In Another Moment

"Turn down that damned radio!"

Over the incessant blaring of 'Lean On Me' and the occasional jumps and bumps of Drewton's underfunded, poorly paved roads, Ashford Ciar heard his companion's near-scream. His lip twitching up, he raised an eyebrow and glanced over at the brunette in his passenger's seat, catching a glimpse of annoyed hazel eyes glaring at him. "My car, my rules, hot-head."

"I swear to whatever god you believe in Ash, I will send you to him if I have to."

Looking back towards the road, through the annual falling of autumn leaves as they weaved clumsy paths through almost-winter winds, Ashford let his small smirk grow. "Fine, turn it down if you want. I'm too busy driving." He glanced at her pointedly, making sure that she saw, before turning back to the road, "You talk enough, Saph?"

Rolling her eyes, she reached over to the pallid green glow of the radio, and spun the knob responsible for volume until the radio turned off completely. "Happy?"

Ignoring both of his questions, she writhed around in her seat until she faced the window next to her. Throwing his gaze her way, Ashford was only able to see her through the dim reflection she cast off. Soft, mirthless hazel eyes. Graceless, curled auburn hair to frame a set of softly curved cheeks, prickled with a light shadow of freckles. He couldn't help but to see the beauty in it. The beauty in her. Careless, but still managing elegance.

"What do you think it'll be like?"

Broken out of his reverie, he shook his head lightly and looked back at her reflection. She hadn't moved, and he wouldn't have even known she had really talked unless he'd heard her so clearly. "What?"

"When we grow up. I don't like to think about it, but I want to know."

He blinked for a moment, stunned. Then, realizing what she asked, he laughed, long and hearty, before turning back to the road. "I thought you'd ask something deep and meaningful, not..." Embracing the silence, he turned back to her. Now sporting a frown, he saw the beginnings of a tear gathering in her eye. He sighed. "We're only teenagers, Sapphire. There's no use in thinking like that. It isn't healthy..."

Trailing off, he looked back towards the road. Long past the settling leaves, they he drove through a field, wired off farmland on either side of them. But it wasn't this that interested him. Under the rising sun, he heard something faint. He had to strain, but it was there. A low, almost silent, rumble with seemingly no origin. By the time he realized what it was, there was nothing he could do.

The ground beneath him shuttered violently, and the car jerked around in uncontrollable bursts. From beside him, he heard a panicked shriek, and all he could do was answer. "An earthquake! Hold on to somethin'!" Instead of driving on, Ashford lurched forward, slamming his foot on the brake. The car slid to a halt, and through the doors, he could smell the light scent of burning rubber. "Get under the car! Now!" He said, reaching down to unbuckle himself before turning to Sapphire.

He gaped for at her for a moment, her eyes dull, wide, and unmoving. Reaching over, he shook her and she blinked, looking at him. "Under the car!" All she managed was a squeak of acknowledgement, before they both struggled to climb out of the car.

In a matter of moments, they both slid quickly under the semi-protective chassis of the vehicle. Around them, the ground shifted unnaturally, and the pavement around them cracked in jagged patterns. Over the rumbling, Ash heard the metallic groaning of tension, presumably in the wired fences around them, and eventually a snap. Then, metal scraping, as the barbs on the wire shot off in skewed paths when the cables snapped. He reached out, grouping around for his companion, and eventually found her hand. He wasn't sure that he ever wanted to let go.

Moments passed, and the rumble only became louder. Opening his eyes, he saw the hunched shadow of Sapphire beside him. He began to shamble closer to her, but hesitated as an odd sense of foreboding overtook him.

Moments later, he gaped as the ground began to rumbled even harder than it had before, and the pavement between them split open. At first, it wasn't a large fissure. But as it began to grow larger and quicker, he soon realized the danger. "Sapphire, out! Hurry!" His throat burned from the shouting, as he pushed her out from under the car, and then tried to crawl out himself.

But then he heard obnoxious creaking that makes his stomach drop.

