Merlin: Texture
Disclaimer: Merlin and all of its characters and locations, etc. belong to their respective owners (who have made me very sad by canceling the show. I WANT MORE.); I'm just borrowing. No copyright infringement intended!
Author's Note: I must have written this...oh, about a year ago now, probably; Jenn challenged me to write something about a sense, and I chose touch. It's set...somewhere early on during the time when Morgana was "missing".
Everything hurts her. She stumbles through the woods, tripping over rocks and roots and the ragged hem of her own skirt. Blood redder than she's ever seen wells up from a hundred cuts on her pale hands. Drops tremble on the tips of her fingers until she shakes them off to fade into the rotten, black leaves on the forest floor. Her eyes blur, tears she refuses to shed.
It is different out here, so very different than back home. There it is deadly; everything is hard and smooth and sharp. By the time you realize you've been cut, you are already as good as dead. Out here, nothing is so subtle; the roughness of thorns, bark, stones, all sharp enough to make you jump. Even the dirt here prickles her hands like shards of glass. Everywhere she turns she is met with resistance.
She finds that she does not mind the pain as much as she would have had she been safe at home. Her mind recoils on her at that, a stinging slap that almost blinds her. She realizes that she has been thinking of that place as home. As if she had not been betrayed and lied to and then left to die. She whispers the truth, repeats it over and again, that is not home. She forces herself onward.
Her feet carry her forward until they catch in a hole in the uneven ground and she is pitched to her knees. Her palms scrape across a fungus covered rock. When she looks at them, there are green streaks mingling with the red. Two sets of veins crossing, overlapped on her palace-white skin. Fists tighten. Blood seeps between shaking fingers. She knows that it should be warm, wet, soft; she cannot feel it. Only a vague sort of tickling tracing a path across her knuckles.
Movement, to the left. She lashes out suddenly, striking a hand against a tree. A cry escapes, short and piercing. The ridges of the bark have imprinted themselves into her palm. Her hand stings, scrapes against the beaded bodice of her dress as she holds it close. Smooth beads feel like sandpaper on her battered flesh. She leans against the tree, sick with the smell of her own blood, and curls into herself, sobbing breathlessly. She will go no further today. She has lost the will to move.
Morgana is cold.
fin.