--- o For the Spooktober Prompt #14: Mother 0 ---

   She hates the rain, not the tactility of wet and cold, rather the feeling her own energy being sapped away with it, dissolving what abessive resolve was left within. It was not the beating of heavy droplets upon her that enticed such things, but the gentle pitter-patter that one may otherwise brush off as nary a trifle, or at most, a nuisance. The fog was the worst part, to live under its embrace for so long mudded both heart and ground, harkening to half remembered promises and unspoken lies come to pay their dues. It felt lonely —isolated —forgotten. Intimate, but suffocating.

   It was the turn of seasons, where the leaves began to fall and sour in the procession bitter cold and famine. The quiet was damp and cloying, worsened by dull grey of barely broken skies above, obfuscating bleak shades of dim lifelessness. The numbness was already setting in —both in heart and body as fatigue and hunger invited her into its cold embrace.

   The warmth of lingering embers had been silenced by the rain, but the permeation of decay remained, not long after their end, but long enough for the rot to begin. Any fleeting hope she had finding likewise survivors had long since solvated as was her own hope of survival. She made sure to check everywhere, even if such sights shall haunt her dreams for as long as she draws breath. And she forced such stifled breaths despite the burning in her lungs from sickness and soot, aware of the absence of ambient life around her.

   The small girl peered through the edifice of a fallen building, tucked away but mostly unsheltered from the storm overhead. Held close was the tattered remnants of a scarf, design masked by trembling hands and torn rags. She stood within an enclave hidden in the rubble she sought sanctuary, but curiosity kept her away as heterochrome eyes set intently upon another.

   If it weren’t for the periodic clicking of tongue in mouth, she may not have noticed their presence, but she did. And she knew that sound well. A hunched silhouette stood in the open, focused on something strewn about on the ground before them. If her memory served her right, it was where an old statue once stood, now among the rubble as was the rest of the village. Her village. Her home —At least what little was left of it, a place she shared with nobody.

   She bit her tongue as if it would help to stymie the need to cry out for help. The knowledge of what happens when one does so prevents her, a swift bayonet or bullet for those lucky, a prison of burning homes or the chase of wolves if they weren’t. She didn’t want to think about what happened to the women. And for what? The heresy of praying to pagan gods and false idols unbeholden to the finality of their raptures?

   Alas, it wasn’t so trite, they were merely unfortunate enough to be on their path. Of where the strange masks and regimented boots came, she did not know, but they left nary a scrap of life behind their wake. It hadn’t been long enough for the scavengers to come, but she didn’t want to linger when they arrived, lest she join the spoils whether for beast or man.

   Were they of the same cloth as those who came before her? She pondered but discarded the thought as there were little similarities. They lacked the airs of vicarious savagery she oft witnessed, but the scent of death precipitated upon their surroundings was just as heavy as her heart. But for what purpose drove them here, so far from the throes of the world yonder? Was the stranger here for her? A pitiful and pointless question she already knew the answer to. Perhaps they pursued them, the men with the masks. A specter of sorts that dogged their every step, for reasons she knew not, and had no intention of finding out.

   The figure was still, facing adjacent to where the girl stood, so she saw the brief show of vague memories beneath tattered hood. It was familiar, though scant comfort subsided nostalgia for growing uncertainty. Her newfound wayward traveler housed a set of piercing blue eyes, as cold as the air around them. Set in with a permanent scowl, knitted brows and hints of despair and fleeting determination betwixt locks of faded dirty pink and careworn face. Her own was a pallid mint, offset by the contrast of red and blue eyes. A rare thing, a novelty of sorts, made all the more peculiar by the gentle shade of hair. Yet she could tell the stranger mirrored not the color of her eyes, but the tacit emptiness within.

   ❛ If I don’t move, I won’t be seen. ❜

   Similar thoughts plagued her mind, racing musings distilled anxious nausea that caught both breath and step, hesitating shaken hands that tenderly touch upon cracked stone through a thin veil of frost. Bravery eluded her, rejecting her need —her want to run away; feet glued firmly to the ground and eyes unable to relieve themselves of what she witnessed. Could she choose between fight or flight? Or be trapped as she oft found herself in that of freezing; much like the evening chill, she was so accustomed.

   The absence of a pendant, her pendant, broke her trance as she instinctively reached for it as she always would when anxious. Finding nothing to hold on to, she frantically looked around for, but it likely fell from her hands during her panicked hamartia to flee from her earlier pursuers. It fell, as it was, at the feet of this stranger who now gingerly kneeled to take it in hand, inspecting it momentarily before scanning the area around them. She ducked to hide, hoping the woman had missed her and passed on to elsewhere so she could make her undiscovered escape yet found she could not do so.

   ❛ If I don’t move— ❜

   She only blinked. Barely enough time for someone to turn on heel and approach her, yet this person — This woman, now stood before her, even before the word she spoke died on the breeze. She didn’t even make a sound,  she was just there, leering over the half-wall the child hid behind.

   Her heart sank the moment their eyes met, as if the woman knew she had been there from the start. And she, the young girl —knew who this person was the moment they did, even if she didn’t believe it. She opened her mouth to speak, but naught a whimper escaped.

   Before her; a stark mirror image to fractured memory; absconded of expectations of warmth and maternal embrace she so desperately yearned, she found in its place an enervated haze and darkened sunken rings set upon her unhurried.

   ❝ L’Gosstyn? ❞

   Blunt, indifferent and uncharged. A word she did not know in a strong a brogue hinted with the ghost of staccato, one she found all too familiar. She gazed levelly at the lone child, an unreadable expression painted around empty, exhausted eyes.

   ❛ Mother? Mother! ❜  There were many words she wanted to say, but her lingering hopes were long since stifled despite remnants of a hopeful smile that faded just as quickly as it came.

   The stranger said something under her breath, but just as quickly pondered as to why she did but pursed her lips. A fleeting look of recognition, brief flashes of glassed eyes and inexplicable melancholy, once more plunged into the jaded depths cast down upon her.

   That moment stuck with her, the cold sweat she felt as the hairs on her neck stand on end, a monumental pit in her stomach she had seldom felt. The lack of recognition in her eyes, and the flat detachment of her words robbed her of what little hope she had left.

   But it was not fear nor relief — No, rather it was an acute mix between an all-consuming sadness and hiraeth. It was of a hope crushed as quickly as it came, the knowledge that this was not the person she so desperately needed, but it wasn’t a mocking imitation either. She was too young to understand they were in a world that she was yet to exist.

   ❝ Are you lost? ❞

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