Beginning 7
She wondered absently how it could have happened like this. She had run from home looking for answers, looking for something to fill the hole that remained after her parent's betrayal. It hadn't taken long for the thought to form. How to fill the hole left by the loss of a child It seemed obvious to a child's mind. And she was still a child, no matter how her innocence had been cast aside.
She had received no enjoyment from the action itself, the thought of the end result the only thing on her mind. Lying still and silent under the man's form as he moved above her and through her. Biting her lip until it bled. There were moments when she wondered if it was worth it
But now she was alone, and somehow that didn't seem to fit with her plans. The man hadn't stayed long enough to kiss her goodbye and it hadn't fit with any of her fairytales.
It had worked. It took her only weeks to confirm it. And now she was sick again, as she had been before, and it held some kind of strange comfort for her. There was no one here to betray her. No, this time she would see it through to the end.
The end it came sooner than she had expected. It wasn't painful as she wanted it to be, something that meant such a loss to her. There was blood but no pain and it disturbed her. Of course, there was some kind of pain. A ripping and tearing at her soul that pulled her so much closer to that whispered voice that had plagued her since that day - seeming so long ago now. It seemed only inevitable that the barrier that kept her apart from that voice would break. And it did
It was the silence that did it at first. The streets were so silent at night and in the silence there was nothing to distract her from that voice. Her soul was shattered and in pieces and no longer afforded her any protection. She was alone with the voice loud in her ears and she knew there was no way she could fight it any longer. She didn't notice her transition into a creature that thrived in the night, it was something that happened without any conscious thought. She didn't notice as her eyesight began to change or her strength build. She didn't even notice as she began to hunt, stretching skills she didn't know she had and learning new ones. As the night became a game.
It was a man who first made her realise that she had changed. He took her arm as she walked past him, tracking the smell of food. His ill intent thrummed through her as his heartbeat that she could hear so loud in her ears. She didn't notice him at first, pulling at her arm as if it were merely being disobedient. Turning to look she followed the hand that had her arm up to a body and then a face. She opened her mouth to tell him to release her and found the voice talking for her, pushing out a stream of incomprehensible syllables that sounded more animal than human. His eyes had widened at this and he had taken her arm tighter. She hadn't liked this, and had pulled away, swinging out with her other arm. Perhaps she had misjudged the power with which she had swung. Perhaps there was anger in that swing that she had been waiting to release. Perhaps she had wanted to kill that man.
What ever it had been, he fell to the ground and did not move again, his angry heartbeat stilled. That day the voice had become Shalimar. She released the last hint of humanity that she had been clinging to and fled.