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When she had first woken up after dinner with the Briarwoods– she still couldn’t believe she had been invited to dine with them – it had been frantic and full of panic as she swayed in the wind. She felt cold. So very cold. She had never been so cold before. And she felt pain. Her bones creaked and her throat burned and her ears stung.
And she was still swaying. There was rope around her neck and air beneath her feet. She was hanging.
She had been hanged.
It didn’t make sense. She should be dead if that was the case. But when she took a breath– she hadn’t realized she hadn’t been breathing– no air made it past the horrible rope crushing her windpipe. She could not breathe. She only half realized she didn’t need to.
When she moved, her bones popped in their sockets. It didn’t hurt. It should have hurt. She was still swaying. She still couldn’t breathe. She gripped at the rope and pulled with all of her strength. She had never been very strong.
She didn’t know what had happened, but the next thing she knew she was on the ground with her shoulder at an awkward angle. It didn’t hurt. She had never dislocated anything, but she knew it should hurt. Why didn’t it hurt?
She scrambled to her feet and ignored every pop and creak as she did. Whitestone seemed so wrong.
There were still bodies on the tree. Swaying like she had. She could hear the rope creaking with the weight. They were dead. She was not. She looked away from the tree. She couldn't keep looking at it. Not when she knew deep in her creaking bones that she had been one of those corpses. That she was a walking corpse.
Whitestone was empty. Empty houses, empty streets, empty stores. She ran through the streets until she was no longer surrounded by stone. She didn’t have shoes on. She didn’t have her dress on. She knew she had been wearing shoes and a dress, her parents had helped her pick it. She vaguely remembered the Lord and Lady giving her something else to wear. She was barefoot and wearing a blue shirt with brown pants. Her ears hurt so much.
She pushed her fingers into her hair and wrapped them in dark strands and tugged. It didn’t hurt like it should. She felt the hair trying to take her scalp with it. She let go and pulled her hands away like she had been burned. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
She knew there was a creek nearby, and she kept moving. She didn’t want to be able to see the tree, but she wanted to see herself. She could see white fall in front of her eyes and ignored that her hair had never been more than one color.
It was only when she saw her reflection that she realized how wrong her form was.
She didn’t look like Matilda. Matilda had warm skin and a blush perpetually staining her cheeks. Matilda had a kind smile and kinder eyes. Matilda had round ears that turned red with her face. Matilda was alive.
She had pale skin and a sickly tone to her cheeks. She had a too-sharp smile and eyes swallowed by darkness. She had roughly pointed ears that had been mangled into the shape they were. She was not alive.
She was weak and spindly and wrong . She could feel her bones pressing against her skin as she moved. She could feel every joint aching to pop from its socket. She could feel her lungs refusing to accept the air she breathed. Her heart beat too slowly and it scared her.
She was no longer Matilda Bradbury. You are more than she ever was .
When Laudna woke up after the fight with Otohan Thull, it was with a pain in her chest and something dripping onto her face. She gasped for air she didn’t need and felt it be forced from her lungs when someone gripped her with as much strength as they had. She knew those arms and the raised texture on their skin. She knew the warmth of the body pressed against her own. She knew the way the body shook while it gasped for air.
Imogen was crying.
Laudna didn’t feel as cold as she usually did with her best friend holding her. But then Imogen was apologizing, and the sluggish blood moving through her veins froze. She couldn’t be back there. Not Whitestone. She had never wanted to go back. She had never wanted to see it again.
She ran outside and past the guards posted at the door. Children laughed in the streets, and she hadn’t heard that sound in this place in far too long. All she could hear was the wind in her ears as she hung from the tree and the voice that whispered with it. All she could feel was the rope digging into her skin that took too long to tear away.
But she could see it there. The Sun Tree was bright. It was colorful. It was so very alive. The Sun Tree was no longer what she remembered it as. There was no rope swaying from its branches. No bodies hanging in the air. There was no rope around her neck. Laudna had no voice in her head but the only one she had never tried to block out.
Laudna couldn’t help but push her hands against the bark and feel . The veil fell around her as she slipped into the familiar safety of the dread.
Instead of dripping ichor and leaking eyes there were claws and deep wells of darkness. Instead of shadows and whispers there were branches and flowers. The dread was not what it had been. It was no longer the stretched thing it used to be. It was something beautiful.
She felt like Laudna. And Laudna had Imogen by her side. You always will .