Escaping the Monster's Embrace

Blink

I stared at the bowl of soup hoping it would give me answers. Answers to what I don't really know, why things turned out this way? Why did my family have to suffer so badly when we lived a good life before the Werewolves revealed themselves. My mother and father would bring me along to help feed the homeless in soup kitchens at least twice a month in the big city a few miles away from where we lived. We religiously donated to charity and my parents helped fundraising for noble causes. We lived a good life wanting to help others better themselves and now we're the ones struggling to survive and half a tin of soup was sometimes your only meal.

I glanced over at my Nana coddling the small child wrapped tightly in bundles of blankets she had knitted while my mother was pregnant.

Silence was the most comon thing to surround us. The house felt lonely, even though the house wasn't barren of life it was empty. The smells of my mothers delicious dishes no longer swam through every room available. My fathers voice of reassurance was no where to be contained in these walls.

I glanced down at the bundle of sallow pink skin, his button nose so tiny and his big blue eyes untainted by anything, nestled behind his softly shut lids undisturbed. I wouldn't let anything happen to my brother. I looked up towards my Nana her expression of worry looked like it has been painted by an artist. She worried for her son who was tangled in war and his children who had been left in her care. I wouldn't let anything happen to her either.

Noises could be heard from outside along with howls and growls from the abominations that harassed us on a daily basis. "Lilah petal, why don't you head on up to bed." Without questioning her I made my way through the empty house. I knew this place would never go back to the way it was, not because of the new race that had come out of hiding, it was because everything had changed. I wasn't too sure it could be fixed so easily. It had been months since they war had been won, neither of my parents came home yet. I wasn't really expecting them too. I had weeped already for both of them and the numbing reality that neither of them would walk through these halls again was present everyday.

I had changed into my pajamas and lay under my blanket. My eyes gravitated towards the moonlight seeping in through my curtain-less window. I had always had a fascination with the moon as a child I would constantly draw it over and over again, mesmerized by its beauty. But I was beginning to resent it. The moon was a symbol of power to the Beasts. They believed it was a sign of their goddess forever looking down on them. Each full moon gave the goddess the power to predict every soulmate for the children to be born until the next cycle.

It felt like I was awake for hours staring at something once beautiful and now tainted like most things in this world. My attention was pulled away from the glowing orb in the sky to the noise of the door opening downstairs. I quietly creeped out of bed a fire poker in my hand, armed incase of an intruder. That was when I heard the interaction downstairs. I creeped down a few stairs just enough to see into the kitchen. A pang of relief hit my chest, all I could make out was the silhouette of a man. The voice I could pluck out and name in crowd of a thousand talking people. It was my father.

I couldn't really make out what my nana was saying but I wasn't trying to hear her very hard. Shock had consumed my body. I had believed to my core that he wasn't going to return.

"Where's Lilah?" He asked gently taking my brother in his arms.

"I sent her to bed I thought there was commotion outside."

"Good, she needs her rest. I will see her in the morning." His voice was slightly clipped, a coldness coating his tone.

"Where-where is-?" My Nana's voice was hesitant but I knew what she was asking and so did he.