exnatura-archive ;   "Stay away from me!"

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         _{Too much time had passed, an amount of time that she could not even begin to try to define. There was almost no sense of time in that dark and dank forest, eaten by magic and weighed down under the weight of the emptiness that seemed to embody it. Honestly it could have been minutes or hours, but she had no idea, and it was a wonder that she had not known it before.}

                           _{That she had not guessed it.}

                                    _{Within moments of being in that forest they had been seeing things.}

                                             _{Terror struck them, and made them cold.}

         _{Somehow it made sense that this was what came next, this paranoia, this sharp fear that seemed to flow through their veins and cut at their skin from inside of them like shards of glass. Naminé could feel it eat her alive and she looked around, unsure if what she was looking at was really a tree or if it was a monster or if there was nothing there at all. A hand tugged mindlessly at her curl of hair, fingers prying at the strands as she tried to breathe, to breathe but the air she took in was thick and smelled like—}

                                                                        _Death.

         _{Trying to keep as close to Aerith as she dared she pressed close to the other woman’s side in spite of her aversion to touching people, just stopping herself from holding onto her dress like a frightened child. Fear plagued her in a way that it did not when she was crossing between worlds, and darkness had never felt this thick or this threatening—it had never felt like it was choking her. But still she tried to keep her head leveled, thinking of the fact that she had to get the woman besides her back to her home, back to her family that she had built up from scratch—yet that barely kept her head afloat. Still her magic eluded her and hid, darting away from her every time she tried to use it, hiding in the corners of her body and slipping away. Further and further.}

         _{The desire to leave that forest was beginning to turn into a need. A desire of safety into a necessity for sanity and a place to breathe, to breathe air that was not thick as it trying to breathe water. A place where there was not a covering of dark fog on the ground and dead trees that stretched high into the grey sky, a place where leaves with no color littered the floor. There was no color for what felt like miles around them, yet felt like there was color everywhere—black and grey and no room for white, no room for a spot of pureness in this dark forest that they had gotten lost in.}

         _{Suddenly Aerith stopped moving besides her and Naminé came to a halt, something seizing at her chest as she looked around in panic, unsure if there was something near them or impossibly far, before she looked up at the brown haired woman. Aerith’s green eyes seemed dead and drained of light as she stared passively ahead and the smaller girl looked at her cautiously, taking a half step back and brushing her bangs aside to look up at the taller woman properly. Still she did not move and the blonde reached out hesitantly, touching her arm. ”Aerith?”}

         _{With the abruptness of a frog jumping off of its perch the woman jerked hard in the direction opposite of Naminé and her eyes came alive again, lighting up with an emotion of absolute and utter fear. Distress bled into her expression and she looked from side to side before her eyes landed on the Nobody and she started to take slow, steady steps backwards, and something inside of the smaller girl sunk. Wringing her hands together she took a slight step towards the woman, dread starting to settle into her bones, into her blood, making her dizzy. ”Aerith, what’s wrong?”}

_{”Stay away from me!”}

         _{Shouted words echoed through the forest for what both felt like an eternity and mere moments before evidently swallowed up by the trees and darkness and Naminé’s eyes widened. She took steps towards the woman who had shown such great kindness to her and shook her head slightly, ”P-Please calm down, the magic of the forest must be getting to you, we need to—“ but her sentence remained unfinished as Aerith steeled her expression and turned around and dashed away from the stunned blonde. Taken aback enough that she did not even have the wits about her to yell for the woman to wait Naminé stood there in silence, listening to the footsteps grow further and further away from her, and a darker fear began to settle into her body.}

                                                               _{How much fear could a body hold?}

         _{It was only when the ground began to tremble once more that the blonde gasped and started forwards, hoping that it was the forest playing games with her mind again, as trees seemed to twist and melt and branches came alive and the earth crumbled beneath her feet. Still she ran on.}

                                                      _Alone.

                                                                        _{”Aerith!”}