123 Dirt Road settled somewhere at the edges of the Glen, before the tree-line truly started. Its address was something of a formality; the mail went to a PO Box in Rhy'Din City, and nothing resembled neighbors, save for prairie dog mounds and the bones of other old farms. Its exterior was quaint enough; once blue paint rendered steely-gray from the sun's bleaching, with the front hemmed in by a comforting porch that currently boasted a pair of runner ducks babbling to each other in a series of echoless warkwarkwarks and a pup tent closed off to the light of day.
Once past the threshold of the front door, the bright colors in the living room seemed oddly dim. The borders on the shadows went fuzzy, like a swarm slavering before laying the crop of light to ruin. The dolorous tone spread from the sewing room, its doorway bearing a deceptively innocent Cardcaptor Sakura poster with corners bitten and nibbled from pushpins and tape. Next to the door, the wide, blubbery shape of Mothership Washingburp, the potbellied pig, sat with her ears alert and her nose set on a careful series of sniffs. Not a single snort or grunt rumbled from her during her watch, and her breath breezed silently.
The air seemed thick, next to the sewing room door, pushing back through unseen, intangible measures. The exaggeratedly large eyes and frills on the poster's figures seemed almost more ominous for it, an angler's sugar coated gleam to obscure the toothy maw behind it. It rattled once, twice... then blew off of its hinges in a spray of splinters and pulverized dust as the old Singer sewing machine burst through it and across the room.
Mothership broke her vigil with a high squeal and ran towards Emarie's room, turning back and forth nervously at its door. Her whine and grinding snort did little to diffuse the dreadful ambiance, and evening light hovered across the dust and debris to show only the bitter roil of suffocating particles. Gloom settled over the living room, inky and black, as the sun set behind the clouds, behind the hills, and the wind howled outside.
Then, like a comet wrapped in rainbow fire, an enormous ball of fabric burst through the cloud, knotted and wild, beset with bestial claw marks and tears. However, this one didn't have the good sense to land on its side and remain still by the stairs. Blood-streaked, square palms in fingerless, elbow-length gloves ripped out from the fabric and slapped violently against the wall, hard enough to leave two softball-sized dents. The knotted wad of cloth rebounded back towards the sewing room, the reams falling one by one in tangled disarray.
The first to emerge was Saffron's head, pupils in focused pinpricks of glaring pyrite through the low light. Pushpins stuck in her cheek and into the dull, dense scar tissue across her nose and cheeks, and her jaw set forward and tense beneath. Her hair held in its loose bun, but barely, and her ears pinned back like ghost-white wings on the helm of a valkyrie in the midst of a blood fury. Her shoulders, couched in a sleeveless, thick shirt with a priest's collar, emerged next, and finally the coiling whip of her white-furred tail snapped the rest of the bundle to the ground as she landed in her black, sneaker-tread slip-ons beneath the overhang of her cargo capris. Knitting needles, seam rippers and pins jutted all around the tiny seamstress' body, sticking through folds in the fabric of her pants where she was lucky, embedded in skin where she wasn't. "Sandy..." Saffron hissed throuhgh her teeth as she pulled the pins from her face, chin down and eyes hard in case she would need to dodge again. "... you're not going to get anywhere with an attitude like that." The air between the room and the house had a twenty-degree difference in heat, marked by the wall of condensation in the doorframe and the vapor that spilled off of Saffron's sigh as she strode back in.
The ghosts that Saffron had experienced in the days prior were tangible things, complete sensory representations of a personality and body, complete with reasoning, with whole hearts and skin and sentiment, come to offer closure and solace. The presence that mimicked her high school tormenter Sandy was not one of these spirits. Its silhouette hung in the air, a coagulated, transparent shadow with its right arm left thin and in pieces, and a single, strange white light hovering at its face. Her room was a mess. Metal clothing racks lie mangled and twisted. her entire closet of fabric had been strewn across the room in a dreadful array, knotted together in a hateful web of unrealized emotion, crushing whatever furniture remained into unrecognizable splinters of angles and columns. Lurking around the edges, barely audible to any but Saffron and the sow that snorted its worry by the door, came the litany of titles she had earned from Sandy and her gaggle of friends: Stupid Troll B*tch, Fat Goblin, Scarface, Red-headed slut, Pokedyke... The epithets arrived one on top of the other, rapid-fire and rich with the acerbic gnash of teenage spite.
