Huh. So it wasn't a dream.
My eyes snapped open, finding something, anything to focus on. Black smoke clouded the entire room, darkening the once picturesque windows. It was too thick to see details through, but I could still make out the faint orange glow behind it. And I knew that glow could only be one thing.
Fire.
Without waiting for a second longer, I flung myself off of whatever hard surface I had been on, crouching down low to the floor and covering my nose and mouth with my sleeve. I crawled as far away from the orange light as I could, even as it grew, and the noise of crackling flame flooded my ears. Sweat beaded on my face and ran down my back, soaking the bodice of the heavy cotton gown.
I scanned the room for a way out. The fire, no doubt, was coming from the direction of the door since I didn't see any other exit. I was trapped.
After hundreds of years—most of them spent unconscious—fighting off a curse that slowly killed me every time I woke up, this was how I was going to die? In a bloody fire?
It seemed fitting in a way. I was unnatural—a witch—and I was going to die at the hands of nature itself. Well done, I thought to the mysterious being who ruled from above. Well done.
But at that moment, my blurry and red-eyed gaze landed on the windows again. Those beautiful, ornate windows that must have looked out over a lush garden with bright red rose bushes and white-as-snow daisies. Those windows were my way out.
Ignoring the sweat that tickled my neck and the flames that licked the wooden ceiling right above me, and my burning lungs, I sprinted to the windows. It was a clear path, one that I wished took longer than it did.
I didn't have time to open the windows, and they didn't anyway. I pumped my legs faster, shut my eyes, and prayed to whoever was listening. Don't let me die.
As I leaped through the window, the glass around me shattered into a billion pieces. My body didn't even register the pain before everything went black.
A/N:
Hello, and thank you for reading!
So this is a story that I've had in the works for a long, long time and I just now decided to start writing it. Yes, I know, I'm quite the procrastinator. Anyhoo, it's not one of my story's that I'm super invested in (I'm more just doing it for fun when I have free time) so I probably won't post that often. But hopefully, you will enjoy it all the same!
Thanks for reading,
XOXO, Kathleen.
