#traditional flooring | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

skyward-floored · 2 months ago

Text

Whumptober Day 1: Race against the clock, panic attack

Hello everybody and welcome back to the fourth year in a row of me beating up nine blond guys (plus others) for a month, please enjoy the show 👍

Warnings: fire, smoke inhalation, minor injuries, and a panic attack.

Ao3 link

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He had maybe five minutes left.

Wild tore through the smoke and flames of the burning dungeon, squinting through eyes blurred with painful tears for any flashes of green or grey, a familiar pelt, dusty brown hair... anything.

All he saw were flames though, colored an unnatural reddish tone. Wild leapt to avoid some as they flared up, then stopped to hack through the cloth he’d tied over his mouth, throat burning from the smoke.

He was hating wizzrobes more by the second. He’d defeated the group of them that had swarmed him and Twilight, but they’d been black-blooded, and exploded into flames as they’d died. It was just unnatural the way their fire was eating at the rocks, melting pillars and devouring walls. How they’d set fire to an entire dungeon largely made of stone was beyond him.

And of course, all this had happened right after Twilight had been snatched by some weird hand-monster and disappeared.

Of course it had.

Now Wild had mere minutes left before the whole place collapsed or he passed out from smoke inhalation, and he had no clue where Twilight was.

“Rancher?!” Wild shouted in a rasp, then doubled over into a coughing fit again. The smoke even tasted unnatural, thicker than woodsmoke, and sweet, but in a sickly way.

Something cracked off in the distance, and the ground trembled beneath Wild’s feet. He dragged in not nearly deep enough of a breath, and kept running, occasionally squinting at the tattered map in his hands. There was only one area he hadn’t been in yet in his search. Twilight had to be there.

Wild leapt over a fallen pillar and entered the last room, squinting through smoke and heat. His eyes fell on a cage at the back wall, and he gasped, the figure inside unmoving.

“Twilight!” Wild shouted, then coughed, already working his way across the room.

Twilight didn’t say anything in reply to his voice, and Wild sped his steps, ignoring the rawness of his throat and the sting in his eyes. There were some of those blade trap things that had been in an earlier area of the dungeon in the way, but Wild deftly avoided them, even despite several being on fire.

He finally reached the cage, and dropped to his knees beside it, breathing hard.

“Twi,” Wild gasped, the words more of a cough than a greeting, “Twi, can you hear me?”

Twilight was huddled in the very back corner of the cage, his hands over his head. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he didn’t reply to Wild’s voice, staying curled up in a ball. Fear shook through Wild at the sight of Twilight so vulnerable, that something had happened to him, that he was hurt, that something was wrong—

“I’ll get you out,” Wild reassured in a voice he tried to make comforting, already feeling for any weakness in the bars. “Hold on.”

He located a portion of the cage where the metal was weakened, bars rusted and loose. Magnesis was hard to use when your hands were shaking, but after a few tries and some help from an old sword, Wild managed to tear the loose metal away, and bolt inside.

Twilight was breathing hard, his eyes open now and reflecting the flames, and Wild grabbed his wrists, giving him a quick shake.

“Rancher, hey, come on,” he croaked. Twilight’s glazed vision flicked to Wild’s face. “Link, wake up, I need you with me.”

Twilight still stared at him, eyes eerily blank, but then they focused, and he gasped, lurching backwards from Wild as he looked around in terror.

“No— no, what—”

“Link,” Wild repeated, heart pounding wildly. He inched closer to Twilight. “Don’t look at the flames, look at me. We need to get out of here.”

Twilight’s breathing sped up, his eyes reflecting the flames as he stared at them. Wild tried to catch his gaze but Twilight wasn’t paying any attention to him, pulling his hands away and digging his fingers into his scalp, breath wheezing as his chest heaved.

“Twi,” Wild begged, snatching his hands away from his hair. “Come on, I’m here to help you! We need to go!”

