tamingthemuse | Prompt 123-Despair-Black Winter (1/2)-tiaordona

Title: Black Winter
Author: tiaordona
Prompt: 123-Despair (the picture!)
Fandom: original
Rating: PG for some morbid imagery.
Summary: One cold day in the midst of black winter, she hurried along a little trail to deliver food to the sick ward nearby. Little did she know that she would find her own self amongst the terminally-ill patients.

The waves of the lake balked and tossed, pitching their cold tongues to the hard, gray sky of December. The bitter wind was a harsh whip, a cold slap that morphed her cheeks into the rosiest of shades. The ground hardened under winter’s cold caress, slicking itself in the pelting ice that cascaded so ruthlessly from the opaque lining of clouds above.

A varnish of ice crunched underfoot to a runic rhythm of the northern breeze, slinking around the gnarled branches of the deadened trees. Her breath lingered on the cold air and blossomed a puff of white oxygen upon it. She scurried along with haste, her basket of summer’s crop becoming rigid and stiff, akin to the fauna about her. Black winter had walloped its unbridled force upon the family farm, and she was certain that Auntie would not be pleased by her sluggish delivery of the weekly donations to the sick ward. Better still, it was her very first time conveying food to the overcrowded home, and the paths twisted and turned into a grotesque pattern as she carried on her task. Her scuttling seemed to echo dully about the hopelessly flat landscape, and for a moment, she discerned the fact that she had wandered astray.

But in the nearby breadth, a shabby building snatched her gaze. She paused for a mere second, but in a flash her thoughts materialized, and she spurred herself to the little dwelling.

She braced herself for a brandish of inviting heat, but was received with indifferent frosty air. She drew her black woolen cloak more firmly about her figure, and reality showered her with how abhorred and unhallowed this place was. The building itself had seen better days in its structure; the wood that erected it was sodden and rotting, the beams loose and suspended haphazardly. The flimsy walls were lined with small beds, each a mockery of a cradle for an emaciated patient. The patients themselves were morbidly pallid, so pale that the hand of death could have easily swept over several, and the only source of heat came from the thin sheets that were draped over them.

The air inside of her lungs seemed to be punched out as she glanced over the scene again, and her heart seemed to solidify and cease to beat. But her reassuring nature melted the appalling mind-set, the ghastly omens that exuded from this unsacred place. She absently twirled a thin, russet braid around her finger, before lowering the hood of her cloak and breathing in the frigid air.

A rasping cough stole her attention, a terminal-sounding hack that seemed to echo off the threadbare walls. She winced from just hearing it; it was deep, drawing down into the gut, and sickeningly wet-sounding.

It came from a girl, a girl that had to be around fifteen years old, her own age. She swallowed hard when she stole a glance of the sick lass...baggy clothes swallowed up her tiny figure. The tint of her skin was a detrimental hue of yellowed porcelain. Thinning, stringy brown hair drooped upon her gaunt face, but her eyes were the most disturbing. They were two haunted, spiritual orbs that were grinded down by despair, a chilling despair when one knew that their inevitable end was hauling nearer by the seconds.

For moments, she found herself unable to speak, unable to reflect upon the ailing girl wilted upon the bed, her thoughts numb and motionless with the phenomena of déjà vu. But as the lost sunlight, faint and slight, trickled in through the cracks in the wooden walls, she knew that midday meal was drawing nearer and nearer. Without a second thought, she gently rested the basket at the heel of the girl’s bed and was off.

Little did she know of the gushing sentiment that broke free from the frail girl’s heart.

---