Death

The wind is cold. I can feel it sweep through my face and prickle my skin.

"This damn heater."

I stick my arm out, and pat around. I grab a hand full of earth, of brittle dirt and rocks but my blanket isn't there.

My eyes snap open, even in the dark I can tell I'm not home, but it takes me a few seconds longer to realize I'm not alone. Two brown beady eyes, it's somewhere out there in the thick of trees.

I shiver, and I don't know if it's due to the cold, the cold that is bound to crawl up my spine and suffocate me, or perhaps I'm afraid, of whoever is out there.

Of what they're going to do.

"Name yourself Gilden. Who are you!"

The voice, sly and monstrous, it punches through the air and vibrates in the ground. I can hear it from every side.

*I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.*

I'm breathing audibly. "W-What's going on! Why have you brought me here?"

"How demonic she sounds, Cadni, get away from it! They've sent a User."

I hear rustles. They're hiding behind me, where the bushes and vines intertwine. I don't wait for them to move before I jump and tear through the ground.

The wind swoops through my long hair, and for a moment the only thing I can hear is my erratic breaths beat like a drum against my ears.

The thick of night clouds my eyes, and I don't know how far I've come, I just know that I can't go any longer. The blood is too much, I can feel it run down my soles and fill in the gaps of my toes.

When the pain becomes unbearable, I take cover behind a tree, and sit on one of the overgrown roots.

Of course this would happen to me. Of course I would injure myself like this, of course.

This is it. I won't even get a funeral. Maybe the land lord would have come around and reported my disappearance if I hadn't paid the next year in advance. How stupid!

I clench my eyes shut and shove my head on the bark. Why does it hurt like hell.

In a breath, fabric swallows my face. I kick, and punch my hands back and forth. I try to move, but the more I push the more my limbs collapse together, the more I take a bigger dose of the poison. My head goes in turns, and darkness seems only a eye shut away.

This is it. This is how I die.