Rage of Whispers (The Remnant Chronicles) (Complete)

9. Glimpse

Blue skies, red clouds, constant shining sun, void of darkness.

Bright... Everything was bright. A rarity in this world.

Birds sang with words. An absurdity that she learned to accept.

The tree above her moved its leafy branch to give her shade. She looked up at it and gave her gratitude. Eyes opened from its trunk and smiled at her as she shifted her gaze to a grazing white deer. She never knew white deer existed. But in their world, she learned to expect the unexpected. The grass changed color, and the moon produced a twin, casting crimson hues, but there was never darkness. The sun would set before her eyes, but its glowing light remains.

The moon rose but bathed in eternal sunshine. The landscape changed sporadically. Sometimes she's on top of a mountain or plateau, floating in an ocean, or bathing in a desert. It never mattered to her what form the world took because it made her happy.

Every time she was allowed to enter the door that led to her little piece of heaven, she took it. She allowed herself to be consumed by it, struggling to keep in her heart a tad bit of joy and freedom before her screaming monster arrived home. Before the acrid smell of burning flesh, cold touches, and an endless whisper of sweet, but dreadful promises. Its words always forced shivers down her spine, devouring her senses, until there was nothing left to do but succumb.

She closed her eyes and took in the sweet scent of nature. She smiled and then ran a finger through her hair that ran from head to foot. She tried cutting them once but found them at the same length when she awoke the next day. She kept cutting, they kept growing until she lost the will and left it as it was. Besides, her monster liked it that way, long and shiny, which it never failed to whisper in her ear.

Amid her reverie, her piece of heaven suddenly erupted in a blaze of fire. The ground began to shake and break, shooting hot molten lava and purple ashes into the sky. She feared not, though, because never once did those anomalies touch her; they would recede once nearing her presence. In an instant, the sky turned crimson blood and the animals disappeared. The tree above her retracted its comforting shade, and its leaves turned brown, then fell one after the other.

Her smile curled. She knew what was coming. The figure emerged not from the hell escape around her but though her-tendrils of shadow seeping from her pores, coalescing into a shape even the sun couldn't bleach. Soon it was full and in front of her. It held out its shadow-like arm, and she took it because fighting was futile, running was a dream, and escape was nothing but a distant memory.

How long had it kept her? She can't remember; she'd lost count of the days, for sometimes she would black out and miss the twenty-four-hour count. Even her name was lost in time. It called her princess, and she responded every time.

It led her out of her destructed heaven, back to their small and dark cabin near the sea. She loved the sea, but the sea breeze near her cabin never gave her the comfort she longed for. It reeked of death from all the floating carcasses of decapitated animals that turned the sea foam into a blackish floating substance that crashed and coated the entirety of the shore.

She walked, she talked, she hugged it. It always hugged her back-arms like smoke, cold and soffucating. Though her companion hid its face behind its dark, shadowy mask, she knew, in its twisted way, that it cared. It lacked eyes, windows of the soul, but it cried invisible tears for her. It did.

She could never leave, for she is its possession. Always was and always will be.

"Don't linger," it whispered as it led her inside her chamber, locking the door from the outside, leaving her once more in an endless paradise of amber and midnight hue.