He saw the sunlight, looked up and saw the small barbs imbedded in the grey paneling of his car. Then he looked back towards the wheel, where the tire had rolled entirely over his ankle, trapping him. Pulling, he only managed to hurt himself, along with giving him the overwhelming urge to scream.

"Ashford!"

Turning back, he saw Sapphire, her arm outstretched. He shook his head. "My foot's stuck." She looked down his leg and finally at the tire. Following her gaze back over to it, Ashford heard a creak. Stubbornly gripping the pavement, he felt his body fall, before he lurched as the grip on his hands was tested. Somehow, the car above him stayed in its place. Looking to her, he shook his head. "Get back, Saph. It's gonna' fall."

Before she could respond, the car creaked again before falling slightly and proving itself against a piece of Earth jutting out, missing Ash's body by inches. Then, the ground lurched quickly, and the car fell. He braced himself for the pain of his body being crushed, but with a violent shift and possibly an explosion, the car tumbled harmlessly into the chasm below. The pain from his ankle as the car fell, however, made him gasp, and the fingers on his left hand lost their grip. Stunned, Sapphire shook her head quickly, before looking over towards Ash. Rushing over, neither of them realized that the rumbling had stopped.

"H-Hold on! I can p-pull you up!" She stuttered

But both of them knew that she couldn't. She was weak, as he'd told her many times before in better situations, tired from the experience, and he was losing his grip. His feet dangled above the featureless void below him, and he looked up towards her. Her hair, the color of Fall leaves, drifting around on the wind in stringy threads. Her eyes, the color of chestnuts and spices, with tears trailing from them. The feather necklace, dangling harmlessly from her neck.

He knew that he would fall. He knew that he would die. So he didn't say 'I'll miss you.' He didn't say 'It's okay to forget.' In his pain addled, shocked state, all he could manage to mumble was...

"Well Shit."

And as his fingers finally gave out, all he could see were the tears flying upwards from his face as he fell down into the void.

The sensation was odd. Once, in freshman year, he felt what it was like to have electricity run through his body without actually leaving it. It felt prickly, and unexplainable. He didn't expect it, but he experienced the same level of unexplainability when he fell.

It was lonely, perhaps even the loneliest he'd ever felt. The chasm wouldn't even give him the decency to fall in darkness. Instead, a faint light mockingly warmed him, and, at some point, he noticed his scream. It was the scream he noticed first. Not the way his throat burned from it, and not the hate that fell with him. It was the scream.

At some point, in the time that he fell, he forgot what it was like to not have the wind screaming against his face. He forgot what it was like to feel ground. And, now that the small light, once kind and mocking, had grown into something almost as blinding as the sun, he forgot what darkness felt like.

And then it was over. With a loud pop that he could feel echo in his eardrums, and a stinging sensation that felt like millions of watts of electricity flowing through his body at once, the light around him dimmed to let him see, with bleary eyes, a white mass rushing towards him.

"Finally. An end."

He cried tears of joy from then until he impacted with the ground, and the first darkness in what felt like years overtook him.

The first thing that he felt was the wind. His body ached, and he felt as though his eyes had been glued shut. In fact, in a matter of moments, he realized that he hadn't only felt the wind. He'd heard it, too. It was weird, for the first time, he knew how the wind sounded when it was howling.

Then he remembered a lesson from physics class, and he realized that it had to be howling for a reason.

Slowly opening his eyes, and trying to shut them again at the light, his surroundings came into view.

He sat no more than a foot away from a cliff that would certainly kill him. His stomach dropped just looking at it. Beyond the cliff, though, there was nothing in his view, other than desolated, dead forest. That wasn't saying much, though. The wintry fog swirling around him obscured plenty.

Inching backwards, away from the cliff, he felt his back meet some sort of surface. More than anything, against his aching muscles, it hurt. A lot. So, clenching his teeth, he brought one foot to rest firmly on the ground, and stood up. Granted, it was slow, and he was straining, but he was able. Confused, he looked down to his ankle, to see no signs of any damage. Then, shivering, he decided to worry about that later.

Now standing, he turned around to see the object he'd backed into. A small head stone.

