Optional Music Spoiler: Content Warnings Gore, Death Most people had turned her away, she had said. How could anyone blame them? Such a rough, brusque northern woman, with enough of a canted, appraising way of looking at you that nobody would return the glare. Slow spoken, though, and if you had any tolerance for it her broken common was charming in its jagged edges. No-one appreciates a stranger in Kintyr. She was adamant about that. Spirit protected those towns and wits better than ours. For without vigilance, we let it into our home with open arms. --- Suffocating. These were forests that reached down with their limbs held close to the ground, thin trunks and plumes of leaves, cast shadows strangling the air out of her chest and leaving no room in between. Warmer than home, warm enough that sweat clung to her face every time she left the boundaries of the townstead and ventured closer to the ocean, only separated by the thinning strips of woods that were sewn taut together by some thread. They had no work. None they would offer to her. So each morning she would crawl out from the hay piled high near her at the top rafters of the barn, stumble down the splintered wooden ladder, and amble out into the cool morning air. More words were wasted on the shops and stalls of the morning market in that first week, unable to haggle, unable to obtain anything but the most miserly, untrusting of ‘deals,’ than any time before or after. She quickly learned what to say. She learned to go hungry. Only the woods would offer her any attempt at struggle, any slivering chance to claw and bite and spit to find success, to find anything at all. But even then, they were meager. Small rabbits, leaving nothing left to sell once she had stripped them of meat, applied the pelts to any new tear in her coat or clothes, and shamefully consumed the bones themselves. Every eye trained on her left no room for air, in the streets, peering through shuttered windows or from the cornered edge of a stained, well-walked alley. Eyes carved into the bark, patterns curved by time forming a steely, unmoving gaze, the birds and animals themselves unwelcoming to her intrusion. It was not forever. Just enough money, just enough food to see her out. It would be enough. It had to be. Faceless familiar hunters became known to her, with names, with families, and homes. Some that she even saw the inside of, for tense, uneasy dinners. A hundred questions from a curious child she could never hope to answer: a hundred more marked by the scared, silent stares most gave her. Now and then they would be waiting for her, to depart together, the air of their belonging freeing her from the disdain of the land. Trips together were more fruitful, meat and hides shared amicably between them, sorrow shared when they returned with nothing, or resentment piled onto her shoulders for her presumed source of it. It was something. It was a blanket, now, a stuffed pillow discarded and dirty, but hers all the same. A name she would give them that they would accept, mangle in their mouths and in their hands but use earnestly still. No longer a pariah of the outsiders, but a visitor accepted by few, and then some, and then most. Barely, inch by inch, warmth chipping away at the pit in her middle, the shiver of her skin and the shudder of her bones. There was no need to, in this place. To expose her skin, to invert flesh and become more was folly. She could hunt without it, she could live without it. But he couldn’t live without her help. They had taken a shorter route, a hope for a quicker hunt and easier game. All they had found was the misfortune of stumbling into the sphere of a stray pack of wolves. Holding formation kept a few at bay. The range of her spear cut one down before it could hope to reach them. But the ravenous air of the woods prevented them from fleeing, from ever letting up, and she knew this was the land itself seeking to expel her. He caught one of the two that snuck behind them with his arm, echoing screams cutting through the woods, reaching up past the leaves it rustled and soaking the earth with blood below. No time to consider. It was at her shoulder, it was for her throat-- but her flesh was wont to bite back. Shredding the snout with a flurry of bone, clawed teeth bursting out of her hand and past her glove, shorn garment swallowed up by fur and meat. Heaving the remains of the beast off of her, scrambling along the earth and towards the sounds of her struggling hunting partner alone, vision smudged by blood and adrenaline. Burgeoning weight slammed into the creature, taking some of the man’s skin with its jaws whilst she wrenched them away. Dirtied claws dug into her as they would dirt, muddying the remains of her shirt and gambeson. Another boned spike, another plate grinding against sinew, all together enough to ward off the rest of the meat. His breathing was shallow, weakly staunching the flow of blood from his arm. Hers were few, skin torn from the chest up, face splattered and stained. Not a single second wasted, another moment with no time to hesitate, tearing into the meat and devouring it wholly. Closing slim layers of skin over herself to slow the flow, knitting faux bandages out of hair and packing it into her wounds. By the time the unfiltered sun hit her eyes, her wounds were sealed. Only the blood, only the ruination of her clothes, the sour expression, and the half dead man she lugged along with her indicated that anything was wrong at all. She called out hoarsely. No-one came, and then one, who called out louder, and then more, taking him from her