Chapter Text
There she is again, surrounded by looming trees that she should have become familiar with given how often she saw them even if they weren’t real. But they remain a mystery to her still, their shadows changing and morphing around her constantly to the point where she’s unsure where her own form begins and other dark shadows end. The myst that shrouds her vision only makes it worse for not only does she always feel lost within these strange woods, she wakes up with a deep chill settled under her bones.
That is usually how she becomes aware that she is dreaming yet again because despite her life in the village, she’s fortunate enough to go to sleep relatively warm near a blazing fire. And so the chill that creeps up beneath her skin soon after her lids fall shut signals the beginning of the now familiar dream.
She had seen this vision so often now that she could recall everything about it before the entire thing even menifested in her mind. There are the trees, giant and seemingly larger than life that always surround her. There’s the chilling mist that threads in between the trees and their branches, skirting across her skin every so often, like an old lost friend saying hello. The dream would have been fairly innocous if that was all she dreamt of. The strangeness of it arises from the heavy gaze that always seems to follow her in those woods yet no other being presents itself to her, her breath and heart the only sounds seemingly echoing around her. The feeling of being watched, being observed from the shadows is what prevents it from being just a dream. The unseeing eyes feel too vivid, their weight on her form too heavy for her to brush it off. It’s what throws her into being conscious again when it gets too much, her eyes snapping open at once.
It leaves her disoriented, then, when that day she wakes up not to escape those eyes from her dream but to rough shaking and a muffled voice grating on her ears. Not how her usual mornings start.
“Will you wake up already?”, she heard someone above her and it took her a moment of collecting fragments of wakefulness to recognize who it was. Though, feeling her head clear of sleep, she wondered why it took so long to place a name to the voice seeing as it’s one of the many that had always berated her existence.
“What do you want?” She grumbled as she pushed away the coverings she had been huddled under in bed, shooting a weary look at the blonde standing in her room.
May crossed her arms across her chest, left foot starting to tap on the floor in a practice picturre of impatience. The girl was hardly older than herself and yet, following in the elders’ footsteps, had taken to looking down on her since they were young. The blonde had her fair hair tied back in a low braid as usual though the way she kept fiddling with the ends of it was certainly new.
“Had that blasted nightmare again, I suppose?” May asked, turning away to rummage around the room before she could answer, “The elders have told me to get you. They wish to talk to you about something.”
She narrowed her eyes at the blonde’s odd behavior. Not only did the others never came near her room in the morning to wake her up, the elders rarely called on her for anything, preferring to ignore her existence until absolutely necessary. And with the way May kept flitting from one corner of the small room she stayed in to the other, there certainly was something strange about it all. May, or rather the entire village, would rather step on an axe than risk getting tainted by the “curse” while touching her things. So for the blonde girl to be gathering her things must really mean something major.
‘Did they finally decide to throw me out of the village then?’, she thought wryly. She wasn’t certain if that was something to celebrate for herself or not.
“I reckon you wouldn’t know why they wish to talk to me?”, she asked May, snatching her things from the other girl. A strange sense of satisfaction settled in her chest when May flinched as their hands brushed. It was amusing to watch the people around her who looked at her in disdain usually cower away at the slightest of her shadow around them. Sad as it may be, it always amused her as well.
May huffed and she let the blonde pretend she hadn’t jumped back a second ago like a spooked rat, “No, I do not. I was only told to fetch you as soon as you woke up.”
She made sure the roll of her eyes was clearly visible to the older girl as she scoffed, “Of course they wouldn’t tell you something apparently so important. Keep working on that boot licking, I’m sure you’ll get some scraps of attention soon enough.”
When the expected shove or smack didn’t come as was the norm following any smart words from her end, she nearly gaped at May who was nearly maroon in the face with how hard she seemed to be holding back.
“Get to the square before I have to drag you out by your hair.” It was all May said before storming out of the room.
The odd behavior was starting to seem less amusing to her now because despite her parting words, she was certain May had been instructed to not hurt her. Nothing could stop May from treating her awfully aside from the elders. That did not happen often which only worried her more.
Knowing she had no other choice, she rubbed the remaining sleep out of her eyes and prepared to freshen up. The water in the basin was icy cold and she ached to indulge in some hot water to wash up but knowing the elders had little patience when it came to her, she cleaned up as best as she could, gritting her teeth from chattering too much.
Once she was done and dressed, she wondered if it was worth risking the elders’ ire if she were to deliberately dawdle and take her time but her own curiosity was eating her up from the inside now.
Before heading out, however, she collected what little she lived with, things she could call her own. If it was truly the time for her to leave this place, she’d rather be prepared. With how little she had to her name, it took her laughably short amount of time to be done with everything. She sighed to herself before heading off to whatever the insufferable old crones had decided her fate would be.
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