Title:
White
Characters: The Wife of the Balverine
Hunter
The alarm was blaring again—a terrible fog-horn noise that made her very bones tremble beneath her skin. Her old arms shakily lifted to push the curtains aside, half hoping and half dreading that she could see him again. She saw the rain creating a fine mist across the ground and concealing the Hero's boots as he moved, blocking and attacking as best as he could.
The balverine, white and drenched in both blood and rain, released a guttural snarl as the sword hit him—over and over again—to no avail. It served no purpose other than to annoy him enough to leave and try again later, not having the strength it needed to penetrate his thick hide. His eyes glittered dangerously, and he leapt away.
She dropped her curtains, and blankly watched them fall back over the window.
Despair washed over her, making her sway on her feet. Her husband was beyond hope. He truly had become the creature that he had hunted for so long. The man stared into the abyss, and the abyss had finally stared back.
The widowed old woman backed away from the window and headed for the closet. It was rickety, scratched, and worn. The handles jiggled dangerously as she tugged the doors open, searching up and down for that chest. She found it at the bottom, half buried by old clothes. The old widow tried to ignore how the shirt looked like it had once belonged to a man, and picked up the box. She struggled with it for a few moments, but eventually managed to loosen it enough to open it.
She flipped back the lid and looked down at the content. In the center of a tattered cloth there was a stone, glowing silver even in the sparse light of her broken home. Bony fingers caressed it, and then her shaking old hands managed to lift it from her box. She didn't suppose he'd mind, her husband, if she took his last silver augmentation.
He was dead anyway.
So the weary widow straightened, clutching the stone, and brought it outside to present to the Hero, hoping against hope that this hunter would not fall to the same fate.
(AN: I decided to do one for the lesser characters for once… since my next one is another Grey sisters' one-shot. Then… I don't know which one. Maybe the idea I had for Jack's mask… or the one about Theresa. We'll see.)
