their expressions were slack with sleep, their eyes gently shut. A feeling of protectiveness overcame her and she felt the muscles and bones in her fingers tighten as she clenched onto the edges of the stone surface.
Netta hesitated, afraid of what could be waiting for her as she stared into the uncomforting darkness of the woods. Even with how skeletal the limbs of the many trees were in the winter, the ancient growth of them that had likely never been touched created a thick, heavy darkness that the beginning of morning could not hope to erase.
It was the weight, the momentary burst of heat that pulsed from the chain that hung from her neck, that jarred Netta's attention.
As she lifted her gaze back up, she thought that she could see eyes that glowed, red, in the gloom.
There was a scrap of something in the withered vestiges of memory that she felt in her mind, like a phantom pain calling out.
Netta leaped from the slab, swinging her legs around so that she was standing, then running from the raised platform of the temple.
She ran into the snow, without giving a thought to the fact that one of her feet had no covering for it. It was when she reached the edge of the clearing that the temple stood in the center of that Netta realized that she felt no pain from the cold of the snow on her naked foot.
She struggled through the underbrush, kicking and shoving branches out of her way as it felt that they were trying to grab her or eviscerate her. Netta was lost, thinking that there was no way that she could find where those familiar eyes had gone.
She had lost him.
And then, as she stopped her running to lay against a tree, defeat wrapping around Netta like crushing vines, she smelled it. Like the aftermath of a forest fire, in the middle of a frozen, still forest.
Slowly only at first, Netta followed the scent on the wind until she was running in the shadowed, rich darkness. She hardly noticed that the tree limbs hardly seemed to strike her any longer, the brush rarely seemed any longer to be a hindrance. In Netta's mind, where almost nothing else remained, she recalled that smell with a hitch her her chest.
She was unable to stop the tears that coursed down her face, the sobs that tore out of her throat.
She was high on the last remaining vestiges of desperate, maddening hope. A hope that was giving away, moment by moment, to engulfing despair.
If she could not find him now, he would be lost to her forever.
And then it came to Netta, a potent increase in strength. She felt, then, as though she was standing not very far from where a great fire had just died.
It came, after she had leaped over a fallen log, a small clearing that was free, utterly, of any sign of the snow. it was free, also, of the cold that covered the rest of the world.
She glanced up and found It, like a burst of vibrant color amidst the shadowed sea of rapidly melting snow surrounding. It stood, thick shadows that could never quite cover the outline of the large shape of the bipedal, great Monster barely concealing it.
She hesitated, her body preparing for a mad dash back to the temple in the hopes that she wouldn't be slaughtered before she could reach help.
Still, she could not flee.
Netta tried to make Its features out. She could see the shape of large, gaunt arms, long legs and a head that was connected to what looked like a duet of twisted arms of the branches of a tree. They rose above Its head, bold with the immediate impression of a spindling, wicked-looking, natural crown.
Fear choked Netta at first. And then longing - sorrowful hope - broke through.
Ashwood. This had to be him - somehow, she hoped, needed this terrifying creature to be It. Him.
Her hand extended, along with her mind, struggling to touch this Monster's with her own. No sooner than she had grasp of Its mind, Its wild, barbarian's consciousness, than she felt the heat, the blinding fire.
She realized that she recognized this fire, had felt it when she had told Ophelia to kill her.
Heartbreak, as It divested Itself of her touch with shocking ease.
Gasping, Netta struggled to find her way back to that mind, to meld herself with It like twining fingers.
STOP.
Its thoughts were loud, blaring, with no pretense of humanity.
At first, Netta did as It told her to. She retracting, as though harmed by actual flame.
She slammed her eyes shut, regaining control of her breathing. Every aspect of Netta ached, burned with need that felt greater than her need for safety. Slowly, she opened her eyes.
Netta gasped. She had not heard a thing, but when she looked up, she found herself gazing up at a face that seemed to yell down the almost barren walls of her memory.
Before she looked up at his face, she could feel Him. It was not just his potent smell, which filled her head like a drug, but his presence. It was him. The legendary Ashwood that the Netta who she had been only a month ago had treasured, clung to like a last piece of debris in a flood.
Looking up, she saw His face. It was one shadowed by a dark, brown horseshoe's mustache and a patch of hair on his chin. Thick hair fell down to conceal the upper half of his face, leaving features, a long, overlarge nose and wide, almost-thin mouth in contrast from the darkness and shadow.
With very little to go on, Netta nevertheless felt that this was certainly not the face of the man that she struggled to recall. He seemed so very different from the outlines that she could barely grasp.
He was too rough, too overtly masculine - older, taller, blunter.
It finally occurred to Netta that this strange, terrible creature could kill her.
He spoke, and it was only at the sound of his voice that it truly clicked in Netta's mind that it was someone's that she knew all too well.
"Nettles -" His voice sounded ragged, almost as though it belonged to a beast attempting speech. The hoarse, unguarded nature of it struck her like a sharp blade that had been stuck in her chest.
And then he spoke, not aloud, but in her mind. The reverberations of his voice, his life's force, glanced off of the walls of her mind like a roar.
I died. I remember once when I thought I had died, then awoke in the desert, found you. But this, this was death. And you -"
Netta gasped, felt his fire and the pure essence of what he was trying to say. They were revelatory images and sensations in her mind, nothing in the least like baseless Human language.
