Just a glimpse from my newest WIP, Notte. Enjoy!
My panic did no good. We could not escape the dead.
Everywhere, everywhere, forests burned and fields blood-stained and wells left black and poisoned. Everywhere, everywhere, empty homes like cold, dead bones, and weapons tossed aside and gleaming like cursed jewels. Everywhere, everywhere, animals, gutted and exploded painted every simple roadway and rotted on every path.
We could not get away. In a day’s time, our world had changed beyond recognition, and so we ran.
We ran, my friend, along those dead shores, where fish bobbed on the surface like so much flotsam and birds fell from the sky to join their dead friends. We ran past houses filled with death, beyond the paddock of livestock no longer breathing, through simple gardens filled with wilting leaves. We ran.
Had we been thinking, we would have gone to dust, but I could not think, and she did not know how.
Had we been thinking, we could have dug into the cool, soft earth, hiding until the storm passed, but neither of us wanted to wait long enough do it.
Had we been thinking, we could have hid in the water – but she did not realize we did not need to breathe, and I was too stupid.
We are fast, my children and I.
We were not fast enough.
