***
The clocktower ushers the sunset. With every toll that travels down the mountainside, the sun recedes from the thickening shadows.
*huff…hu…hah…*
She runs barefoot over a dirt footpath. As she winds down the incline in a messy sprint, urgency vibrates in the depths of her stomach.
The respite is ending.
The solemnity was only for the daylight, to pay respects to the Crown. Be a darling, smile, shake hands. Not a single cuss unsheathed on such an occasion. It was a respectable day to wander around. But come sunset, it’s unwise to be so far from your territory.
The crowd in the procession had dispersed earlier for this reason. She should have left along with them, but was distracted by the casket boy. As she relives that moment, it suddenly rattles her, momentarily losing her rhythm.
She reaches up to her eyes and touches the side, where the rim of her glasses would be. No cold metal there.
He saw my eyes.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
She gives herself a small fistful, wondering why she stayed to watch him.
Her calloused heels thunder against the cold earth as she turns a bend in the road, towards distant lights on a low hill.
The toll of the clock tower stops.
It leaves a stingy ring in her ears. The sky turns into a dark, hazy blue. Everything in the forest begins to lose its edge.
Torches and lamps suddenly glow just outside of the town, pointing in her direction. There’s an exchange of laughter and catcalls among the silhouettes hiding in the trees. Something whistles past her leg, grazing her skin.
Her face contorts to form several chins.
She keeps running but makes a wide sideways curve for the town. Another emerges from the darkness. She barely dodges the blur of a weapon and dives into the thickets, congratulating herself for the maneuver.
They were older and stronger, but she knew these parts enough to know which silhouettes belonged to spitty youths from a nameless group.
She loses them in the overgrowth and makes her way back on the main path. Though her mind is already at the mahogany doors ahead, gravity has the audacity to drag her body. She strains against physicality and the hilly terrain, stumbling over nothing every few steps.
At last the town’s borders were in sight. Those majestic, moldy wooden pillars.
*Thwack!*
She greets the ground in an instant.
***