In order for her to understand this world, she has to give up everything she once knew to be true. So far, that’s meant a few items of wear, minor comforts that humans senselessly rely on. But soon, this place will call for more from her.
She’ll see…
“It’s okay,” she whispers.
I run my hand through her hair, pausing behind her ear. “Whatever happens, I will protect you. Do you believe me?”
“I will follow your lead,” she says through tight lips.
But as we exit the basement, we hit the edge of the marshes. The world is quiet, except for the sound of short footsteps over the noises of buzzing insects.
Someone is near.
My heart stops inside my chest. Instinct kicks in, and my arms coil around her. “You hear that?” I ask, voice low.
Her body turns rigid, shoulders as stiff as a board. Her eyes are like two wide voids, peering into the darkness ahead. If she raises her voice, I’m fucked. If she runs, all of my hard work and patience will have been for nothing.
Before she has time to respond, one man wades through the water with a rifle, maybe fifty feet in the distance. He’s dressed in a tan button-down shirt, a pair of muddied, wide-legged pants, and steel-toed boots that can be seen with each shallow step. Behind him, men wearing potato sacks for masks calmly crouch and follow the man’s lead.
“You sure you saw him crash around here?” one of the men asks.
“Shut up,” the leader says. “He’ll hear us if you’re too loud. We can’t lost him. You know what that man will do to us if we do.”
That man?
“Who are they?” Ava asks.
“Cultists,” I whisper.
“Cultists? Are you serious?” she asks.
“A break-away faction from the hunters inside the forest. They worship the heavens, and they believe me to be the devil. Space is not a reality to them. They do not understand it.”
They’re fucking insane.
“What do we do?” she asks.
I swallow, saliva catching against my Adam’s apple. “We wait and hope they don’t catch us.”
They wade through without locating our positioning, but even with the men in the distance, I’m careful to start moving again.
They are determined to find me and ruin my progress.
The night is peculiarly cold. The air is chilly, as though some mysterious and terrible being has iced the planet. The eerie silence thickens with the difficulty of our position. I go on, afraid to look back or peer ahead, or even to stare straight in front of me. But the worst of it is that, once they disappear, I see nothing.
They are craftier than the hunters, and not necessarily predictable. They seem to have no home, just drifting around this world like lost souls looking for salvation.
“Let’s go,” I say.
As I spring forward, a faint light flares from the opposite side. I pause, lowering the both of us back into the water with quick success.
I hear one cultist flap against the surface. “Wait. You hear that?” he asks.
Fuck.
“Hold on,” the leader growls, turning back around.
I witness him staring in our direction, and I’m not sure if he can see my nocturnal eyes shining against the glow of his lantern.