Shelter

Shelter

A calm falls suddenly over the countryside. It comes as a surprise, the unexpected silence casting an even darker shadow over the rain drenched plains than the ferocious storm could. She stops in her tracks, shakes the water out of her hair and eyes, and looks about. Her sodden clothes are heavy, and feel like lead weights on her tiny frame. The weariness creeps over her, the long hours of battling the blinding rain and winds are finally taking their toll.

A sudden flash of lightning lights up the area, and for a second, it reminds her of those long past moonlight nights when she used to creep out to the lake to meet him. She closes her eyes briefly, a soft smile playing across her cracked lips. She remembers the scent of his skin, the unbelievable softness of his hair under her fingertips, the salty taste of his tears as they would sometimes flow down his face when he was asleep in her arms, and the sudden twinkle in his eyes when they stole glances at each other across the Dining Hall.

She shakes all thoughts out of her mind. This isn't the time to think about that, not after it's taken so goddamn long to banish the memories... well to some extent anyway. She keeps walking.

Every step now makes her legs feel like another weight has been attached to them, but that doesn't really bother her too much. The pain inside is still so great, so gut- wrenching that any physical discomfort that she experiences now seems to be more of a welcome distraction than anything else. A light breeze blows across the common, causing her to shiver, and another flash of lightning followed by distant thunder reminds her to begin looking for shelter for what's left of the night. A rumble in her stomach... she wonders when she had eaten last... she can't remember.

Squinting, she can just about make out a patch of trees in the distance. Mechanically, she moves toward them, and settles down under the largest one. She tries to close her eyes for a little while, but instead of sleep setting in, a manic collage of the last few weeks fills her exhausted mind. Starting with those secret meetings in the astronomy tower and in abandoned classrooms, the indescribable bliss she felt, to the day when the relationship was inadvertently discovered, her defiance of 'what was right', his being taken away by his father, the Dark Lord's repeated visits in her dreams, the torment, the agony of not knowing... the pitying looks of strangers in the halls... all blending together in a terrifying mélange of images that end abruptly with the sound of his tormented screams and the blinding flash of green light that ended her entire world. She awakes screaming his name, tears flowing freely down her cheeks, and for a second looks wildly about her, almost expecting a replay of the scene that she just witnessed for the umpteenth time in her mind. But, she is alone. Still shaking, she settles down again, and mercifully, her tired body overrides her brain, and she sleeps, dreamlessly till the morning.