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Rowan
Rowan pulled tight on the edges of her slightly too small blood-red cloak and wrapped her arms tight around her middle in a failed attempt to keep what little warmth it trapped next to her body. Despite her efforts the cold, winter wind cut through each layer of clothing even as the contrary, stronger gusts pulled the fur-lined cape and hood from her face and forced her to the edge of the trail. The crusty snow was deeper there and her oiled leather boots sunk up to her ankles each time, forcing her tired legs to work harder to pull them free to return to the hardened trail and continue moving forward.
She struggled to keep to the trail even without the wind pushing her about as it carried hard pellets of snow into her face, and more importantly, her eyes. Tall, hard wood trees, normally bright with great, green leaves, played the role of ghosts as she squinted through her frosted eye lashes. Her breath clouded and warmed the air around her face just enough to melt the snow as it approached her face but froze immediately upon hitting her cheeks, nose, and eyelashes. Every few minutes she gritted her teeth and forced herself to reach a hand through a tiny opening to wipe the frost away and dab at her nose. The wind took advantage of her distraction and attempted to steal the cloak, making it fly behind her and snap loudly in the woods. It startled her each time as it broke through the rhythm of the crunching snow under her boots and the wind rattling through naked tree branches. The wind and Rowan traveled the otherwise silent woods together, the only things that seemed even partially alive. Even the sun hid from the forest in perpetual twilight hardly sharing its muted, diffuse light. It reminded her of the unnatural stillness of a graveyard. The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
Finally, Rowan’s feet stepped on the little used path that led to her grandmother’s cabin. People came up with all sorts of stories to explain why her grandmother lived so far away from any settlement. Some people whispered salacious rumors, she consorted with the devil, or the fae touched her long ago. Rowan’s monthly visits resulted in those same people attaching similar rumors to her. She little cared for what they thought. Her grandmother told fantastic tales and shared her secrets and tricks with her granddaughter. Rowan, barely sixteen, knew much more about the world and the men and women that inhabited it than any of her peers in her own village.
A few yards onto the narrow path she began to feel uneasy though the source of her unease eluded her. After she passed through the last screen of trees and saw the cabin she realized what she missed; the smell of wood smoke. Without thinking about the consequences of her actions she broke into a run, her need to know overriding her need for caution.
She slipped and fumbled her way toward the now ominous cabin. Fifty yards from the door she fell fully into a deep snow drift and knocked all the air from her lungs. Her stunned diaphragm refused to move despite her heart and brain’s desperate need for air. I can’t breathe, she thought, panic building in her chest, further preventing her from gaining control over her muscles. Her vision clouded over, white and black and shimmering closed about her. The snow surrounding her grabbed at her and prevented her from being able to pull herself out. She struggled less and less as each limb gave up, the cold leaching her strength.
The distant sound of a wolf howling escorted Rowan into the deep, black depths of unconsciousness.
Fog
Anna woke up to screaming. She tried to stand but her body refused to respond, not even to turn her head. Only her eyes responded to her insistent need to do something, run, hide, fight, anything but lay on the hard, frozen pavement. Opening her eyes revealed only a heavy, oppressive fog obscuring everything around her, including her legs.
The screaming echoed through the fog, seeming to come from all directions at once, though it was weakening, coming in coarse gasps and underlying tears. The fog almost seemed to have a presence to it, pressing down on her, choking her, and making it difficult to breath. The screaming matched its rhythm to her breathing, cutting off suddenly when she began to cough. It’s me, I’m the one screaming. Her newfound insight seemed to be the cue her body needed to make it work again. She wished it hadn’t.
Searing pain raced up her limbs, burning her nerves, boiling her blood, tearing her muscles, and shattering her bones. Another more primal scream escaped her raw throat and the coppery smell of blood overloaded her sense of smell. The pain forced her back to arch, her hands clenched tightly, scraping her knuckles against the sharp pebbles littering the road, hardly registering over the other sensations overwhelming her system.
It stopped as abruptly as it had started. Her body dropped down hard on the pavement, and her breath came in short, deep gasps as though she had just run a marathon. But she could move now. She slowly pushed herself up, using the yellow guardrail next to her to lean on while her shaking legs adjusted to her body weight as well as the fog. The fog that seemed to cling to her like spiderwebs in a long-abandoned tomb. She left smears of blood along the guardrail, dark red coating the bright yellow.
Glass and gravel crunched beneath her feet, loud and distant at the same time. A car, there should be a car, she thought. She continued to stumble forward, searching with her hands and feet as much as with her eyes.
The crumpled wreak of her car fuzzed into being in front of her, ghostly and ghastly. The crumpled front looked like it had attempted to plow through a mountain and failed. The windshield no longer existed and the steering wheel was crushed into the driver seat along with the driver side door. Where she had been sitting, buckled in. She looked down at her chest and found herself staring at the torn, bloody shirt imbedded in her skin with chips of glass and a narrow metal rod. Her hand rose of its own volition, shaking violently as it tried to grasp and pull the rod from her left breast. Her blood slick hand only slid along it, but she knew already what it meant.
She lunged from the rail to the car, its blue paint barely present between the gouges in the carbon fiber. Her hands found the cold, wet vehicle, and she inched her way around to the driver window. Cold. Enough time had passed for the car to cool off. Her hair prickled, covering her in goose bumps as the cold had not and sending a shiver down her spine. She knew what she would find, but she needed to see for herself.
She reached the door where it had been forced at least six inches into the cab. Her eyes closed involuntarily, putting off the inevitable for a few extra seconds. Then they opened and she saw her own body, slumped into the passenger seat and covered in blood. From this perspective she could see her chest was crumpled into itself, her head hanging limp against her shoulder.
The screaming began again, something so primal and full of fear that the fog shifted away from her, afraid of her. Then, gathering itself into a swirling mist it engulfed her slowing only when she had been consumed entirely.