Swirl

The mist never took Anood. She walked on the road where curls of the water vapor drifted and swirled - as if alive but going with the flow.

Neon blue rune paths - active even this late in the night - set a hazy aura on the vapor. Sometimes the light was obscured. 

Anood pulled her sleeved vest closer by hunching her shoulders. She pulled the front-facing satin strings of the vest and retied the ends. 

“Ha.”

She tested her voice in this purgatory of half-visible forest on either side of the road. Her voice sounded flat with just one spark of soul.

The road she was approaching crossed hers. She liked this because the architects had realized they didn’t need to dull-glaze the forest flow to install a runepath.

Anood turned right with the slow pace that walking offered. She felt she should be long past when she just stepped beyond the intersection. Nature was dominant here with only glaze where the runeway runes needed to be carved.

She anticipated a vehicle sliding out of the fog gliding over those runes to hit her. Would she die? Would she be in crippling pain? What would that feel like?

Anood knelt down at one rune among westfae weeds and satingrass. She touched the crevice of the rune. The glaze was cold and the light was warm. She loved the feel of the firm glaze with the emptiness and the feeling of lack where parts of her palm and fingers overlaid the cut.

The glaze cracked and the rune went dark when Anood touched the whole of her hand down. Now a car passing over that dun rune would have a momentary jolt on one side and stall or slow its trajectory. She felt a little safer now.

Sometimes she walked to the university and played at being a student. She would attend classes. 

She would if she could.

She would if the mist let her in.

Right now she approached the professors’ dorms. One yard ahead to her left, up a hill and probably north of the classroom building. She had to have the map in her mind be accurate or she would be lost. 

This was like walking blind in a room but with more forgiveness.

A man came out of the front door and Anood felt the serotonin rise in her at her luck.

He closed the door behind him and stepped down the short outdoor stairs to walk down the hill as if he could see for miles. As if the mist bothered him not at all. Of course he saw the mist, but he seemed to not mind.

His professor’s garb was quite handsome and of course mildly wrinkled. Many professors took naps between their classes. How did she know? She giggled. That's a seeecret.

Anood wanted to ask him questions but he wouldn’t hear. 

Instead she stabbed him where she thought his heart would be. Once he was dead she picked his - 

“Whoa, what, waaait no.”

Anood dispelled the intrusive thought. She could break runes but not affect much more.

All propriety was out the mist.

Anood pressed her hands on mens and womens breasts alike to break the runes on their souls.

They went their ways.

________________

Into the hollow she collected her peers.

She would not be alone. She would bring these children in with her. She would teach them to respect the trees.

Was she the haunted or the haunter?

Breaking runes was tiring.

Did she do this for herself? Yes.

The mist held her back from entering buildings.

________________

The students began to perceive her and the mist as safe. 

Anood learned from them.

She couldn’t help falling for them.

Anood couldn’t follow them back so she kept them.

They stayed but somehow she knew they knew she was keeping them there. Strange that they did not feel the pressure of captivity.

She decided they could never return. 

She killed them one by one, one day.

Better to keep them young.

When they started rotting away, their bones she made into weapons.

________________

Why the mist held her captive she couldn't solve. 

She protected nature.

Why she could destroy runes she guessed.

Couldn't she enjoy all the options?

Were the thoughts intrusive or natural?

Did she even claim the space they inhabited?

Was she alive?

Her friends were no longer. They could not think - feel - experience. So there was no reason to be sad or guilty.

She was not a force of nature. Her arms had chills when she did it.

Her heart rate rose with that semi-paralyzing spark.

What did getting cut feel like?

What did drowning in your own blood feel like?

Was there any pleasure at a severed limb or only pain?

If she was beheaded would she still have thoughts until lost too much blood?

Some people were alive - dead. No more thoughts, cease to be in a moment. But wasn’t death always in one single moment - just with more pain beforehand?

Then was when her haunting became a sanctuary that she could take anywhere in the world.

Le’falyne, living water infused her from the mist, but she had a knowing that she was not a puppet.

The mist clung to her … a shelter.

Being in the mist was equivalent to being in a cloud. Wet but unbearably barely even there at the same time.

Anood tied her hair in a swirl braid. Shed designed this style herself by touch and brain mapping. The braids held the loose curling hair in swirls meant to resemble the mist that slid like living art on the ground.

The mist never took Anood but ever around her the people and animals she encountered saw her, her silhouette or hazy form and never truly could make sense of it. 

That was, until a man - was he a man? - came to find her. He came to stay with her - haunted by the haze and chill. 

Could she die? No.

Not until Le’fayne did at the end of all.

The mist did not protect her. Only in ways by nature.

She didn’t want a real man but her fantasies were more vivid from then on.

The mist clung to her.

The dirt clung to him.

He wasn’t with her long.

She played with the cartilage of the tip of her ear left ear. A triangle to draw in sound sharp and clear. The mists allowed her to smell very keenly.

Law

Control

Presence

She was alive.

Le-falyne evaporated.

Liar.

The living water had promised forever.

They fled from the sun.