With each step Saffron took, a flood of memory, of old instincts shrieked through her mind's eye; The feel of Sandy's diaphragm spasming and releasing her breath from her knuckles and the tall, flaxen-haired girl doubling over her fist and the sound of her back hitting the locker. The way Sandy's arm popped after she threw a punch at her face, the glint of a knife in the other hand. The drag felt from her hold on Sandy's knife as it tore through her bicep, over her elbow and diagonally across her forearm, plucking through tendons like they were harp strings. The heat of blood splashing on her face, and down her front.
Saffron dug in her heels as the sensations tore through her from the inside out, and her tail whipped back and forth, already trembling with the stomach-turning fury of her adrenaline. She exhaled through her teeth, tense and slow, as she pulled the pins and seam-rippers out of her arms, from her flanks, and out of the tops of her thighs. The damp, dusty air set upon her wounds with perverse glee, causing her knees to drop and her arms to raise. Nevertheless, she breathed through the pain, neither relishing in its punishment, nor wholly ignoring its presence. She held in her immobile, liminal state, surviving the repetitive flashes of torments given and torments received in the presence of the phantom.
Her focus broke, however, as one of Mothership's spirited Hweek-hweeeeekee squeals followed the epithet of Piggy Bitch. Her snicker began, a snorty, rumbling sound in itself, most likely the sound she had made to have earned her the insult. She sputtered and held her arms across her abdomen, cheeks pulling out to accommodate her fangy, sweet smile and silent chuckle. The temperature started to rise in the room, and the wall of fog at its entrance parted enough for the black sow to storm in, circling Saffron with a tire-peal charge sound. This was enough to bring Saffron to her knees, aching from deep within as her laugh dredged in deep enough to bring out tears. Bit by bit, the memories started to slow their fervor, and the fierce, tangible reminders of bloodlust and dishonor wove back into the tapestry of Saffron's history. A wave of rectification, of forgiveness settled around the room, and the corners seemed to sigh in response.
"Huup!" The fox-eared girl gasped for air and groaned out the remainder of her laugh, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand as she looked up. The gloom, the cloying shadow, had settled to simple lightless pockets, no more numinous than a banker's office. Nevertheless, as she set eyes on Mothership, she found the pig turned sideways, taking a defensive posture with her muzzle wide, baring her formidable lower teeth to something in the corner.
Sandy, fully rendered in her slim-fit black jeans, her blue H&M hoodie and hair in a high ponytail, dangled from the bloody ruin of her arm, legs buckled beneath her, big green eyes wild and desperate toward Saffron. A slender, delicate hand had taken it by the wrist, wrapped in a spectrum of tattooed phoenix feathers. Staring back at Saffron with golden, cat-slit eyes and elfin points, was the spirit that she had named, that had taken the form of the fox and led her from metamorphosis to metamorphosis during her stay in Rhydin, the spirit Teumessa. The dainty mouth curled around a chunk of muscle on Sandy's forearm and tore upwards, spraying blood all around her mouth and down her neck with a feral, provocative grin.
Sandy winced in desperation to Saffron, some long, lost phantom of relief on her face, dressed with a fresh batch of anguish as what seemed like unyielding agony reasserted itself to her mind. Her voice was little more than a rasp, squealing and desperate as she looked straight into the graphite gray eyes. "Help... Me..." Then, like a lamp turned off from a switch, the vision disappeared.
