New fic: Clandestine PREVIEW
Clandestine PREVIEW
by ~ManiacTenshiMakenshi
When overcome by fear or its cousin anxiety, one often suspects the world of conspiring against them. Crowds are staring and brazenly gossiping, though speaking as callously as if secret. Even Nature scrutinizes one's faults, with the winds spreading rumors and the trees murmuring offensive truths. For the youth Crona, solace could not be found even within isolation. Every which way she turned, a voice denigrated hir mere presence.
So when dwelling in the vast, ashy woods that the moon tinted corpse-blue nearly each night, this adult of 17 would desperately wrap a faded cloak of onyx around hir form to block out fabricated slanders. Though, to be fair, the slanders were not always imagined. Indeed, the words spawned from the scorn of the deranged carpenter's widow.
Medusa Gorgon, respectively Lady Medusa, was once the wife of a carpenter. The estranged couple appeared well-met, until behind closed doors. Call Lady Medusa a Wolf in Sheep's wool, for that's what she was.
Many a month passed in contentment before the carpenter noticed the peculiarity of his wife. Her abundant kindness never faltered, and, had he been a simpleton, he would have told himself not to look a gifted horse in the mouth. But the carpenter was wiser than Lady Medusa would have liked. He became suspicious of her late-nights in the nursery with their new babe; at all hours with the mother the child would wail relentlessly.
One night when awakened by the cries, he investigated. Initially, he witnessed his wife asleep in her rocking chair with the fitful infant tucked in a blanket in her arms. He would have temporarily abandoned his suspicions then had he not detected another presence. He leaned over seeing a thin, curved shadow beneath his offspring's crib and found too late what it was.
"Poor fool," the wife muttered, "-he went sooner than planned."