#i was gonna do an au wheeeere

[outlaste-a]

@6ore, “hey… hey! you don’t need to be scared anymore.”

a spectre of the past, each child had already mourned the boy who lived, who returned from the cruel wilderness that swallowed his voice and took all feeling out of his expression. [a sacrificial lamb spat out by the woods after two months of cultivation, a tender composition of meat that's mere existence defied sense for the girls to finally feed off of.] javi had been one who survived when he shouldn't have. if one of them asked where he had been and what he had been doing that entire time, he wouldn't be able to produce an intelligible answer: it felt something like a dream, a series of movements and feeding that felt lightyears away from the present moment. going through the motions, unable to sense the grip of flesh at the behest his fingertips and the bones splintering between his teeth. seeing them was something like waking up, so how could he share that he felt more scared than ever, being back in their company? javi can still visualise the knife pressed deep into travis' throat, how they each salivated at the mere sight of blood, the trickle of red that cascaded down the long stretch of his neck. not nat, though. her alone could javi trust, not yet witnessing her succumb to the madness that had plagued them all. his hand fists against her jacket at a suspected attempt to leave, burying the cloth inside own terrified grasp.

please don't leave me, doe eyes plead. they speak noiselessly, an adjuration that appeals to her sensitivity: it was not her he was scared of, but the others. and perhaps just as much, being alone again, like those two months isolated, drinking muddy water off of the land. [if he were really thinking about their situation, and not still stuck navigating the dreamlike nether, javi would consider what had been a worse situation.] dread had crept under his skin, homed itself there, as though anticipating an awful something that was yet to announce itself.