Survivors
SPN100 challenge, word: rough
Summary: It might take only a moment to change your perception of the world forever. Hopefully, there's always a helping hand even in the midst of horror.
200 words.
Later, when she sometimes woke from nightmares, rolled into a little ball of primeval terror, she'd only remember snapshots of that evening when her image of the world had changed.
The moonlit forest, the warm scent of pines, the sound of her running shoes on the soft ground, suddenly mirrored by something else… bigger, faster, a black blur with gleaming eyes, growling, jumping.
A shot, a roar, an impact.
Buried alive under fur and muscles and claws – and the stench, God, that fetid stench of death and decay and nameless fright. Her eyes closed, her mind trying to escape, her body slack and ready for surrender.
And then – all of a sudden – the weight on her was gone.
A rough voice tried to reach her, kept asking questions, but the hands searching for injuries were gentle and steady and reassuring, and when she finally found her way back to the world, he held her while she cried, stroking her hair and whispering soothing words in her ears, while a blazing fire consumed the beast.
After that night, fear was never far from her heart. But faith was even closer. Faith in the ones out there to protect people like her.