The dense vespertine air hung around her. She remembered that when she was little she used to beg her parents and her to go out to the woods around their home. Now she would kill to be able to stop wandering. Her gaze drifted around the cobbled slate streets, their crevices developing a film of algae. The many farmhouses all overlooked the fields on either side of the road, luckily for her the farmers and their wives had all retreated to slumber many an hour ago. She was very relieved that all the people were asleep, if they weren’t she would surely be either killed on the spot, or worse. Her mind weaved in and out of focus, barely registering the unkept trees and large Ivy that slowly encased and loomed over the road as if it were in the process of strangulating the path, making its windings lost for those less steadfast with their conviction. Thoughts slowly drifted away from the present and into her past. She tried to recall all the sounds that were around her when she was little, the flow of the mountain stream near her home, the sound of the windswept grass in the clearing where her family’s den lay. She wished that they lived deeper within those woods, where humanity could have never reached her.

She shook off her wandering mind and jumped over a stone wall, only prevented from crumbling by the thick mat of moss coating the surface. The house that had dominion over the field appeared to be abandoned, the roof partially caved in and the slats in decay. The porch was the nicest part left, but algal stain was still obvious on the wood. She marched over the down of mowed grass to the house, it seemed like a good enough place to spend the last night on the run. She walked up to the door, the hinges opened in a long, drawn out creak, if she pulled it any harder the door might have collapsed completely. She went to the spot in front of the chimney in the remnants of the living room. She put up some of the slats into a lean-to on the alcove between the shale of the fireplace and walls on either side. There, she laid on the earthen floorboards and fell into an easy sleep.

She was awoken suddenly by the heel of a farmer’s boot over her chest. “Who are you?” the farmer said, his voice audibly irritated.

“I am Wren; I am on my way to the coast.”

Her voice faltered as she became nervous from the sudden interrogation.

“What purpose do you have on the shore?”

His voice was coarse and abrasive.

“I am going to see family and work.”

Wren’s voice became small and distant from the world around her, trying to hide itself deep inside her body.

“You better scram off my property then.”

The farmer pulled her by the hood to escort her out of his property. The hood collapsed, and revealed two perky ears, matted fur flowing out of the gaps in the isosceles shaped ears, small tufts of white hair at the tips, unlike the titian of the rest of hair. Her eyes wildly hazel in the light emitting from the candle lamp the farmer was wielding. Her ash skin cowered from the sudden exposure to light as her skin coalesced into bumps on the surface.

“You! Yantýi!”

The farmer’s voice became aggressive and vengeful.

The farmer unsheathed a blade, recently whetted. The blade slashed at Wren, cutting through the air with the grace of a hawk in flight. She dodged the attempted blow and made her way to the remnants of what she assumed to be a window opening, although it looked more like the hole from a grapeshot blast. She leaped through the hole in a dive, but a twisted ivy tendril snagged at her leg and caused her to falter. With a firm thud she landed on the grass belly first, the wind knocked out of her completely. She tried to draw a breath and muster up as much energy as she could to run into a dense thicket several furlongs away. Her legs could only twitch in a pathetic attempt to move. She still lay on the grass, she could smell the sheep excrement drifting to her nose. The wet grass misted her face, each cold droplet slowly flowing down. She felt a frigid pressure on her port side. It pressed down until a distinctive splintering sound leached from her ribs. She screamed in agony and in response the object that was once on her side lifted and firmly placed itself into her mouth with a kick. A honed blade was put to her body. Warm, viscous liquid bubbled up from the small scrape the knife made.

The knife dug into her side, slowly twisting deeper into the sinew of the neck. She tried to release a scream, and at first she let out a yelp, but as the knife dug further air could no longer manifest. It kept going further, she could no longer think clearly, her eyes glazed over. Her muscles started spasming in a desperate attempt to free itself. The knife was retrieved from her neck, along with it came blood spewing from where the wound was carved, like a pulsating spring source, bubbling up from a rock. Her muscles became motionless, and her breathing slowed to almost a standstill. Her mind went to the ocean, its sound was calm as waves moved, grinding against the gravel beach, back, forth, back, forth, back. As she repeated this her inner voice got more and more distant, after a while it ceased altogether, with that her life was over