'Summer Rose'

'Thus kindly I scatter'

He, through the pain, managed a small smile. "Someone liked poetry. Sorry, by the way. Didn't see you." And that was it. Looking up, he saw a small forest, dead, like the one below him.

This was the first time he realized that he didn't know where he was.

Eyes widening and panic setting in, he reached into the back pocket of his darkened jeans, and pulled out a smashed mass of wires and metal. Looking towards it, the panic in his stomach escalated. "I don't think insurance is gonna' cover this..." He sighed and threw it off the cliff. Mostly out of rage.

After a few seconds of watching his crumpled phone tumble down the cliffside, he sat back down with a grunt. There was plenty that he didn't want to think about, and anytime the fall or his ankle crossed his mind his head began to hurt. It was all so confusing.

Deciding it best to get it off his train of thought, he stood back up, this time with slightly less pain. He didn't know where he was, or what was going on, but wasting time sitting would do him no good. If he walked for long enough, he was bound to happen upon something.

With that thought in mind, he set off into the forest.

He was losing hope. What felt like hours of walking hadn't led to anything, and his legs weren't exactly holding up very well. On top of that, the wind had been frigid, and he shuddered every time it blew past him. Jeans and a tee shirt weren't the best way to keep warm.

He didn't even know if he was going forward or not. The trees were similar enough to confuse someone to walk in a circle...

Then he heard it. Sweet salvation in the form of reckoning. Something that meant he had heard either his savior or his murderer.

A gunshot.

After little thought, he limped off towards the sound.

It didn't take long for him to notice that the place was different, somehow.

It wasn't in any obvious thing. No, it was just how the frigid winds of the forest felt against his skin, and how the icy fog only rose to his feet before fading away in the air. Two completely normal things that somehow felt off. And there was the noise. Ash was a great listener, but he hadn't noticed the noises for a while. At many points, he doubted that they were even real.

At first, it was nothing more than a near-silent tapping. Then, it grew louder, until it had turned from a tapping, into heavy footsteps, finally into something that made his stomach drop.

A growl.

He didn't need wolves right now. He was tired and aching, and even though he might've been able to fend them off on a good day, right now he wouldn't even be able to run away. So he decided to take his only viable way of action. To walk away very slowly.

Continuing through dead brush, he tried to walk on in the way of the gunshot, and it seemed as though the snarl had gone away. But all of that hope fell away when he saw something tall dark and haggard dash towards him.

Panicking, he lurched to his left, missing whatever thing had come at him by inches. Then, landing, he turned to see exactly what the thing was. When he saw it, his heart lurched before nearly stopping.

In front of him was no wolf. Instead, a creature with a pelt of the night sky and teeth of crimson stood over him, snarling. Ash could see the trail of saliva slinking down from the thing's clenched maw, and could only hope that the red flakes in it weren't from a previous meal.

And in a second, the moment of analyzation was over. The creature leapt at him again, and years of instinct and martial arts training could only will him to move so much. This time, instead of escaping with nothing harmed, he felt a claw shred through his shirt, the sting of cool winds coming soon after.

Knowing that the creature would have to take a few moments to reposition itself after the lunge, Ashford looked around quickly for something that he could use against the monster. Quickly, he found a sizable rock and grabbed it, only to turn around to see the monster already jumping at him again, with a seemingly renewed bloodlust.

He could do nothing as the thing came towards him, other than punch the thing in the stomach. He didn't expect it to do much, knowing that the thing was much stronger than him. That was, until the creature stumbled backwards, toppling over into the snow.

Looking down at his hands, his eyes widened. What, exactly, had happened to him while he fell?

His confusion was short lived, however, as he heard another guttural growl and looked up only to be met with the oversized paw of the beast in front of him. He, much like the creature, flew backwards. Instead of landing in snow, though, he felt his back hit a tree, and he slid down.

Dazed, he shook his head, trying to get the blurriness to dissipate. Just in time, he saw the oversized paw coming at him once again. This time, he managed to roll forward clumsily as the paw came past.

