Touched by Darkness

Darkness touches me, and I stay. The thought was odd and completely arbitrary, and Elyra brushed it aside as soon as it occurred to her. Wet and clumped with blood, her hair flowed carelessly across her face, coating her delicate features with rivulets of sticky warmth. She did not have any of the blood.

She felt a sharp, twisted wave of anguish and confusion sweep over her. The creature that appeared when she stumbled into the moonlight was merely a person. She gently dropped to her knees next to The Silverbrook, her face blank as she started to remove the remnants of her horrific hunt from the previous evening. Blood dissolved into the clean water in pink wisps.

Tasting the cool, metallic tang of the blood-tinged water, she brought her fingertips to her lips. Her chest tight with residual stress, the need for air a strange feeling, she let out a sigh that may have been the first breath she had taken in minutes.

She began the difficult job of purging her human form of the sins of the night by tearing off the blood-soaked, ripped garments that clung to her body. Her body and soul both yearned for this ritual since she could only allow herself to forget it once the blood was gone.

chilly. Cold was heaven, and cold was forgiving.

Grandma... As her thoughts shifted to the disapproving matron, she forced the hunt of the night from her memory and pictured her lips pursed in tight disgust. Trouble was bound to follow if the old woman noticed her disappearance before daylight, conjuring up stories of ribaldry. Even more terrible, though, if she finds out!

Under the roots of an old oak tree, where a fox had once established its den, a set of fresh clothes was lying. Glistening gold in the moonlight, little hairs still clung to the pale cloth. "Little fox," Elyra whispered, her tone a mix of consolation and despair, "you and I keep this secret."

Wearing the simple yet clean clothes, she sighed wearily as she stood up, stretched to relieve the pain of a body that was still getting used to its human form. She could sneak home now and pretend to sleep until dawn, which was only two hours away. It was unclear what horrors or dreams awaited her, but it was possible that she might even fall into actual sleep.

Irritated by stem fragments entangled in her knotted hair, she scratched her scalp and pulled them loose, bringing some order to the defiant strands. As she worked, a strange, tuneless melody escaped her lips, her thoughts straying from the night's activities, left behind along with the blood-stained pieces of her mother's dress—cloth that would never be clean. Once, it had been her mother's outfit.

Thoughts of her mother, who was either pushed into the dark by some unidentified insanity or lost to eternity soon after Elyra was born, caused the song to grow. In any case, a lost soul But for some reason, the thought of this woman she had never met gave her hope. Elyra's lips curled into a slight smile at the idea of her mother, who had been destroyed by some sick beast of the night—her own father, if the stories were true.

In one of her rare moments of nostalgic nostalgia, her grandma had said that Elyra looked a much like her mother. Without hesitation, Elyra said out loud, "I have the gold of her hair, the twist of her grin, and a spark of her defiance. However, my eyes... She stumbled here, like she always did.

"I think your father is the only one who could have had eyes like that." Any hint of affection had been smothered by the grandmother's icy tone. Elyra stopped moving and looked up at the night sky, wondering what had happened that fateful night and the night she was conceived. A human woman and a demon man, connected by a meager thread that bounds them to the everyday world... Did the story have to be tragic? She had no idea, and that doubt tormented her more than the weight of her unclean blood. Her grandma never responded; her tales were always shrouded in darkness and tinged with suffering.

As she struggled to quiet her thoughts, Elyra's stride grew weaker yet her grace remained unwavering. Her lips pursed slightly in preoccupied concentration. When she arrived in the village and caught a sight of a light flickering in her grandmother's window, all thoughts of her parents abruptly disappeared. She let out a moan, her shoulders slumping in exhausted despair. Again, caught. It should no longer even be relevant.

She stopped, if only briefly, and looked out at the bleak landscape where the brittle strands of human existence tangled—where hunter and hunted were kings. She had a steely resolution to never look back, just as her father had faded before her. How easily it could all disappear. As her gaze followed the footprints her tired feet had left on the ground, she whispered, "I cannot deny that I am his daughter." "I can't hate him because I know that I am better than he was, but his darkness still echoes inside of me like a shadow that I can't escape."

She stood motionless for a long time, her lips twisting into what appeared to be a grin as she delighted in a brief vision of her mother—a fantasy of leaving the mortal world to be linked to her demon lover forever. However, it hadn't happened that way, had it? The actuality was much less forgiving and much tougher.

"Grandmother..." Her determination solidified again as she tightened her teeth after making a grimace. Allow the elderly woman to judge her and attempt to unravel the riddles of the night.

But the night was all she had left when darkness fell.