WARNING - 2

Inside, Finch was still coughing and trying to breath properly after being choked. Her throat was sore. She felt like the pipe of her throat got narrowed, making her difficult to breath. With her small fingers, she tried to massage her throat from the outside, rubbing and kneading her neck slowly in hope she would get better. She blinked her wet eyes, trying to get rid of the small tears that started to cloud her sight.

Her thought went back to what Mosley had spoken. She felt hurt with what Mosley had done to her, but at the same time, she felt she deserved it for being so blundering. How could she not noticed? How could she not question him enough to reveal who he really was?

Who was the boy even?!

"Finch." Called out Mosley from outside.

In hearing the woman's voice, the girl's heart skipped a bit. She was still utterly scared of her. What had she found outside? Her body hesitated to get up and go outside to see what Mosley wanted; whereas her brain told her to promptly answered the woman as the longer she waited, the worse the consequence would be.

So, she got up and walked to the already opened door, finding the woman standing right on the entrance. She saw Mosley's white eyes bore into her, piercing her soul. At that moment, she wished what Edmond said about Mosley being blind was true. That way she would not feel intimidated by the woman's eyes right now.

"Yes, Mosley?" Spoke Finch in a hoarse voice.

The woman replied to her with a smirk that Finch did not like. A kind of smirk that made her wanted to stay away from whatever the woman had in her mind right now. "Let me in, Finch." Her voice was soft but Finch did not fail to detect the subtle meaning behind her softness.

It was not like she asked Finch to invite her in before she choked her. She was absolutely forcing herself in fume, ignoring her scary skeleton looking form she produced on her own appearance. But she had enough of getting upset with the little girl she had been looking after so far. She had enough of scaring her.

"Please, come in, Mosley." Finch obliged, inviting her in a low voice.

After getting invited, Mosley stepped inside her oasis gracefully, closing the door behind her. Her long white dress, that slightly turned darker and worn out as it had never been washed, swept the floor.

"Thanks, my dear." She smiled at Finch.

Finch nodded slightly at her, looking at the ground. She did not dare to look her in the eyes. She was aware that right now Mosley was in her perfect human form, not the skeleton form which was dreaded. It was the first time for Finch to see Mosley as a whole skeleton from head to toe. She had witnessed quite often how Mosley's fingers turned to bony ones, when the woman was working on something, but never her whole figure.

The woman now came closer to the girl who was still in fear. Her hands reached out to grab Finch's shoulder that suddenly became tense under her touch. But Mosley smiled anyway.

"How's your throat, hm?" Asked her calmly and gently. Finch did not utter a word to her question. "I will make something to drink, to ease the pain in your throat. It must be painful."

In Mosley's cruel remark, tears started to ran down on Finch's cheeks. She cried silently. She felt relieved when Mosley let go of her shoulder and left her small space, to move to another corner of the place. But they were both still in the same room, which made Finch wary still.

Finch slowly fell down on her knees and crawled closer towards the wall that was right next to the door. She sat down with her back against the wall, so she could set her eyes free to see what the woman was doing. Her knees were brought onto her chest, holding them together as she kept watching Mosley cautiously.

As Mosley had said that she would make something to relieve Finch's sore throat, Mosley began to mix a few herbs into a boiling water. She stirred it gently anticlockwise with her bony fingers, as her lips quietly murmured some spells.

"You know what, Finch?" Said Mosley. It caught Finch off guard when she heard Mosley spoke whilst she was watching the woman intensely. "You didn't lie to me before."

Finch was now confused. If Mosley knew she did not lie, why was she being rough with her?

"But you know what?" Asked Mosley again. She turned her head slightly towards Finch and smirked. Her voice was calm when she said, "Your friend has just died."

Finch's blue eyes went wide in shock upon hearing the news.

William died… She sobbed internally.

"How?" Although her throat still hurt every time she spoke, she ignored it. Her heart saddened to hear that William had died.

Mosley shrugged her shoulder nonchalantly. She did not have an answer for that. She did not know how they boy died in such a short time. It made her wanted to go to the village straight away to confirm what she discovered. If the boy had really died, his spirit must have been the one who came to visit Finch in the morning.

"What did the boy said to you this morning?" Mosley had just finished stirring her potion for Finch. She poured it into a metal cup. Quietly muttering another spell, the hot boiling potion on the cup turned to be warm, ready to drink. She walked towards Finch and bent down to pass the cup to the girl she nearly killed less than twenty minutes ago.

With her shaky hands, Finch took the cup from Mosley and began to drink the brown liquid without complaining. The taste was extremely bitter, but Finch showed nothing on her face that indicate how she hated the drink that Mosley had just given.

Seeing Finch drank her potion till the last drop, Mosley grinned from ear to ear. She kindly took the cup away from the girl when she finished. For a second, Finch thought that it was a way of Mosley apologising to her.

"What did the boy say to you this morning?" Repeated Mosley.

Finch cleared her throat before she answered the woman, who seemed to be holding patience. Her pain was gone. But as she remembered about what happened upon William, another pain surged from her heart, up to her throat that caused her to sob.

"He said people would come here to look for me."