Getting up, he spun around quickly, ready for the next attack, only to see the thing struggling against the tree he had hit. Realizing that the creature's paw had gotten stuck, he shook his head, still dazed. As it finally faded, though, he realized the opportunity that he had. Raising the rock in his hand above him, he brought it down with a scream that echoed both his strain and the confusion he'd experienced over the past few hours.

He wanted to go home.

As soon as the rock connected with the creature's head, it had gone limp, and a dark scarlet liquid that Ash could only assume to be blood began to soak the creature's scalp. He sighed, glad that he could finally rest.

Then the gunshots began again, this time incredibly close. His head snapping upwards, he, through thick brush, saw a distant figure in a red cloak. His only hope so far.

His stomach dropped once more, though, as he noticed the same things he had faced that were behind the red figure. And Ashford could only assume that they were pissed. From the clearing, he could hear the collective growl of, what seemed to be, an entire pack of them. But, what startled him most, was the cloaked figure in the middle of the field. Whoever they were, they hadn't made any motion to run. And, from what Ash had seen in his fight, if they thought to fight all of them at once, then they were completely insane.

He hoped it wasn't hypocritical for him to say that.

Then, in a blur of motion, the hooded figure broke their silent standoff with the creatures and darted forward, something very large detaching from the figure's back. He couldn't be sure, but, twirling around as the monsters charged, the figure looked to be feminine.

As soon as the first thing made contact, Ash knew that he'd underestimated the figure immensely. When the creature's head fell at the feet of its brethren, the things seemed to realized that they had made the same mistake. They realized it too late, though, as the figure sped towards the bulk of them. Ash could barely keep up with her as limbs and heads of the creatures fell from the group. Awestruck, he watched the massacre and, deep down, felt a little bad about himself.

In an instant, it was over. The figure in the field stood wordlessly as bullet casings rained down around her, the corpses of their fallen foes littering the ground around them. Ash stared wordlessly at what he now knew to be a small girl, as she held an enormous crimson scythe behind her.

From beyond the girl, movement caught his eye. Deeping in the clearing, another of the creatures stumbled out of the underbrush. It was small, Ash assumed it to either be an infant or the runt of the liter. Either way, his eyes widened as it inched further into the clearing, closer to the girl. He wasn't sure, but the girl made no notion of having noticed the wolf.

He weighed his options, his eyes still following the creature as it neared.

He could yell out to her. The girl seemed plenty able to protect herself in a fight. But he might confuse her long enough for the creature to pounce. Skilled or not, if a creature of its size managed to make it to her, her frail body couldn't possibly resist its claws.

Alternatively, he could rush forward and try to stop the creature entirely. Much more dangerous, but much more effective. His eyes narrowed as the creature neared dangerously close. He'd made up his mind.

Darting forward from the underbrush, he saw the girl's attention snap to him. Too late to stop, he pushed himself even harder, before bending his knees and jumping forward. He drew his foot back as the creature lunged for the girl as she turned.

Time slowed as his foot connected with the creature's filthy maw mere inches away from the girl. As soon as his foot made contact, a sickening crunch emitted from the thing's snout. Rolling forward as he landed, he shot to his feet and turned, only to see the girl cut the creature in half.

Silence overtook them as ashen eyes met silver. Glancing down, her eyes widened. "Oh my gosh. Are you okay?"

He followed her line of vision to his stomach, where, through his blue shirt, he could see red soaking through where the picture of a diamond had been torn in his previous fight. "Huh." He said, and grimaced as a wave of incredible pain racked him. Looking up, the girl was suddenly closer, and he stumbled into her grip.

"Hey! Stay with me!" She said. Ash looked into her eyes again, and suddenly the silver in them was duller than it'd been before.

He smirked sluggishly, "'Tis but a…" He began, before another wave of pain took him and his vision. He realized that they'd started walking as he stumbled out of grip onto a knee. He grunted, biting his tongue to stop himself from wailing at the pain. "Okay, maybe not," He said. From behind him, he heard the girl whisper to herself.

"Who are you?"

And that was the last thing he'd heard before the familiar darkness greeted him.