“What did you do?”
THIS IS THE END
Deacon Eichel & Annemarie Eichel
prompt: colours
Slanting sheets of icy rain hammered the landscape and it was with his breath coiling mistily away from his face that the last of the wolf fell away from Deacon Eichel’s frame, leaving him slightly hunched, eyes closed and water dripping and running from his features, his hair a soaked, blood-smeared mess on his head. Drawing in another freezing breath that assaulted his overworked lungs, leaving him aching and frustrated, he lifted his body to its full height, his shoulders rolling awkwardly, the bruises they had left on him flaring and protesting to the motion as tension seeped and faded from his limbs, his eyes opening, the last traces of wolfen white fading to the human shade of brown, his gaze already turning to the side, across the small expanse to where she stood, already returned to her human form.
She was quiet, her lips drawn in a line. He could see her chest rising and falling as she breathed, faster than was normal, as if she were straining herself, and the tension that had so easily dropped from his body was back in a heartbeat, only intensifying as he saw her eyes. Dark like his own, they were unfocused but wide, her expression drawn into a knotted sort of realisation and even fear. That look on his sister’s face was enough to ignite a flame of panic in his chest, and he moved towards her. Annemarie Eichel did not move as her brother approached.
Deacon stopped, the rain hammering down all around him even as his gaze lowered, moving below her waist. “You’re bleeding.”
Her hand lifted as without a word she placed the palm over her mouth, her eyes still staring at a point no one but her could see, past his taller frame and into the shadowed night somewhere behind him. He didn’t look behind him to try and see what she was seeing, knowing already that it wasn’t really there, that she wasn’t really looking at anything.
“Annie…” His face dropped as he reached the only true conclusion there was in the situation. He could see no wound, she wasn’t writhing in agony, but the shock and sense of knowing that practically rippled from her in waves ground him to a full halt, but only for a moment. In the next, he was moving again, striding to his sister and taking her gently by the shoulders but with overwhelming concern; it was so thick and powerful it practically winded him, and his own aches and pains were so easily forgotten as he stood in front of her that he felt almost as if he hadn’t fought at all.
“What did you do?” He looked down, the crimson and brown of the blood and dirt merging and swirling together in the downpour that soaked the earth, creating a sickly pattern below their feet. Deacon cursed, switching so fluidly to their native tongue that he barely even registered the switch in dialect; “Annie, what did you do?”