Wild gave his hands a tight squeeze, and Twilight flinched, blinking hard as his shoulders hitched up. His eyes darted around, and Wild got up in his face so it would be much harder for him to see the flames.

“Link, please, breathe,” Wild pleaded. “We’re not going to make it if we don’t go now!”

Twilight flinched again at the shout, then swallowed, his eyes suddenly fixing on Wild.

“W-Wild,” he said in a shaking voice, and Wild nodded, squeezing his hands. “Wild, what...”

“Wizzrobes, magic fire, you got snatched, I beat the wizzrobes but they set the place on fire,” Wild quickly explained, and swallowed as he looked over Twilight. “Did that hand thing hurt you? Are you okay?”

Twilight’s breath hitched. “No. Yes. I mean I... I think so?”

His gaze flicked to the flames again, and Wild felt a tremor go through him, panic in his expression. Wild let go of his hands and took his shoulders instead, giving him another shake.

“Twilight. You can’t freak out now, we have to get out of here,” Wild said firmly. His throat scratched as he spoke. “We...”

Wild fell into another coughing fit, breath tight, throat burning. It took him much longer to stop coughing than the last time, and getting in air was a lot harder, tears dripping from his eyes with the effort.

A hand clasped at his shoulder as he wheezed, and Wild glanced up to see Twilight looking at him. Twilight was still breathing fast, face pale, eyes wide, but his expression had slipped to an emotion Wild was more used to seeing on his face.

Worry.

“Are you okay?” Twilight asked, and Wild nodded, wheezing as his fit finally ended.

“Yeah... just... smoke,” he rasped, careful not to fall into another fit when he spoke. “Place is gonna... come down... need to go.”

Twilight looked out at the dungeon, flames roaring as they devoured the old temple, and he swallowed thickly. But when he looked back at Wild he nodded, and they both got to their feet, legs shaking for different reasons.

Twilight had an iron grip on Wild’s arm as they finally left the cage, and the two began to work their way back to the entrance.

It wasn’t easy. Everywhere Wild looked there were more of those reddish flames, purplish-pink at the center, plumes of sweet-yet-rancid smoke roiling through the air. A lot of the path he’d taken to get to Twilight in the first place just wasn’t there, and they had to pick their way around all kinds of rubble.

Everything seemed like it was on fire now, and sweat and tears poured in equal amounts down Wild’s face, eyes burning with smoke. They rushed back through the temple, dodging falling stone and roaring flames, Twilight shaking every time the fire got anywhere near them.

Wild glanced at him, the rancher’s grip on his arm nearly bruising, and swallowed.

Wild knew Twilight was wary around fire. He’d seen him stay back whenever Legend got out his fire rod, or Hyrule lit his sword up in flames, and generally fight fiery enemies from as far a distance as he could. He’d even teased him about it, and Twilight had shoved him and teased him right on back about being too willing to solve his problems with fire.

But this was more than wariness. This was straight-up terror at the sight of the flames, and Wild had never seen Twilight so blatantly afraid of something before.

What had happened to him?

A huge pillar came crashing down mere feet away from them, and Twilight and Wild scrambled back against the wall, heat pressing against their faces. Wild heard Twilight’s breath catch, and he tugged him in a different direction.

It was getting harder and harder to breathe, even with the cloth over his mouth. Wild’s steps faltered suddenly, and he stumbled against a part of the wall, breathing hard. They didn’t have time for him to stop, but he had to catch his breath, just for a moment.

“Wild? You good?” Twilight asked, voice raspy, but less so than Wild’s was.

Wild straightened, but before he could assure him that he was fine, a scratch in his throat made him cough, and before he knew it he was practically bent double, dry, wracking coughs pouring out of him.

Somehow he landed on the floor, and Twilight’s voice was frantic in his ear, a hand pressing at his back as it tried to help him.

