Anna may one day find it funny, the things that set these immortals off. Her crude words and vulgar gesture earn her only a pointed, prim scoff as the troupe of four return to the outdoors empty of other life.
What makes the quietest set of footsteps cease (followed swiftly by the other two) is the question. Anna makes it a full step and sentence further before the curious lift of her hair comes once again, and without warning, or even pain, she topples like a dead thing.
Dinah makes a stifled, half-gasped sound; the young man makes none. There is a rustle of motion behind Anna, who may only look unblinking ahead, and the quiet instruction of: "Spit."
Two pairs of feet pass her by. Anna may find some consolation in the hesitation of the pair that belong to the girl she is doing a favor, even if they do not stop. They go on for a while, all the way to the end of the street (passing through the ward with a snapping hum distinct from Woe's, a minute detail that may well be lost on Anna, under these circumstances), and both cloaked and hooded figures turn right, leaving only Anna and Woe.
"I told you it was vulgar to attempt to provoke me," Woe says, contemplatively, behind and above her. There is a whisper of cloth and the muffled contact of knees to cobblestones almost touching Anna's immobilized skull. Deft fingers tuck her hair behind her ear. The delicate edge of a small, fine nail dipped in viscous liquid touches just at her revealed hairline at her temple and begins to draw in light, unbroken, barely catching lines.
"Do you know what the trigeminal nerve is?" Woe asks, with dreadful quietness. "Try to move anything, if you don't."
cw: saliva, violation of bodily autonomy, body horror, psychological horror
What makes the quietest set of footsteps cease (followed swiftly by the other two) is the question. Anna makes it a full step and sentence further before the curious lift of her hair comes once again, and without warning, or even pain, she topples like a dead thing.
Dinah makes a stifled, half-gasped sound; the young man makes none. There is a rustle of motion behind Anna, who may only look unblinking ahead, and the quiet instruction of: "Spit."
Two pairs of feet pass her by. Anna may find some consolation in the hesitation of the pair that belong to the girl she is doing a favor, even if they do not stop. They go on for a while, all the way to the end of the street (passing through the ward with a snapping hum distinct from Woe's, a minute detail that may well be lost on Anna, under these circumstances), and both cloaked and hooded figures turn right, leaving only Anna and Woe.
"I told you it was vulgar to attempt to provoke me," Woe says, contemplatively, behind and above her. There is a whisper of cloth and the muffled contact of knees to cobblestones almost touching Anna's immobilized skull. Deft fingers tuck her hair behind her ear. The delicate edge of a small, fine nail dipped in viscous liquid touches just at her revealed hairline at her temple and begins to draw in light, unbroken, barely catching lines.
"Do you know what the trigeminal nerve is?" Woe asks, with dreadful quietness. "Try to move anything, if you don't."