SKILL : - - - ( 1 / 5 )

The early spring day was filled with rain, dampening the world beneath the treetops into a pale replica of itself. Gaps in the trees that would have ushered in sunlight instead held doors for the rain to enter and coast to the forest floor until the spongy turf was mushy under touch.

Despite its dismal display, the dancing of raindrops wove a lulling tune. They sang of slumber and sloth, and who was Camille to deny them their request when it was composed so captivatingly? She lingered between a state of sleep and waking, eyelids hovering at half-mast as her breathing grew regulated.

Truthfully, it did not take much to coerce her into sleep these days, if only because she couldn't seem to rest - not fitfully. Her dreams, once a place of fanciful wonder, were besieged by a burning purpose forged by voices and presences she did not know. Camille first thought the entire existence she'd been thrust into was a dream itself, but the fact she continued to wake up and she was not home spelled her fate out ever so clearly.

She was here on a permanent basis, for reasons she did not know, and she was cursed to live as a beast.

Not only was she followed by her troubled dreams, but she was still recovering from the bite sank into her shoulder. She was not a practiced hand when it came to healing, but even she knew the wound didn't look good. Her pale fur was blemished by the streaks of dark red that had dried, spiking the fur in all directions around the painful punctures.

Camille had anticipated she would be sore as it healed, but her left leg remained stiff in the days that followed the event. She could feel the heat settle into the injury and it worried her, but she had no means to tend it. There were no scraps of cloth she could protect it with, and even if there were, she was without hands to bind it.

She pressed a long sigh through her nose as she shifted gingerly into a sit, banishing all thoughts of a nap as the pain hummed insistently, groaning against the strain of movement. It seemed to throb in time with the beating of her heart.

Camille was quite certain she would think twice before going back to that cabin.

It really was like going to sleep. One moment standing, the next with mud in his mouth. Bloodied mud. Perhaps he’d bitten his own tongue. He didn’t get the chance to ask. One moment he was staring at dozens of leather bound legs, the next one of his fellows landed beside him with eyes glazed in death. Ah, he hadn’t bitten his tongue. A shaking, freckled hand pressed to his midriff, and his body jolted in confused pain. His mind didn’t register it like the rest of him did. It was far away, synapses firing slower. The world was a watercolor portrait, colors smearing together like an amateur’s paintbrush had been taken clumsily to his surroundings. He had little else to do but look past his dead and dying compatriots, and watch the brushstrokes of the world as it danced dizzily around him. He didn’t want to look away from it, but his eyelids itched to close. And he had little energy left to fight his own self.

Somewhere in a muddy clearing in a forest he’d never known the name of, Aymeric breathed his last.

Life had a way of continuing though. The river of time couldn’t be impeded for long, overflowing every dam, speeding through every obstacle. Matter couldn’t be destroyed, just remade. Maybe if life had more time, it would have put him somewhere kind. It would have scooped him from the river and rested him gentle in a happy sort of life. Aymeric had a bad habit, though. He often slipped through the cracks. From orphanages to prisons to militaries. He slipped past the fingers that would have brought him gentleness, and was scuffed by the next.

He came out roaring. Injustices burned into his eyes, chains to his throat. Earth erupted from his shoulders, around his legs, mud and blood tangled into his thick, pale coat. Old blood poured from his mouth in rusty clots that he coughed against the ground. And for that moment, he could only heave, cough, and wheeze out curses in a voice that felt it hadn’t changed when everything else had.