Panic lurched in Wild’s middle, the lack of air only making his breath speed up. His world narrowed to the tightness in his lungs, the way they refused to take in as much air as he needed, and the dry feeling in his throat that made him want to cough with every breath.

The worst of it finally faded, but the fit had sapped most of Wild’s remaining energy. His head was spinning, throat dry as bone, and his breath was little more than desperate wheezes.

“Wild?”

Wild managed to raise his head and look at Twilight, the rancher‘s face pure alarm.

“Can you walk?” he asked, and Wild swallowed, trying to raise himself up on shaking legs. He got about halfway before a tremor shook the ground, and both he and Twilight lost their balance.

A portion of wall abruptly collapsed nearby, crashing to the ground mere feet from their boots. Flames burst into the air, and Twilight scrambled backwards, pressing one arm over Wild while the other covered his face from the sparks. Heat roared against them, and Wild felt it sear his uncovered skin.

More of the wall collapsed around them, and though Wild tried to scramble to his feet, his legs were like chu jelly when he put weight on them.

“Can’t...” Wild wheezed when Twilight looked at him, his chest too tight to explain further.

He couldn’t walk, not like this, not with his head spinning and vision darkening at the edges. The flames would overtake the structure any moment now, and he was slowing Twilight down.

“G-get out... Twi...” he managed to rasp.

“Not without you,” Twilight said firmly, and he looked at the flames, fear still reflecting in his eyes. He exhaled shakily, and then his face hardened with determination. “Come on Wild. We’re getting out of here.”

He clutched Wild’s arm, then pulled him to his feet, slinging Wild’s arm over his shoulders. Wild stumbled against him, but managed to keep his balance with Twilight’s firm grip.

Twilight began pulling him through the blaze, dodging flames and collapsing architecture, and Wild stumbled clumsily beside him. He was slowing them down, badly, but he didn’t have the breath to insist Twilight leave him.

We’re not going to make it! he wailed inwardly, but Twilight kept dragging him, hands shaking where they supported Wild.

Fire dripped from the wall beside them like a living thing, and Wild felt Twilight violently flinch from it. He just kept going though, even despite the spreading flames and nearly unbearable heat.

Wild found himself relying more and more on Twilight as they went, his legs refusing to behave. Despite how he tried to walk himself, most of his weight was soon being supported by the rancher.

Are we close? Wild thought blearily, fighting the urge to stop and cough violently into his arm. He’d lost the map, and anything that would have given away which room they were in was either in flames or actively falling to pieces.

“We’re almost out, we’re almost out, we’re almost out,” Twilight began to repeat under his breath, and Wild would’ve joined him if he’d had any breath to. “Please light spirits we’re almost out we’re almost out—”

An ominous crack rang through the dungeon, and Wild heard Twilight’s breath catch. His steps sped up even more, and Wild did his best to hurry along with him, breath wheezing, eyes teary from smoke and yet much too dry.

The walls melted and crumbled around them, the ceiling warping and groaning as flames ate away at it. A light different then the fire glinted in Wild’s fading vision, and Twilight let out a guttural cry as he ran towards it.

Flames roared, something crashed, and Twilight threw him and Wild out of the dungeon.

They tumbled down the stairs that had led to the door, and the structure collapsed into itself with a roar behind them, a blast of hot air sending them both to the ground. Wild might’ve passed out for a moment, but he honestly wasn’t sure.

A violent wheeze escaped him, his chest tight and aching, vision still darkened at the edges. He might’ve been shaking, but he couldn’t even tell he was so dizzy from the lack of air.

A hand pulled the cloth at his face down, then settled in his hair, and Wild blearily recognized it as Twilight’s, the other hero’s face streaked with ash.

“We made it,” Twilight croaked, and Wild coughed, trying to reply, but unable to get the words out. “We m-made it pup. Thank you.”

Wild pulled in a rasping breath, tears still dampening his cheeks, but he managed a weak smile. Twilight let out a short, panicked laugh, and curled around Wild where they were both lying in the grass. Despite how overheated he felt, Wild appreciated the contact.

