How long had it been since she’s had a normal spring evening? Out of all 365 days in the calendar not a single one had been quiet enough for her to rest her weary bones. Her clothes were battered, torn, and her body was covered in cuts.

  Laying in the soft grass, one could mistake her for a corpse. Such was the exhaustion that seemed to shackle her to the spot.

  Through half closed lids, her amber eyes gazed fixedly at the sky, the blue-black night left a weight on her abdomen a feeling akin to someone had punching her in the stomach. Light gray clouds circled the small clearing she was laying in, like guard dogs diligently patrolling their territory.

    But she gazed past that.

   Past the clouds

   Past the sky

   All the way up to where the angels must be.

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   She stared and stared as if to burn holes in the wings of every last one of them.

   The seconds began to drag their feet, protesting the fatigue that had begun pressing itself upon the young girl’s body. Giving in to their indignation, she slowly and jerkily pulled herself up. Her body seemed to creak as she defied gravity and rose to her feet.

   She looked down at her coat. It was tattered, cut, and worn. There was even a sharp curved object caught in the side of one of her sleeves. Her skirt hadn’t fared much better and her boots looked like they were on their last legs.

   Letting out a sigh of resignation, she tore the cracked and bloody claw from her sleeve and muttered to herself,

  “Durable my ass… didn’t even last a week.”

  before tossing it behind her.

   She turned her back on the carnage that was in front of her and limped her way towards a road a few miles ahead.

   Behind her both human and inhuman things lay in pieces. Various fluids stained the ground. Red, blue, yellow, silver, and several colors that one could not describe. Wings and claws, eyes and ears, beauty and terror, all are ways with which to describe the pile of slaughter she left in her wake.

   Finally reaching a derelict road, the girl tore her burning gaze from the sky to glance into the inky horizon that lay before her. She confirmed her direction and began trudging at a steady pace towards the nearest city heaving a long sigh.