All Hail the Shifter King
Title: Shock
Word Count: 513
Crossposted here at runaway_tales
Exhaustion overwhelmed her when she sat on the edge of the small bed, smoothing her hands absently over the hand-stitched blanket. In ways, she felt like she'd never left the tiny guest room, or Eli's house in general - the last several days felt like an odd nightmare, something brought about by the stresses of her back to back ordeals since she arrived in Rion Fell. As she listened to Eli and Rebekah moving about downstairs, talking in quiet voices, she convinced herself that it was just their usual evening banter as they cleaned up the dinner dishes. She tried to ignore Rebekah's concerned tone, Eli's obvious frustration, the tension that ran thick through the air in the small house.
Sighing, she plucked the extra pillows from the bed and threw them toward the futon, determined to at least try and get some sleep. Two of the pillows landed on the futon, but the third tumbled off to the side and knocked a stack of books to the floor. Grumbling under her breath, she crouched to retrieve them - a pair of paperbacks she'd pulled from Eli's small library the week before, a Jeep repair manual, and...
Her fingers brushed a familiar black plastic cover and a shudder trembled through her, tears springing to her eyes. Biting her lip, she gently lifted Gavin's field notebook from the floor and returned to the bed, where she pulled her legs beneath her and leaned back against the wall before lifting the cover on the top-bound book. The sight of Gavin's tight, precise printing and the first of what she knew were dozens of sketches made her press a hand to her mouth - not fast enough to stop the tiny sob that squeezed between her lips, but enough to keep any more from escaping for the moment.
Why, she wondered, was she feeling so lost? She wanted to believe that it was because Gavin had become so professionally corrupted, that his betrayal of her and the others wasn't personal. Perhaps he'd been offered money, or the tenure he'd been hoping for. Maybe they'd promised him his name on the research papers, a share of the credit for what would no doubt rock the medical and scientific world as they knew it. But the more she thought about it, the more it became the most basic of abandonments - her best friend and most trusted colleague had turned on her, and try as she might she couldn't maintain any sort of professional detachment when she was still scraped and bruised from being thrown into the holding cells.
Pulling her knees to her chest, she pinned the notebook between her legs and her body and hooked her hands around her ankles, bowing her head and allowing herself a few moments of tears. She was too exhausted for much more, too stressed and numb from her experiences at the camp, but the grief still trembled through her and settled across her shoulders, an invisible, immovable weight.
"What do I do now, Mom?" she whispered. "What the hell do I do?"
Word Count: 513
Crossposted here at runaway_tales
Exhaustion overwhelmed her when she sat on the edge of the small bed, smoothing her hands absently over the hand-stitched blanket. In ways, she felt like she'd never left the tiny guest room, or Eli's house in general - the last several days felt like an odd nightmare, something brought about by the stresses of her back to back ordeals since she arrived in Rion Fell. As she listened to Eli and Rebekah moving about downstairs, talking in quiet voices, she convinced herself that it was just their usual evening banter as they cleaned up the dinner dishes. She tried to ignore Rebekah's concerned tone, Eli's obvious frustration, the tension that ran thick through the air in the small house.
Sighing, she plucked the extra pillows from the bed and threw them toward the futon, determined to at least try and get some sleep. Two of the pillows landed on the futon, but the third tumbled off to the side and knocked a stack of books to the floor. Grumbling under her breath, she crouched to retrieve them - a pair of paperbacks she'd pulled from Eli's small library the week before, a Jeep repair manual, and...
Her fingers brushed a familiar black plastic cover and a shudder trembled through her, tears springing to her eyes. Biting her lip, she gently lifted Gavin's field notebook from the floor and returned to the bed, where she pulled her legs beneath her and leaned back against the wall before lifting the cover on the top-bound book. The sight of Gavin's tight, precise printing and the first of what she knew were dozens of sketches made her press a hand to her mouth - not fast enough to stop the tiny sob that squeezed between her lips, but enough to keep any more from escaping for the moment.
Why, she wondered, was she feeling so lost? She wanted to believe that it was because Gavin had become so professionally corrupted, that his betrayal of her and the others wasn't personal. Perhaps he'd been offered money, or the tenure he'd been hoping for. Maybe they'd promised him his name on the research papers, a share of the credit for what would no doubt rock the medical and scientific world as they knew it. But the more she thought about it, the more it became the most basic of abandonments - her best friend and most trusted colleague had turned on her, and try as she might she couldn't maintain any sort of professional detachment when she was still scraped and bruised from being thrown into the holding cells.
Pulling her knees to her chest, she pinned the notebook between her legs and her body and hooked her hands around her ankles, bowing her head and allowing herself a few moments of tears. She was too exhausted for much more, too stressed and numb from her experiences at the camp, but the grief still trembled through her and settled across her shoulders, an invisible, immovable weight.
"What do I do now, Mom?" she whispered. "What the hell do I do?"