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05-05-2015, 02:09 PM
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You saw her before I did; it was your instant, shuddering alarm that made me whip my head around, to see something emerge from the shadow of a tree. It didn’t take long to realize that sudden horror pouring from you; it washed over me, mixing in with my own as my eyes found the hazy movements of a dead thing. What else could she be? Clearly she was a corpse brought back to life, wasting away in a sun that was way too hot for autumn. Even the way she moved seemed wrong; despondent and hazy and unfocused, like her limbs weren’t entirely her own and she barely remembered how to do the walking thing right. But I guess that’s what happens when certain arteries are cut and the muscle is peeled from bone and marrow. She looked like all of her was disconnected from the rest of her—and I wondered if her brain was part of that equation. Didn’t take me long to find out. I was actually debating whether or not I should approach; dead things walkin’ are strange things, things that make no sense, follow no law or moral, and I wasn’t about to put you in danger. But then she talked to me, words that made sense and not at all—and all the logic to it sorta rushed at me, and I paused, hesitating while it caught up, listening to the warble of her words leave her crusted mouth like some crooked, backwards-ass lament. *“If you are here to kill me, please do it now. It would be beneficial to both of us…Ironic that this new edge is already sending out rogues to kill us.”* Laughter shouldn’t be a thing that haunts, like her laughter was doing. Laughter shouldn’t sound like something trapped in a metal cage, alone and dying and disconnected from itself. Something other than fear was rising up in my gut, and I wasn’t sure what it was—but it was sad in a way that I didn’t know before, sad in a way that was greasy and sick. “I ain’ here to kill you,” I said carefully, “I’m not the one.” My own words were….smooth for once, once you compared them side by side to the scratchy defeat that bubbled from a shrunken throat. I spoke lowly, slowly, wary of a walking dead-thing. I paused again—calculating for once, trying to be fragile with this corpse, because I wanted to keep my word and do her no more death. It looked like she had been through enough of it. The Edge stuck in my head though, in a different way than the Basin had. The Basin was a personal evil for me—a tragedy that kept following me in ironic and heartbreaking ways. The Edge was a stranger; could they have been the ones the Basin had “helped out”? “Are—are you from the Falls, ma’am?” I offered, again in that slow, steady voice—using “ma’am” for once, a rusty thing that left my mouth coated in dust. It stood to reason that something this dead and this ready for death would come from a place that had just been crushed under heel and hoof. I took note of the way she said “new edge”. It fell on my mind in a strange way, a way I had to remember. “Why would the Edge want you killed?” @[Elsa] |
