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Snow pounded against the roof of the cabin. Its windows, already cracked and worn with age, had completely misted over from the cold, shining a pallid white glow into the darkness of the bedroom.
In that bedroom, only two pieces of furniture, both coated half in scratches and half in dust, remained— a wooden closet that was nearing its end, and a ragged, half-broken bed, where a girl sat at its side, staring at the wall.
The girls hands were bunched into fists on her knees, which were bound inside dark-brown stockings. Her pleated skirt, dotted with a black cross-pattern, no longer puffed up around herself as it once had, instead sagging limply against the mattress.
While the skirt was as red as the tips of her hair, her turtle-necked garb was as black as the rest of that hair, with sleeves that swelled out both at her shoulders and wrists before being tapered into cuffs. About her abdomen she wore a black and red bodice, where a belt wrapped itself around her hips, sporting two small pouches. Her silver eyes settled to a hue more black than white.
A loud crack shot the girl from her melancholy. She looked up, ears perking at the sound, but she didn’t hear that crack, or any similar cracking sound, anything that could possibly be classified as a crack— instead, she heard a growl.
Slowly the girl stood off the bed. She stepped towards the exit of the room, grabbing the red and black conglomeration of iron and metal that she’d left leaning against the wall.
She held it in both hands, as one would a baseball bat, or a newborn child.
The girls boots crunched against the snow outside, her eyes darting cautiously about herself as she scanned the dark, barren forest for the slightest fraction of movement.
…
Maybe she’d misheard. And slowly, the girl turned back to face the open doorway, cocking her hood back over her head and
Sharp claws suddenly swung against her back, causing her to stumble to her left and be caught by a mighty thrust in the abdomen. The girl cried out and flew back, slamming into the snowy ground before realizing just what had attacked her.
A large, growling beowolf, its fur dripping black onto the white surface below it, its claws digging into the earth. Its red eyes bore straight through the girls skull, and its teeth…
Its teeth dripped with blood.
The girl quickly, clumsily, felt her back. She pulled away and found a small clump of torn fabric lying in her palm, but no blood.
She wasn’t bleeding. She glanced back at the grimm. It was taking a step forward.
The girl jerked herself onto her side and grabbed the weapon she’d dropped from her fall, aiming it forward and dislodging its side. Instantly, the front of the contraption opened, and two bullets flew free.
The beowolf roared and dodged, sending each bullet into a tree, swinging its claws towards the girls front. She quickly used the momentum to stand back up, switching the rifle in her hands up into a large, complicated scythe. She swung the blade down over the back of the grimm and into the snow, where it lodged itself cleanly.
Then, with a small grunt, the girl hoisted herself over the beowolf, swinging the scythe from its positioned point and straight through the grimm’s side. The terrible beast barked loudly in pain, a splatter of black gushing into the ground.
The girl landed on her feet, scythe still in hand, partially coated with that same black ooze. She formed her weapon into a rifle yet—
The grimm launched at her, just as she was in the midst of the switching process, causing the still-formed blade of her scythe to swing itself downward and slice through her lower leg.
The girl let out a hiss of pain, staggering against a decaying bush as the slender wound began to leak blood.
How had her aura not caught that? But the answer quickly hit her when she realized that, through the torn spot of her stocking, her ankle bone was indented through her skin.
The girl knew she couldn’t afford to wait, as the beowolf clamped its jaws right beside her left shoulder, just after she managed to catch the movement and swing to the side. She then ducked below the creature’s head and formed the rifle of her weapon fully, aiming it straight into the grimm’s neck and firing.
But somehow, some how— the bullet merely grazed its pelt. The beowolf roared, its head flying straight at her own as it once more attempted to bite into her, before swinging her backwards with its own body. The girl only managed to limply punch it in the eye.
She flew back into the ground by her makeshift home, which she’d only ever made her “makeshift home” because she couldn’t accept the one her friends had made for her.
She couldn’t accept that her friends were still trying to stick with her at all. Not after what she did. What she let happen. Who she let die.
The girl saw the beowolf bare its teeth, eyes focusing in on her.
She never even knew that girl as much as they did. And now she’ll never get to know that girl again. No one will. Because she’s dead. She died. She died and
I did nothing to stop that.
The girl stood on unsteady legs, dropping her weapon beside her on the snow.
But they still tried to help me.To comfort me. Comfort me like I even knew that girl as much as they did. Why wasn’t I comforting them? Why wasn’t I there for that girl?
The girl clenched her fists and grit her teeth.
Why isn’t my own team here for me?!
She flew at the beowolf, her body exploding into a flurry of rose petals that swam gracefully through the air, through the snow that continued to fall around her. In a mere fraction of a second, that blip of roses shot straight from her original position, through the air, through the snow, through the beowolf, and
Slammed into a tree, right before she could leave the beowolf’s body. And as soon as she reformed, all she heard was a quiet bark.
The area around her became showered with murky, black goo. The head of the creature platted to the ground only a foot away, its open jaws gushing out its own body matter like a broken faucet.
The girls skin began to burn. She was coated in that black ooze now, and it now began to burn up her red cape and hood. With a cry she threw it off, watching as it sizzled against the snow-covered ground.
She stood there momentarily, struggling to breathe. She placed a hand against the tree she’d collided with…
…and saw the beowolf’s head beginning to lift from the ground.
The girl watched as the grimms’ body began to, almost effortlessly, reform itself, black ooze repiling into the shape of a large, dominant wolf.
And as soon as it had fully regenerated, by whatever means it had done so, it glowered down at the trembling girl.
She started to scream.
She leaned herself forward, throwing her arms back and screamed directly at the beowolf, her eyes wide and tear-stained, but with not a glow to them.
Her skin burning from both the cold, the strain of the fight, and the splattered black flesh still latching to her body, she screamed at the grimm as it began to back away, either expecting those silver eyes to awaken at any moment— or from the sheer overwhelm of all that grief.
The girl stepped forward, still screaming, crying her heart out while those tears remained unshed, in the silver eyes that, try as they might, dared not glow.
And even as the beowolf began to run away, through the woods and into the darkness, the girl screamed, until the scratchiness in her throat seeped into the sound of her voice, causing it to crackle and slowly, but surely, die.
At once, the girl fell silent. She stood there, in the small, snow-covered clearing just outside of the cabin she’d made home, which somehow hadn’t sustained as much damage as she feared. Snow trickled down upon her puffed shoulders, and her red skirt lightly billowed as she bent down to retrieve her ruined cape and hood.
She dragged the cloth gracelessly along the ground, grabbing the weapon she’d dropped just outside the cabin’s entrance. Quietly, as if hoping someone would be there to surprise her with… anything good, she stepped through the doorway, shutting the door and locking it tightly, before dropping both cloak and scythe right behind it.
The girl walked slowly through the cabin, that lonely cabin— every fraction so utterly, painfully unremarkable, as though time itself, or whatever entity there might possibly be out there, had never meant for it to be— until she reached the bedroom.
Snow pounded against the roof of the cabin. Its windows, already cracked and worn with age, had completely misted over from the cold, shining a pallid white glow into the darkness of the bedroom.
In that bedroom, only two pieces of furniture, both coated half in scratches and half in dust, remained— a wooden closet that was nearing its end, and a ragged, half-broken bed, where a girl sat at its side, staring, again, at the wall.