Sanguine

Hollow’s End, late Summer

The sun beat down on the girl’s browned skin as she handled the scythe, swishing it along the rows of wheat her family owned, her father working a row over. The harvest had to be brought in, rain or shine, heat or chill, never mind the comfort of the workers; still, she’d have loved to go topless as her father did. She compromised by wearing her thinnest blouse and a pair of trousers – another reason the girls snickered as they passed, or looked fearful. What was it about cross-dressing that made people want to scream and throw things, anyway? She made no effort to disguise her breasts, which were beginning to develop at the tender age of 9, nor did she ACT particularly masculine, other than doing the chores, exploring the world around her, not being grossed out by the facts of life (and why on EARTH did they think things like mud were intolerable? She loved the feel of a good squish between her toes)… well, alright, so she didn’t act like the other girls either. But that didn’t make her any less of a girl, did it?

She paused to wipe the sweat from her brow, glancing up at the sun and habitually making the Sign of Pelor. Pelor’s Light protected these fields as it did most of the human world – it kept the darkness away. Though, she rather liked the cool feel of the night air on her skin.. still, she was aware of the dangers darkness presented to a young woman. After all, women did get raped and mugged in bigger cities – one reason among many that people had hesitated to rebuild them when most of them were destroyed in the Great War. Elves lurked in the darkness too, now, and a number of demonic… things. None of THEM would ever have interest in a little girl like herself, muscled and tanned as she was.

The school-bell rang from town a short ways away – must be three o’clock already. The other girls’d be walking home along this path in a few moments, them that didn’t linger in the general store at the soda fountain. They’d see her and snigger, figuring their oh-so-impressive knowledge of the backs of boys’ heads and the feel of their soft hair was more important than her practical knowledge of the feel of the wooden handle beneath her. They’d probably chop those pretty braids off if they held the instrument in her hands for but a moment. But then, she had no idea what to say to a boy. When she’d been able to attend, she’d actually bothered to pay attention to the lesson at hand, learning maths and language; she’d known she had very little time in school before her parents’d need her for one thing or another, so she spent it learning as much as she could. That, too, set her apart.

Ah well. One day some younger son would want the farm, and her parents would handle the negotiations, and she’d be a Mrs. It didn’t matter. She still had the warm sun and the cool night, the strong handle and the pliant wheat. She had to get back to work. Her future didn’t matter.

Bastian’s Keep, Spring

She waited in the darkness for the pain to come again – the pain and torment fed the machine, you see, they had explained it to her a few times as though she were a child. The pain fed the machine, and the machine fed Man’s addictions. The liquid Agony extracted kept a more potent feel when it was distilled, just as her blood kept a strange shine to it when it was extracted, and her feathers could hone blades to the sharpest point, or be used as talismans when the right spell was applied. She knew, though, that it was the pain that kept her alive. They could have taken her heart by now, for whatever nefarious deed they wanted, or killed her to gain power from their dark god, but they needed the Agony. It sold for exorbitant sums on the streets – “Angel-Agony”, they called it. Nevermind that her mother had been the angel, her pain was still potent enough to fetch a price. Even her tears were potent. She waited for them to start taking fingers, toes, teeth, but they seemed content to farm her for pain and blood and feathers.

She didn’t know how long she’d been in the dark. Some months, probably, knowing the rate her feathers grew in. The men came and the men went, and she wished they’d kill her and be done with it. The pain wasn’t so bad after this long, but the indignity.. if she was to be treated as so much cattle, she wished she could be butchered like it as well, rather than made to feel how very inhuman she was. She had long since given up hope of rescue.

The door opened. A man entered, spilling light into the darkness, his blond hair gleaming in the light. He was beautiful; she’d have said angelic, but she’d seen real angels before. No, he WAS angelic, mortal or not. His eyes were deep blue pools; his weapon was keen and polished, and drenched in the blood of her tormentors. His armor, soaked in blood, was of leather; blood dripped from a slash down his arm, pooling on the floor, but he didn’t seem to mind. He blinked as though he had been the one in darkness, dazzled by the light, and she felt the warm, expensive, highly sought-after tears sliding down her face, falling, wasted, to the ground. She knew it wasn’t her beauty that stunned him so. She hoped he was here to kill her.

Hollow’s End, Summer

The night surrounded her with its cool air full of secrets and whispers – she could feel the energy, alive, in the air, wrapping around her, caressing her skin. She stood a little apart from her mother, not holding her hand as a younger girl might; she was too enraptured by the air, charged with a coming thunderstorm, smelling of fresh rainwater all the way from the clouds, calling to the moist earth and drawing the smells up to her nose. She loved the rain, and the moon, and the night air; she loved the wheat and the chaff, and all was right with the world. In the morning, Pelor’s light would shine upon the fields and bless them, but like a stern father, his hand could be harsh, his judgment cruel – the night, like a mother, loved her children, and wished them well; how could anyone fear the dark? How could they feel this energy, this life caressing her as a lover would?

Her mother had fallen back; she turned to see why. Her mother was dead. The night had betrayed her like Medea, killing her children, and worse, handing them over to the monsters, for here was the murderer, and in a brief flash of lighting she could see it: he was not human.

And he hungered.

She ran for the barn.

Bastian’s Keep, Spring

She was beautiful.

Hollow’s End, Summer

His weight pressed upon her, forcing her back into the haystack she’d made for the horses, who were going mad now, screaming and stomping and struggling to be free of their pens. He pressed upon her, and his flesh was warm, not cold like it should be – warm with the blood of her mother, warm with her life he’d so casually take from her. His cloak draped around them and she wondered for a moment if he would drop his pants before he penetrated her, more intimately than even rape would be, his fangs into her veins, into her life, drinking her in. She was falling, falling forever into blackness, the world around her fading away, and all she was aware of was the steady beating of her heart, that traitor, feeding his lust, offering herself, her life, her blood, to him as though it were a mug of ale or a cup of tea, not something sacred, something to be held and cherished. His weight pressed on her, but she no longer felt it, lost in the struggle, the sensation that whether she willed it or not, her traitor heart would give herself to him, pumping and pumping until not a drop was left in her broken body, and then he would live on and never even know her name, never know who she was, rob her of everything she was and never once value it any more than she valued the rabbit she’d eaten for dinner. She was nothing to him but a meal, and he held her heart in his hands, and she FELT him, and he wasn’t even hungry, but he had been so sloppy. His heart beat, and it was her mother’s heart, her mother’s hands that held her, her mother’s voice that called to her – but her mother would never give her to the monsters, and so she resisted, struggling to be free, all the while knowing there would be no salvation, no escape from this trap. She didn’t even have it in her to regret never finding true love, or any of the clichéd thoughts people had while dying – all she was aware of was the struggle for life, and all it brought. Life, despite the pain and loss. Life, which she would be denied, for he would not let go, and she was dying, and she was dying…

The light blinded her, but a moment too late. She saw her father, pipe in hand, thrown against the wall, his life sacrificed for hers, and the blond stranger in the doorway came bearing the sign of Pelor, but then the fever claimed her, and she fell into the blackness.