(no subject)
All she could hear were her footsteps pounding on the century-old wood flooring, the loud crack like close thunder as she jumped from the top of a flight of stairs. One more step and there was the door. She flung it open. She moved to the side, and then again, and then she was out. The sun was far too bright, the sky far too clear and the air was thick and heavy with the smells of magnolia and lilac. The fear that overcame her was so great, so unlike anything she'd ever felt, she wished almost for the chance to stop and just experience it-
But Jenna didn't walk in slow motion, defying the laws of physics that every terrifying villain she'd ever heard of did. Instead, it ran full force with the strength and speed of the demon blood inside her after Sunny, and she ran as fast as her little legs would carry her. She knew her effort wasn't enough. She dove to the left and back into the woods around the Safehouse.
The Safehouse is large, but because it existed in the heart of Laea Wake, where the defiant unruly laws of this world of dreams were strongest, the terrain was not of anything that could be delineated, anything that could be elucidated with words. She could end up in an entirely different terrain in less than a heartbeat's time, from swamplands to urban jungle to ocean shore in only a few steps. Therefore, although Sunny ran through woods at the moment, it was necessary to keep one eye on the house and her surroundings at all times.
Her feet began to catch in the mud and underbrush and she veered to the right again. She was rounded the back of the house, where the forest blended into swamplands. The ground beneath her was getting softer and wetter. Her breath was running out, her heart was beating too fast and too hard for her small chest to withstand. She knew it would be only a moment before she was back near the ocean, just outside of Miranda's room, and from there she could continue into the city that spread out along the shore and beyond.
Jenna had been catching up to her, but she soon noticed that it's pace had slowed as hers had. It was choosing to match her speed rather than to outrun her, which it could have easily done now. SugarBlue was uncertain whether it was trying to see where she was going, if she would lead it to something or someone or somewhere else, or if it just enjoyed the chase as any creature of such dark blood-thirst.
She wondered if it were possible to transmute on the run, her hand ran to her pocket to reassure herself that at least she had her Invention Key, though she'd lost all her weapons. She fought back blinding tears as she pushed forward, her mind kept returning to one thought though she tried with all the strength that remained to fight it, wrapping around how much Jenna was enjoying her now, toying with her now. There was something about that realization that birthed a fear that was far beyond paralyzing. Shivers ran through her as her feet pounded against the grass.
She looked down, watching the muddy soil melt into firm gravel and soft sand and the smallest feeling of pleasure welled inside her, something that wasn't quite hope but an indiscernible fire of determination. Then, in that moment, as she raised her head and squared her jaw and the slightest bit of extra adrenaline flowed to her legs, her foot caught amongst a tangle of railroad vine and seashore dropseed. Her momentum launched her as though she had meant to dive onto the beach, and were there any rocks or branches in her way she would have been easily impaled as she collapsed on her stomach, the air expelled by force from her lungs as her head flew back and then down again with a great crash and scuffle.
Had Jenna been a creature capable of feeling at all, she wouldn't have been able to help the slightest snicker at the slapstick sideshow to Blue's tragic and desperate situation. As it were, however, Jenna displayed her pleasure at the cornering of her prey by reciting a few ominous lines of what could be called amateur poetry but in the sounds spoken from her mouth - phonic impossibilities that included several voices and accents at once - possessed not the slightest of artistic or appreciable qualities.
“There are demons all around me,
in the shadows that surround me,
I can hear their whispered lies.”
For the slightest second, SugarBlue thought she heard the raspy sound of footsteps in the sand behind her, but she dared not look away from the gaze of this creature's black and soulless eyes or the sharp and bloody hand that reached for her throat.
“There are angels in the distance,
fighting all of my resistance,
I can hear their pleading cries.”
And Jenna laughed the sort of laugh one can only imagine when they hear tell of an evil, overbearing, maniacal cackle, because no sane or soul-possesing creature could produce the sound that SugarBlue Sunshine heard in that moment.