Human language could conceal emotion and sincerity. In comparison to what she experienced, even the most emotionally revealing and vulnerable moment that she had ever had with one of her own kind seemed empty, afraid of what their words could give away.
The problem was that there was simply too much of him to reason at, and Netta was too astonished by being abruptly plunged into the overwhelming, endless ocean of Ash's emotions that she could not hope to swim to safety in it, let alone analyze what surrounded, whispered, caressed, burned, crushed.
In a moment and without warning, he gripped, plunging her into the apex of his wide chest. His skin smelled, hotly, of burnt wildflowers, underlayed with honeysuckle and juniper
As quickly as he had grabbed her, the Monster pushed her back, took her chin in one of his long-boned hands. His fingers easily reached to enfold either side of her face.
It was you. You saved my existence from being erased. After everything I've lived through, what I've done, it was you that awoke me, grew the small flame of what was left of me, stayed in my temple...
Netta was nearly undone by terror, as well as strange, alien, and yet all too familiar desire when she felt the shudder from the depth of his soul to every piece of his skin that touched hers. He was overcome with a kaleidoscope of emotion, but for a moment that was pushed aside for a bloom of awareness that she was a shivering, desirous knight errant. And he knew that she had come for him, bled and sacrificed, basically crawled to come here.
He spoke as the wave of need abated for only a moment. Let me hold you.
Netta felt as he reached his hands down to take her into his arms. Where he wanted to keep her.
Netta shoved him away, fear creeping into her mind. "W-wait," she hurried. She looked up into that unfamiliar face that nevertheless seemed to call to her, compel her with those fiery, inhuman eyes.
When, finally, he stopped, she said, "I don't - I lost all memory of - of you."
It was pointless, perhaps, to say it. He could see everything of her, perhaps knew a moment before she reacted what she would do, say. Still, Netta did not fully know what she was engaging here. What she could stand to do any further that would surely brand her a traitor to her own people.
Her breath hitched in her chest. Netta thought then that she must be in her nightmare after all. She had been finally caught by the predator that had been tracking her, with her willingly walking into his lair.
Unbelievably, when she felt him wrap his arms around her - each one of which was as big as a tree branch - she could feel him shiver anew.
She felt the emotional weight of his inadvertent sign of weakness. It wrapped itself around her, enveloping her in his vulnerability, making the fear in Netta's chest seem to recede softly.
She was pressed to his flesh, his skin the color of dull gold.
They remained like that for some time. She almost spoke aloud, but felt herself longing to speak to him in a language that he lived in.
Finally, she said, You don't resemble the one that I think I can remember, if I try hard enough...
He laughed in her mind, a warm, relieved sound that had too much of a feral quality to it.
So I have been gone too long, and now my Nettles has forgotten me so easily. I can't go back to that version of myself. I tried. It's too hard to hold onto that image of myself and talk to you like this. He paused, and then there was a true, encompassing sadness. I don't want to, any longer. You told me once that you did not want that man. He paused. You have forgotten me?
For the first time, Netta realized that there was something to this Monster that she knew all too well. Looking at his shadowed face, Netta was overcome with the impression that he was ashamed of this fundamental form. He would prefer to appear to her as a facade, a poor imitation of a beautiful human man with nothing but ice in his veins than to show her this. Here was a man with undeniably a Monster's red eyes, skin the color of tarnished gold, the features of an older man.
She could see in his face - and feel in her mind - the moment that he realized the truth, as enmeshed as he was, instinctively, with her mind.
It was embarrassing to Netta, feeling as though she knew so little of Him. What she did feel was a need for his body - pure lust - building alongside her fear.
His harsh mouth had fallen open, his eyes had widened as wonder struck down anger, sorrow.
His hand had come behind her head she realized too late, long fingers seeming to find the outlines of the bones of her skull, twining and spreading over and through a mass of her hair, holding so that her face was tilted to his.
Softly, he spoke, and it echoed in her mind.
"You want me -" His voice muffled, as his mouth pressed against the top of her head. "like this."
Netta bit her lip to keep from telling him how deeply indeed she wanted him - like this.
Instead, she busied herself with wrapping her arms as far around his tall, somewhat emaciated, yet muscular torso as she could. The moment was a sweet one, surely, but all she could feel was a need for the burn of his skin, to taste his words. Knowledge that he could read her every private thought exhilarated instead of frightening her.
This strange man-creature, whose body smelled of cinders and ancient wood, almost in equal measure, seemed to call her body as Its kindred.
Had the Netta before her ever luxuriated in him - had truly done so with any man, for that matter? At some point, she knew she had held a man - a Human man - in some esteem, but she could be damned if in the presence of so powerful a force of nature if she could recall so much as the name of the other.
She knew, somehow, instinctively, that she had once shared a deep bond with the Monster that held her.
And for a moment, she was offered a moment of clarity in his mind, knew what he had in mind before he said it, began tilting his body rhythmically against her in the first, most primal of dances.
The thought of you, not knowing me. I can't stand the thought of it. His voice in her mind was rough, but had grown soft. She knew his game, what he meant to say next.
Netta trembled to continue the intoxicating, wicked game that he was playing. The not entirely harmless actions and words with a set, surely taboo, end goal in mind.
She did not know if the woman she had once been with this man would have ever considered acting boldly with him, but she did, reaching up to tangle fingers into the thick mass of his hair. She hardly hesitated as she spoke, staring into eyes that glowed, inhuman, back at Netta.
"How can we best become re-acquainted with one another?"