He listened to Twilight’s heart hammer in his chest, the panic he’d been fighting away obviously breaking free. Twilight let out another panicked laugh, this one a fair bit more hysterical, and held Wild tight.

Wild clutched back as best as he could, and relief and exhaustion suddenly swept over him, intense and thick.

They’d made it.

Despite everything, they’d made it.

And Wild’s body took that as a sign that it was finally safe to pass out.

#whumptober 2024 #day 1 #race against the clock #panic attack #linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu wild #lu twilight #fic #linked universe fanfic #writing from the floor #keeping with my tradition of beating up twilight on day one <3 #sorry bro but also not really

112 notes · View notes

chiropteracupola · 25 days ago

Text

"What Grows on the Oak," 2024.

it's the time of year, once more, for an original spooky story!

The oak trees lie across the hills like low smoke, soft and near, and the road dips down into the valley, as inviting as any road has ever been, but the girl on the bench of the buggy on the hilltop makes no move to follow it.

Rose looks out down the road and over the hills, and taps her fingers beside her on the bench. It’s a quiet enough afternoon that there’s little other sound but the high thin sound of insects, and the wind in the long grass, and Rose’s fingers, tapping. The horse, still in harness, looks up and flicks its ear, as if in protest at the sound, and Rose sighs and forces her hand still.

There is a girl in the nearest tree, Rose notices — the fact of it is idly categorized, without true interest. All the same, the light is catching in her hair, dashing shadows over her face as she sits draped across the curve of a branch, and Rose cannot look away from her.

The Fosters, at whose door Rose waits, have no daughter — no children but the one still-toddling son, who Rose remembers as a colicky, twitchy boy. Besides, this girl looks nothing like Mr Foster and his wife, for her hair stands out about her head like a bundle of mistletoe, pale as sun-worn wood. She is, perhaps, their hired girl. Rose is struck by envy, suddenly, that the Fosters’ hired girl had the time to shinny up a tree in the last light of evening, and still would be paid for her work…

Rose sighs, leaning her chin on her hand. Perhaps it is enough for her to be her father’s driver, and to have bed and board in his house — perhaps some day there will be money for school again, in San Francisco or even out east. And perhaps it is not enough, and perhaps there will not ever be.

“Hello, doctor’s driver,” says a voice at Rose’s elbow. Rose yelps in surprise, then turns. It is the girl with the mistletoe hair — dry moss hair — hair like a cloudy day in August.

“No, you’re his daughter, are you not?” asks the Fosters’ hired girl, and Rose nods. “Miss del Llano, that’d make you.”

“Just Rose, please.” She’ll be Miss some other day — not now, in her too-short skirts and with her plait hanging over her shoulder.

“May I come up?” asks the girl.

“Surely,” says Rose, and the girl has swung herself into Rose’s father’s accustomed seat in a fluttering of pale skirts.

“Your father is the doctor — what does he do here? “He is a leech, then? A bloodletter?”

“Don’t be silly, he’s not medieval!”

“Hm-mm, I shall believe you when you prove it me,” says the girl, laughing, and leans her chin on her hand to make herself Rose’s mirror. Side by side they sit for a while, and the dark gathers in across the hills until oaks and grassland alike are made one mass of shadow. Somewhere in the trees beyond the road, a horned owl utters its deep, melancholy cry out into the dusk.

“If ghosts had telephones, I should think they’d sound rather like that,” says Rose, the early chill of after-sunset driving her quite easily to a morbid sort of cheer.

“How the times change,” says the girl, with an odd, but not entirely unhappy, look in her eyes. “No, my dear; ghosts use the same telephones as you and I, as you well know.” Rose does not know, well or otherwise, much at all about ghosts, so she nods, and feels a little more of the girl’s weight settle on her shoulder.