Saffron fell to her knees as the vision had dissipated, and her pet pig trotted immediately over to her, nuzzling her face beneath her hand and pressing her round, black-furred body against the little seamstress-shamaness. The round, short fingers scritched and petted Mothership slowly, in a broken, bewildered trance.
Once past the threshold of the front door, the bright colors in the living room seemed oddly dim. The borders on the shadows went fuzzy, like a swarm slavering before laying the crop of light to ruin. The dolorous tone spread from the sewing room, its doorway bearing a deceptively innocent Cardcaptor Sakura poster with corners bitten and nibbled from pushpins and tape. Next to the door, the wide, blubbery shape of Mothership Washingburp, the potbellied pig, sat with her ears alert and her nose set on a careful series of sniffs. Not a single snort or grunt rumbled from her during her watch, and her breath breezed silently.
The air seemed thick, next to the sewing room door, pushing back through unseen, intangible measures. The exaggeratedly large eyes and frills on the poster's figures seemed almost more ominous for it, an angler's sugar coated gleam to obscure the toothy maw behind it. It rattled once, twice... then blew off of its hinges in a spray of splinters and pulverized dust as the old Singer sewing machine burst through it and across the room.
Mothership broke her vigil with a high squeal and ran towards Emarie's room, turning back and forth nervously at its door. Her whine and grinding snort did little to diffuse the dreadful ambiance, and evening light hovered across the dust and debris to show only the bitter roil of suffocating particles. Gloom settled over the living room, inky and black, as the sun set behind the clouds, behind the hills, and the wind howled outside.
Then, like a comet wrapped in rainbow fire, an enormous ball of fabric burst through the cloud, knotted and wild, beset with bestial claw marks and tears. However, this one didn't have the good sense to land on its side and remain still by the stairs. Blood-streaked, square palms in fingerless, elbow-length gloves ripped out from the fabric and slapped violently against the wall, hard enough to leave two softball-sized dents. The knotted wad of cloth rebounded back towards the sewing room, the reams falling one by one in tangled disarray.
The first to emerge was Saffron's head, pupils in focused pinpricks of glaring pyrite through the low light. Pushpins stuck in her cheek and into the dull, dense scar tissue across her nose and cheeks, and her jaw set forward and tense beneath. Her hair held in its loose bun, but barely, and her ears pinned back like ghost-white wings on the helm of a valkyrie in the midst of a blood fury. Her shoulders, couched in a sleeveless, thick shirt with a priest's collar, emerged next, and finally the coiling whip of her white-furred tail snapped the rest of the bundle to the ground as she landed in her black, sneaker-tread slip-ons beneath the overhang of her cargo capris. Knitting needles, seam rippers and pins jutted all around the tiny seamstress' body, sticking through folds in the fabric of her pants where she was lucky, embedded in skin where she wasn't. "Sandy..." Saffron hissed throuhgh her teeth as she pulled the pins from her face, chin down and eyes hard in case she would need to dodge again. "... you're not going to get anywhere with an attitude like that." The air between the room and the house had a twenty-degree difference in heat, marked by the wall of condensation in the doorframe and the vapor that spilled off of Saffron's sigh as she strode back in.
The ghosts that Saffron had experienced in the days prior were tangible things, complete sensory representations of a personality and body, complete with reasoning, with whole hearts and skin and sentiment, come to offer closure and solace. The presence that mimicked her high school tormenter Sandy was not one of these spirits. Its silhouette hung in the air, a coagulated, transparent shadow with its right arm left thin and in pieces, and a single, strange white light hovering at its face. Her room was a mess. Metal clothing racks lie mangled and twisted. her entire closet of fabric had been strewn across the room in a dreadful array, knotted together in a hateful web of unrealized emotion, crushing whatever furniture remained into unrecognizable splinters of angles and columns. Lurking around the edges, barely audible to any but Saffron and the sow that snorted its worry by the door, came the litany of titles she had earned from Sandy and her gaggle of friends: Stupid Troll B*tch, Fat Goblin, Scarface, Red-headed slut, Pokedyke... The epithets arrived one on top of the other, rapid-fire and rich with the acerbic gnash of teenage spite.