arms and demanding an explanation. She avoided their discerning gazes, explained only as it happened in her mind. It was enough in that moment. They offered help, she denied it, lumbering off to the haven of her ladder, her scaffold in their barn. There was only so much time to pack, to collect herself, peeling her ruined clothes off and burying them in the damp corner beneath years of mellowed, packed manure. Cleaning the blood off would come later, at a stream along the road, at an abandoned well, anything. She had left her spear back in the woods, forgetting about that would certainly be starvation. Dim afternoon light filtered in through the rotted planks above her, sun cresting the edges of the forest by the time she exited with a cleaner pair of clothes. With only her pack held loose to her shoulders, she somberly slunk through the edges of the woods and closer towards town, intent on retracing her steps only. Her intent would not match reality. A few of them were gathered at the edge of the town, lanterns illuminating distant, distorted expressions. Some held weapons tensely in their arms, clinging dearly to them and only angling them in her direction once spotted. They called out, bright beams cutting through the dusk of the evening to pin her to her place. “There it is, by the trees--” She bolted. Cacophonous alerts and rumbling cries followed her into the trees, in a direction unknown, eager to get as far away as she could, pounding in her ears ruining all sense of space and direction. It was just enough for her to be able to avoid colliding with a larger tree or tripping along a root, thin leaves and stringy branches cloying at her and whipping past, leaving only small hooked seeds in her clothes and scratching across her face. How could he have done anything but see? Anything but hear the twist of her flesh and understand what his eyes, his ears, and the palpitations of his heart told him. Though no further from her pursuers, the thinning of the trees and the faint crashing of waves against stone indicated her departure from the grasp of the woods. The earth ushered her towards the sea, towards the harsh mountainous face of stone. They had fanned out, by the time she broke into open grass, encircling her and ushering her towards the edge. Land and Man together working her into such a corner, how could it be any other way? Her face was darkened, burnt by wind and still stained by quickly dried blood, the tips of her ears and nose numbed by the chilled air. Only managing to stumble backwards, her pack sloughed from her shoulders, holding her hands out to the crowd, most of their words drowned out by the thunderous brush of water against stone, of air weaving through worn holes in the rocks and whistling out into the unknown. But it was everything she had dreaded to hear, every word caught just under her Brother’s breath when he hissed at her, unable to see his eyes and peer into his intent. “Monstrous thing.” “How could we--? How could it--?” No words would dare cross the threshold of her throat, caught in a trembling, manic stupor. She held her hands up in only the weakest display of peace, the warping of her skin and the creaking of her bones betraying her stance. Any further would spell death, any closer would be a violent fight for life. The first seam appearing on her arm was the signal. From past her vision, an arrow whizzed over the heads of its compatriots, lodging itself into her shoulder and forcing her back, puncturing the open space of the fetid maw along her upper body. She crawled along, disoriented, towards whatever end was closest to her. The roar of the bottomless depths, the will to find her footing, another arrow, and then the cool, open air... “You are Anathema to--” She didn’t last long enough to feel the ocean on her skin for more than a fraction of a second. The stones battered the body, snapping neck and bone and muscle and skin, catching limbs and holding them there, but dredging the remains of it into the currents and shallows, battering it against the rocks until it was worn and viscera. Until it started to stitch itself together again, saltwater hewn into its veins. The first time she woke, her lungs were filled with the sea. It was dark enough she couldn’t follow the bubbles, and the rocks embedded into her legs thrashed when the currents pulled her head into another stone. It expunged the rocks, this time. It was made of the rejected water. The second time she woke, she was able to feel sand kicked up from the ocean floor beneath her, silted and rocky, unable to gasp for more than two faint, agonized breaths, before fading again. It would drag itself closer to air. The waves would take it to salvation. The first time they woke, it was on the shore. Jerking their head up, spewing lungfuls of saltwater onto the ground in front of them and wheezing. Skin chafed raw by sand, goosebumps littering wherever it was not. Their teeth ground against each other, slender hands closing around their shoulders. Bleached white hair fell over their eyes, ruined by brine enough they could see nothing around them. But they coughed, and gasped, and then began to laugh, tittering, spiteful, and hollow. The waves sang their hymn while they walked along the edges and away, lapping at their feet, incapable of drawing them in ever again, only meekly pulling sand back into their footfalls. With those erased indents of presence, what remained of them was only the blood stamped over the rocks.
This is a wonderfully engrossing story. At the end, why the sudden change in pronouns? Was this some sort of baptism?