“You have very cold hands,” says Rose, and the girl from the oak tree smiles and taps at Rose’s cheek with clammy fingers.

“I always have, I’m afraid.”

“It’s no bother, really.” And so they sit and watch the sky, the falling-dusk and the distant fog that creeps over the hills, until there’s light, sharp as a door opening.

Rose turns, and it is only Dr del Llano, leaving his patient with his hat in his hand. She turns back, and the Fosters’ hired girl is gone.

“How is Mrs. Foster,” Rose asks, without any particular feeling in her voice, and her father shakes his head in reply. But the road down into the valley, where lies the town, is before them, and Rose is pleased enough at the journeying that she asks no further questions.

It’s in the hills and on the road that Rose meets, again, with the oak tree girl, the mistletoe girl, the girl with hands like marble in the shade. Once again, Rose is waiting for her father while he attends a patient, and, lazing in the sun, Rose has pushed the sleeves of her shirtwaist up to her elbows.

And then the girl is there again, with her shock of cobweb hair moving, ever so faintly, in a breeze that doesn’t seem to reach as far as the buggy-seat.

“Hello, my pretty-lovely,” says the girl, putting her hand out to the horse still in its traces. Though usually affectionate, the horse puts back its ears and pulls its head away.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into her,” says Rose, half-laughing. “Save your sweet words for someone who wants them, all the same.”

“Has she a name, then?”

“Other than Morgan, for what she is? Not at all,” Rose replies. Neither she nor her father have ever thought of one, for all that they’re fond of the hardworking little mare. “And have you a name, then?” For she’s remembered, now, that her oak-tree girl had never told her of it.

“I’m called Saro,” says the girl, and again swings herself up beside Rose. “What does your father do here, my Rose?”

“Oh, I oughtn’t say,” and Saro looks back at her with a stare of please? and Rose laughs and says anyway. She shouldn’t gossip, but she leans in close anyway, and whispers that “Old Man Lucas has got the clap, and him a widower these ten years!” Saro’s mouth twitches at the corners — she can’t hide her laugh for long, and it bursts, bright, out from her.

“I shall tell, I shall tell!” says she, and Rose coughs on her own laugh with a still-merry “Don’t!”

“You’ll have to catch me and make me, first!” and Saro leaps down from the buggy and runs, her skirts, her hair a flash of white in the golden-dry grass. And Rose, her spirits raised beyond what a grown girl such as herself should permit, follows. She’s less fleet-footed than Saro, earthbound still, stumbling on furrows in the land, catching her heels in ground-squirrel burrows.

Saro, she’s sure, is holding back for her benefit — letting herself be caught. And Rose does catch her, knocking her off her feet and into the grass. Saro’s laughing-merry still, her hair stuck full of grass-seed and foxtails. Close-to, Rose can see the freckles that dapple her cheeks and nose, the squint of her dark eyes when she smiles. Saro flicks Rose’s cheek, the snap of her fingers like a prickle of frost, and Rose lies there in the dusty field, entirely lost.

But Saro’s on her feet again before Rose can blink, before Rose can reach out to her, and Rose is standing, blinking in the sunlight, stumbling back to the buggy as she dusts bits of dry grass from her skirt. She buttons the sleeves of her shirtwaist again, the cuffs of which don’t quite come to her wrists anymore, and laughs when her father hands her up into her seat like a lady.

“The best whip I ever had,” he says, perfectly straight-faced.

“Gee-up!” says Rose, holding the reins in one hand and imagining herself perched atop a stagecoach. But even for all her imaginings, she’s as good a driver as her father says, and draws the horse into a gentle trot to see them home. It’s hill and dale down into the valley, hill and dale again like a song, and in the inner slopes lie trees in amid the dust-golden grasses of summer. Beneath the sparse, spreading branches, it is suddenly cooler, then warmer again, as the horse steps evenly onward and back into the sun.

