Genre: Supernatural
Rating: K plus
Summary: Ursa finds something in the woods that no one was ever meant to find. (Urzai horror)
The woods are no place for humans.
Ursa doesn't care about that. All she wants is to get away from the expectations, the petty rules and empty smiles and leering boys. Silly superstitions are of no concern to her. There is no darkness that the light of science and rationality cannot banish, she knows, and therefore she is not afraid like she should be.
Twigs snag on her dress and snap under her feet as she marches into the darkness, and fog begins to rise up, obscuring her vision of what little path there is. She doesn't care. All that matters to her is that she leaves behind Hir'aa and its stifling prejudice, if only for a few hours. Her way becomes marginally more difficult, tearing the now tattered fabric around her calves to bits and scratching at her skin. She doesn't notice, and even if she had she wouldn't have turned back.
Her anger begins to fade, but her pace doesn't drop. The march becomes the desperate gait of someone who needs to be somewhere, though she doesn't know why or where it is. She only knows that she must go there. The white noise has filled her head. She cannot think to turn back or slow down, and so she only runs on, desperate to find the source of the white noise and whispers.
(There are stories of this in Hir'aa's legends. You must not go into the woods, for if you wander within earshot of the King's call, you will not be able to resist.)
Her surroundings change, fade from living green to dead brown, but it doesn't register that now the twigs snapping beneath her feet have a wet, rotted feel to them, or that there are no longer sharp thorns to make her bleed. Everything here is dead or dying, rotting away in the unnatural twilight. The white noise is softer, now, but the whispers boom inside her skull and beckon her away to an existence beyond. She runs, desperate to find him (it wants to be called 'him,' she knows, but she does not know how she knows), desperate to complete the process-
-and there he is.
She can't see him at first, but she knows he's there, in the mound of rotting, decaying plants and flesh. "My king?" she breathes, not sure how she knows to address him this way. The white noise and whispers are gone, and it is now a silent and invisible force holding her feet to the ground despite her shaking hands and racing heart.
The mound begins to move, limbs separating themselves from the body and stretching out toward her. A white mask, pale like the moon, lifts itself and peers at her despite its lack of features. The King towers over her. She cannot move as he takes her into his hands.
"Hello again," he whispers, soft and welcoming, "my queen."
yes I know it's not the Bechdel Test challenge but I really wanted to write this because it was like the only idea I had and I wanted to write some horror stuff