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dusk
notes – ripped Asha out entirely. No, really. Originally, SHE was going to be the darkness dragoon, but y'know- Mary Sue!senses were screaming at me…
At any rate, short 'connecting' chapter.
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Bale's skyline was darkening to a hazy purple, turning the very air around the city alight with a violet sheen, spilling over wood shingled rooftops and lancing to the ground in splashes of dying brilliance. Flocks of pigeon's scattered by the hustle of last-minute errands dotted this sunset tinge with flecks of gray and white, winging their way to roosts and window ledges for the coming night.
Timeless, it seemed. A scene played out everyday in countless cities and villages, always back dropped by a different variation of sunset.
Or, it should have.
The clouds waiting to overtake the sunset were darkening with the rouge of nightfall, and heavy with the scent of rain.
The slender blonde watched the sky with a sort of wondering expression. Her hands stilled in the actions of gathering papers and the odds and ends that scattered about her.
"No stars tonight," the queen mourned aloud, taking another glance to the moisture heavy nimbus blanket and moved to right the mess she had made here, her own little sanctuary.
The 'observatory' maybe had been the remains of a garden shed, or perhaps a greenhouse, Emille mused, touching one of the many glass paned windows around her.
Star charts rattled as they were folded and tucked into their niches; the blonde eyed them wistfully, tracing a fingertip around one constellation before folding it as well.
Thunder laid the bones of a brewing storm; it was building a rather decent body of dark clouds now that the sun was nothing more than a blazing lip on the horizon.
Wrestling with a coversheet, the modest telescope was blanketed and Emille looked over her domain with searching gray eyes. A satisfied 'hmph' thereafter, she brushed her hands together and stepped lightly across the stone floor towards the door, running a mental tally of what needed done before she could seek out her bed.
'Step one: Pry Albert from books.'
A practical impossibility.
'Step two: relocate said husband closer to chambers.'
Because, really, is would be easier to drag him to the bed when he'd pass out from lack of sleep. She didn't fancy lugging him from the library to the royal chambers in the dead of night!
'Step three: finish letter to Lisa…'The door shut behind her with a light 'clicking' sound, and it took her wandering mind a moment to realize that the sound of the door shutting had. not. stopped.
Click click click. Across the floor she'd just crossed herself.
The length of her spine was clutched in a sheath of ice.
Click click cli-She whirled, peering though the paned glass.
Shadows. Shadows where shadows didn't belong…
She shook her head, as if to clear it, and the pool of congealed darkness that had lay in greenhouse was gone.
The young woman's hands inched towards the doorlatch, but fisted midway.
'Stop it,' she told herself, pulling a strand of pale blonde from her eyes as a wind suddenly sprang up in the tiny garden.
Somewhere in the thickened brush along the wall, a branch snapped. A wet, stealthy sound came soon after.
Slithering, scrabbling, watching, waiting.
The blonde moved, away from the gardens, listening to the rumble of thunder in the heavens above and for anymore noises around her. Reaching a smaller side door into the castle, Emille peered back, narrowing eyes, flickering from the trees to the undergrowth.
There was that…feeling. Something misplaced, a subtle wrongness. Emille frowned. 'Just the weather, maybe…' Shook her head. The slender blond vanished in through the door, slipping into the darkened passage that lead back into the main hall. Fighting with the impulse to look behind her, she shuddered faintly.
Really, it had felt as if she were being watched…
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The garden was quiet with the impending storm, waiting for the rain to come. For the clouds to break. From the underbrush poured a thin sliver of a shadow, where it probed to path that the young queen had just taken, sniffing about like a hound dog might.
Not yet
It paused, thirsty for the warmth coursing through the human's veins.
The shadow retracted on that voiceless command, returning to the silent foliage and into the darkness that birthed it.
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