With each step Saffron took, a flood of memory, of old instincts shrieked through her mind's eye; The feel of Sandy's diaphragm spasming and releasing her breath from her knuckles and the tall, flaxen-haired girl doubling over her fist and the sound of her back hitting the locker. The way Sandy's arm popped after she threw a punch at her face, the glint of a knife in the other hand. The drag felt from her hold on Sandy's knife as it tore through her bicep, over her elbow and diagonally across her forearm, plucking through tendons like they were harp strings. The heat of blood splashing on her face, and down her front.
Saffron dug in her heels as the sensations tore through her from the inside out, and her tail whipped back and forth, already trembling with the stomach-turning fury of her adrenaline. She exhaled through her teeth, tense and slow, as she pulled the pins and seam-rippers out of her arms, from her flanks, and out of the tops of her thighs. The damp, dusty air set upon her wounds with perverse glee, causing her knees to drop and her arms to raise. Nevertheless, she breathed through the pain, neither relishing in its punishment, nor wholly ignoring its presence. She held in her immobile, liminal state, surviving the repetitive flashes of torments given and torments received in the presence of the phantom.
Her focus broke, however, as one of Mothership's spirited Hweek-hweeeeekee squeals followed the epithet of Piggy Bitch. Her snicker began, a snorty, rumbling sound in itself, most likely the sound she had made to have earned her the insult. She sputtered and held her arms across her abdomen, cheeks pulling out to accommodate her fangy, sweet smile and silent chuckle. The temperature started to rise in the room, and the wall of fog at its entrance parted enough for the black sow to storm in, circling Saffron with a tire-peal charge sound. This was enough to bring Saffron to her knees, aching from deep within as her laugh dredged in deep enough to bring out tears. Bit by bit, the memories started to slow their fervor, and the fierce, tangible reminders of bloodlust and dishonor wove back into the tapestry of Saffron's history. A wave of rectification, of forgiveness settled around the room, and the corners seemed to sigh in response.
"Huup!" The fox-eared girl gasped for air and groaned out the remainder of her laugh, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand as she looked up. The gloom, the cloying shadow, had settled to simple lightless pockets, no more numinous than a banker's office. Nevertheless, as she set eyes on Mothership, she found the pig turned sideways, taking a defensive posture with her muzzle wide, baring her formidable lower teeth to something in the corner.
Sandy, fully rendered in her slim-fit black jeans, her blue H&M hoodie and hair in a high ponytail, dangled from the bloody ruin of her arm, legs buckled beneath her, big green eyes wild and desperate toward Saffron. A slender, delicate hand had taken it by the wrist, wrapped in a spectrum of tattooed phoenix feathers. Staring back at Saffron with golden, cat-slit eyes and elfin points, was the spirit that she had named, that had taken the form of the fox and led her from metamorphosis to metamorphosis during her stay in Rhydin, the spirit Teumessa. The dainty mouth curled around a chunk of muscle on Sandy's forearm and tore upwards, spraying blood all around her mouth and down her neck with a feral, provocative grin.
Sandy winced in desperation to Saffron, some long, lost phantom of relief on her face, dressed with a fresh batch of anguish as what seemed like unyielding agony reasserted itself to her mind. Her voice was little more than a rasp, squealing and desperate as she looked straight into the graphite gray eyes. "Help... Me..." Then, like a lamp turned off from a switch, the vision disappeared.
Saffron fell to her knees as the vision had dissipated, and her pet pig trotted immediately over to her, nuzzling her face beneath her hand and pressing her round, black-furred body against the little seamstress-shamaness. The round, short fingers scritched and petted Mothership slowly, in a broken, bewildered trance.