Curses and Will Chapter 7: Chapter 1: Sparkle in Blue

Read chapter 7 of Curses and Will by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

The snow came through the cold like it had always been there. My knee pressed into the ground, and the cold worked through my clothes slowly, draining what little I had left out through the contact point. My vision had already started narrowing at the edges, the way it does when the body starts making decisions the mind hasn't agreed to yet. Fatigue pulled at me from every direction at once. And then I saw her. She stood at a distance, still enough that the falling snow moved around her instead of landing on her, or maybe that was my vision going. Her hair was white, the exact white of the snow itself, like she'd been made from the same material as the sky above us. Her dress was pale, embroidered across the hem with patterns in blue that caught even the flat gray light of whatever this place was. Her eyes were the thing that stopped me completely. Blue. A blue that reflected the overcast sky back at itself and somehow still looked like it was lit from the inside. A hand caught me before I hit the ground. Warm, firm. Someone saying something I couldn't make out over the noise of my own body shutting itself down. Then nothing. Just dark. Inside the dark, a voice found me. It belonged to someone I couldn't see and couldn't name, broken in places but somehow carrying more weight than most voices manage when they're whole. It asked two questions into the black, not urgently, just placing them there the way you'd set something fragile down carefully. Is the majority always right? Are living and dying really so different, when it comes down to it? The dark split apart at one edge. A single thread of light pushed through. She was there again, far away, standing in the only lit part of whatever this was. A full moon hung behind her though there was no sky to put it in. Fireflies drifted at her shoulders, slow and aimless, like they'd forgotten there was anywhere to be. Her blue eyes caught the light of them. Then I woke up. The ceiling above me was white with pale blue trim, the kind of detail someone had put thought into. I lay there a moment just looking at it. My cheeks were wet. I'd been crying in my sleep without knowing it, and I had no idea why, only that something in my chest still ached with whatever had caused it, the way a bruise aches when you press it even after you've forgotten how it got there. I sat up slowly. The room was large, larger than anything I had any memory of sleeping in, though my memories were a sparse and unreliable set of things. A knock had woken me, I realized. It came again now from the door, patient. I got up, crossed the cold floor in bare feet, and before I reached it the door opened from the other side. An old man stepped through. Butler's clothes, posture that had been straight for so many decades it had simply become the shape of him. His face was calm the way deep water is calm, not empty, just settled. "Ah. You're awake, sir," he said, like he was noting down a fact. "Good. We were concerned when you collapsed. I hope you are feeling somewhat better." "I..." My voice came out rough from disuse. "Yes. A little. My head still hurts." I looked around the room again, trying to find something to anchor to. "Where is this? Who are you? The last thing I remember, I was..." Pain detonated behind my eyes without warning. My knees buckled. He caught me by the arm before I went down, steady as a post driven into solid ground. "The Hiodoshi family residence," he said, guiding me back toward the bed. "We found you near the outer woods and brought you in. That area is not safe after dark. There are things that move through it that you would not want to meet without some preparation." He sat me down on the edge of the mattress with practiced efficiency. "Your body still needs time. Rest first. Questions after." My eyes went to the window while he spoke. She was in the garden below. The same girl. Her hair caught the gray winter light and still managed to look white. Her dress moved slightly in a wind I could