“That’s mistletoe, you know,” says Dr del Llano, as he’s said a thousand times before, and points up at the gray-green mass that clings among the summer-sparse branches of an oak.

“Isn’t that for Christmastime?” asks Rose.

“It’s an odd thing we bring it in for the Nativity,” muses her father, still looking back at the tree as they pass it by. “Poison, that — and it chokes the life out of the oak tree, too. Not a kindly thing, mistletoe, but we hang it up with the flor de Nochebuena all the same…”

He doesn’t speak after that, but sings instead, an out-of-season hymn of sons newborn and deaths already foretold. If the verse telling of tombs ought to be grim, Dr del Llano doesn’t make it so, and so the story of gloom and gravity is nothing but a blithe eventuality, predicted all light-hearted by a man very certain of the truth of it.

Mrs. Foster dies soon after. Rose sits in the church as the priest says the first of the masses for her, the first of seven that her widower has paid for. She waits at the door while her father makes conversation — how she wishes he would hurry up! But the doctor in his black coat and the priest in his cassock are two crows alike, and so she is there in the doorway until her father says ‘good-by, Padre’ and comes to join her. Rose hardly has the time to shut her hymnal closed over the catalog tucked inside before he bustles past her, eager now to be on his way.

“Damned quiet place now that the mine’s shut up,” he says on the walk home, and Rose nods, though she does not remember the mine-town as her father does. She knows that there is no more coal to be had here and no more sand, and that with the mine has gone much of her father’s custom. Without black-lung and burns and broken bones, there is far less for a doctor to do in these hills.

But there is no other doctor than Juan Soto del Llano, with his limping step and his rosary about his neck and his rattletrap of a horse-drawn buggy with his only daughter to drive it, so he goes on as he has, and mends up broken bones and offers fever-cures to farmers and their wives, and to the valley townsfolk nearer home.

Henry Freeman is twenty-two, the bright young son of a new-money farmer. He is sickening for something, he is grey-faced and cold and his eyes do not focus.

Dr del Llano is at his door with hat in hand — money passes from the elder Mr. Freeman’s worn hand into his, and the doctor closes the older man’s hand over the coins. Out on the bench of the buggy, Rose scoffs and shakes her head. The fog-touched night is cold even through her coat, and she shivers involuntarily.

“He oughn’t to do such things,” she says, to no one but herself. But all the same, Rose turns her head, and Saro is there beside her, smiling.

“What oughtn’t he do?” asks Saro, with the questioning merriment in her voice that Rose has come to like so well.

“He doesn’t ask for payment, when it’s hill sickness,” and, seeing Saro’s quirk of the mouth, the way the question lurks in her well-dark eyes, Rose continues. “Father doesn’t know what it is, still, and he can’t mend it. It cannot be consumption, for it doesn’t settle in the lungs, but all the same — it is as if something is drawing out the life from them, every one.”

“So your Henry Freeman shall die, then,” says Saro, blunt.

“Don’t—“ says Rose, and stops, cold. “Who are you?” she asks, and looks Saro in the eyes, the brown of them so dark that Rose can barely find her own reflection. And the girl with the mistletoe hair reaches out, and pulls her hand across the golden curve of the hill as if she is stroking the grass that lies like dry cowhide on the ground.

“You know my name, doctor’s daughter, is that not enough?”

“Saro—“ Footsteps, and Rose’s head turns without her willing it. Doctor del Llano still has his sleeves rolled up, the edges wet from scrubbing. He doesn’t let them down again as he drags on his coat, hauling himself up to the buggy-seat as if held down by a great weight.

“Father—“ says Rose, and looks to Saro beside her, but even as she turns back, Saro is gone again.

“I’ll not talk of it,” he says, and hauls his bag into the buggy. It might well weigh as much as all the world. Rose huffs, and pulls her arms against her chest, and sets them on the road again.

