Lions Sit in Solemn Lines

Lions Sit in Solemn Lines

Postby Guppy » Sat May 18, 2019 3:26 pm

She dreamed.

soft giggles of children playing.
chanting rhymes
unaware.
innocent


A shift, a world turned on its axis.

crackling, licking, burning
the screams
death, all around her
and she laughed so loudly that her own ears bled

a soft whisper, a gentle stroke of lips against the shell of an ear
please don't go
a breath, a soft purr
sweet nothings
its voice like rolling thunder
I'll eat you whole


She awoke with a gasp, eyes shot open impossibly wide and pupils blown and threatening to swallow her up in the suffocating darkness. A cold sweat soaked her lithe frame, her clothes sticking to her unpleasantly. Panic assailed her, roiling in her gut; her breath came in short gasps that felt as if they were entirely unproductive. Surely, there must be a hand wrapped around her throat and a boot weighing down her chest, she reasoned. Groping hands revealed neither of those.

Safe, she was safe.

safe safe safe.

The nearby fire had dulled and fallen to soft embers; unable to banish the fear assailing her from the surrounding, congested shadows. It was too hot, too cold. Too much. She kicked violently free of her covers. The wildling scrambled forward, driven from the soft pile of furs that made her bed and into the wee early hours. The sun had not dragged itself from behind the horizon so she groped blindly for the char-coated, blunted stick to poke at the embers. Her breath came in little puffs of mist upon the early morning chill. Slowly, slowly she coaxed the fire back to working order and it leapt brilliantly as she blindly, desperately flung a handful of loose tinder onto its shy light.

Abruptly so bright she had to shield her eyes.

The obscure memory of her dream and the cloying sweetness of those soft whispers made her scramble backwards and away from the fire in an attempted escape. Her back hit the cold of the cave she'd been hunkered down in for months, and she narrowly avoided a yelp at the sudden contact. Her arms, sinewy muscle, came to wrap tightly around her knees, pulling them up to her chest as she stared into the darkness lit bravely by her tiny, valiant fire.

The dark, malevolent laughter she felt at the edge of her mind was probably just a memory.

Probably.

She was alone.

alone alone alone

She snapped her eyes closed so hard, she saw whirling white and gray among the absence of light behind her eyelids. Her hands slammed down on her ears to block the imagined laughter whispering around her.

After a quarter-hour, her hands lowered and all was quiet. All was quiet. Softly, a bird whistled from the depths of the forest and she held her breath until her lungs ached with wanting.

...

Eventually, near dawn, an unproductive, fitful sleep reclaimed her.
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Guppy
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