Old People
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Damian stayed quiet while looking over himself. This was to keep the forest quiet, and he preferred the quiet when perturbed. He, maybe belatedly, felt something loose on his risk and saw a white bone bangle. Fiddling it, he saw it wouldn't fit over his hand to be removed. He ran his fingers through his hair, feeling dirt stick between his fingers as he did. There was a widow's peak nearing his forehead and the rest was thick, so he wasn't blue and bald.

He took a deep breath, deeper than any he had taken before this breath, and placed a hand onto his chest. He did this to feel his heart beat; that it was calm, or make it. This was a habit, one that he had somehow formed. He had been through enough, to know that getting upset wouldn't help in many things. Angelo had put his situation well; he would rely on himself. He began to move towards the smoke.

Leaves and pine cones were slowly replaced by calf length grasses. As he continued the land took on a slope; and a village lied at the bottom. It was late evening by now, almost night. The smoke he had followed came from a house on the outskirts of the village. Unlike the other's, the house sat outside of the wooden fencing and seemed more well kept. It had rained, the little path he found himself on, had turned to muck. The hill made the water flow down and through the village. 

His feet were making sucking sounds, as the mud threatened to swallow more than his ankles. Perhaps this is why he had been spotted.

She came out as he was twenty feet away from her home. She walked with a cane, wearing a shade of yellow that made outside the home seem brighter than where he stood.

"You should move, boy, or it's gonna get ya."

He didn't understand her words. They were too different from anything he had ever heard before. Damian just stood there, wondering what his course of action should be. 

The old woman was usually reserved; it was nearly a requirement of someone of her stature. Though she didn't hold those expectations to heart and hadn't acted in accordance with it very often, there were times it would reveal itself. So, it was understandable why she wouldn't repeat her words to the boy.

Damian spoke, after some hesitation. "Um.. I'm sorry, I didn't understand you. I'm not from around here. I'm lost, actually."  

He knew that she wouldn't understand him, either, so he held up his hands; to show that he held no weapons. He came five feet closer.

"You don't understand me, then? Well I know how to help with that."

Her eyes began to dry and then cracked. And they glowed yellow in the middle. Cracks that glowed red like her eyes were firewood crawled across both, reaching into their very corners.

Damian wasn't too sure about what was happening until he saw her walking stick began to glow also. She broke the swollen tip off. This is when he ran.

She held the burning wood within her left. Embers flew off of it but didn't seem to burn the old woman. As Damian looked back, he saw her smile.

He ran up the slope in swerves. Surprising himself with how fast he did. He looked back to see that he'd made it halfway up and stopped. Something odd was happening down below.

The old woman threw the coal, and it grew the further it went, and began to change shape at the end of its arc. At about seventy feet, it became a skull, with distinctive horns, and sharp teeth.  Thongs of flame, it had left in its wake, became its spinal cord; which was held within the left hand of the old lady.

The demon bit down into something, which croaked, and he knew that he had been followed. The frog blurred before appearing wholly. Twenty, five feet up and fifty feet long, cleared of the filth it had come out of.  Patterns, as he'd never seen, covered its body.

"How did that thing follow me?"

The monster's head, he saw it as a monster, had been almost swallowed by the demon. It thrashed wildly. He heard its skin searing. After a while, the scent came on the wind; it smelt nice. The old lady broke off another piece of the walking stick and threw it at the demon. The skull grew several vertebrae and arms, of charcoal. They held the frog in an embrace and threw it onto its side until it moved no more.

"Magic?"

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