And so it goes, over and over again — the Misses Hayward, unmarried, a few years older than Rose herself — Martin Foster, only three — the widow Ruiz, whose husband died down the mine before Rose was born. All of them greying, cold, dying quick. There is sickness in the hills, and it is sickness that the doctor cannot cure, and Rose — Rose finds that she barely cares. She stands in the church, once more, at Lillie Hayward’s funeral, and cannot look at the coffin, but only turns her head to search for wild light hair among the townsfolk in the pews.

But Saro doesn’t come to town; that’s not the place for her, Rose knows. How could she stay anywhere else but where the wind drags the points of oak leaves down the sky, where the tall grass parts under her hands like water?

So life goes on as it did before — the spiders building their webs across the age-grey clapboards of the doctor’s house by the old mine, the oak leaves stuck by their prickling edges to the drying wash, Rose’s father singing softly in his parents’ Spanish as he stocks his black bag at his desk in the front-room.

Rose leans against the desk, chipping at the varnish with her fingernails. In concession to the afternoon heat, the eastward window is flung open, and the thinnest breeze flicks at the pages of the last Sears catalog laid idly within her reach. She has begun to resent the sun — she closes her eyes, hunting darkness for darkness’s sake, and thinks of Saro in her white skirts, standing candle-slender in the dusk between the hills, Saro’s hands that are always cold, pressed softly against Rose’s face, her neck, her chest.

Telephone, its jangling sound sharp in the late-summer quiet — her father’s soft noises of questioning and assent — the practiced movements of putting harness to the horse. But for all that the interruption is sharp, there’s a pleased rise in Rose’s heart nonetheless, for if she is lucky, she will see Saro on the road.

She reins in the horse when her father tells her so, and hands him his bag as he jumps from the buggy — once he’s gone, Rose allows herself a secret smile. It’s early in the evening now, with the light all golden, her father’s horse with its dark mane a-gleaming in the last of the sun. Rose has a flask of coffee with her, brewed black as her father’s coat. She drinks most of it, hot and bitter, never mind that it had been meant to be shared. It doesn’t keep her awake — she drowses, head on her arms, and feels a breeze like soft hands stroke along her neck.

Today she has a headache. Her face is hot, even with her collar unbuttoned and her hat laid aside in her father’s seat. The day is warm, and the air tastes of dust, hot and dry in Rose’s throat. Saro’s hand on her cheek is as sweet and cold as anything Rose has ever snuck from the ice-house. Saro’s mouth against her neck is a cool draught.

“My dear sweet Rose,” says Saro, quiet, with only the barest hint of her usual merriment. “You’ve been ever so patient, even while I took my time with others.”

“Mm,” says Rose, and lets the weight of her body press up against Saro’s cold frame. Perhaps — perhaps that cold could leach the heavy heat from her head, the feverish blur from her eyes.

Saro’s fingers are at the buttons of Rose’s shirtwaist, now, the full breadth of her hand an ice-print on Rose’s chest. Saro from the oak tree, Saro with her hair like mistletoe. The hills rise golden around them, the wind rushing in Rose’s ears without touching her skin.

“May I?”

“Please,” says Rose, at the last, and lets Saro draw away the last of her living warmth.

#em writes stuff #oc time again hehe #oak savanna vampire #AND LO! AS PROMISED! EM HALLOWEEN STORY 3!#in the tradition of the very first round of em halloween story this is written for benjhawkins and pentecostwaite's spooky season challenge #except that. this took Two Years whoops.#(this was supposed to be last year's but it wasn't Working so I finished rat piper instead)#bit of attribution for the header-image -- 3/4 are from the california academy of sciences #(and public domain as part of the uc berkeley calphotos project! yay!)#and the fourth is of some relatives of mine (my gram's cousins iirc; and to put it as she would) 'standing there like the grapes of wrath'#some of the concepts of the story itself are also based on the experiences of some relatives (not those ones though)#[lying on the floor] CALIFORNIAAAA

53 notes · View notes