Bone and Feather

Bone and Feather -2- {Burn}

A scream tears through the air, emitting from the gaping mouth of a woman at the front of the crowd. They all watch the girl, convulsing on the ground, staining her scarlet dress with dark earth. Her eyes are open, but even from his cage, the boy can tell they aren't seeing anything at all. He watches her in horror as her limbs jerk and flail like a rag dolls, head whipping from side to side, hair cloaking half her face, sticking to her skin with sweat and saliva. A sickening feeling falls upon his body, prickling down his prominent spine and he knows that whatever has happened to the girl, wether it's his fault or not, his hours are numbered. For she had touched him before she fell.

The man with auburn hair, bursts through the barricade of people, rushing to the girls trembling side. He takes her pale, shaking hand in his own.

"Cora! Cora!" he yells her name, leaning over her twitching body. Still, no matter the man yells, she does not come out of her trance and a filmy layer coats the surface of her eyes.

"Somebody help her!" the man cries, turning towards the crowd, a single tear trailing down his cheek. When no one makes a move to help, he yells again, turning back to his daughter in anguish, fingers tearing the hair from his head.

Finally, a man decked in black surfaces from the fear-stricked crowd of people. The man is not very tall with stumpy legs and beefy arms, his face seems to be divided by the hollow creases of wrinkles etched into his skin. His eyes, fearful and unforgiving, remind the boy of someone. His face scrunches together, picking through his hazy memories, though cannot seem to pinpoint a face. Though he knows the man standing before the still-convulsing girl is not anyone from his past, his body cannot help but react to a faded memory.

Images from his dream the night before flood past his vision, like blood from a reopened wound. The muscles in his arms tense up, his palms begin to sweat and his spine begins to burn. He gasps as a flash of dark eyes passes through his mind, a hand with a silver knife stained with scarlet blood, metal scraping against bone. His heart quickens, threatening to break through his ribcage and tear away from his body.

He tries to shake out of it, out of the dream, or memory. He swings his head from side to side, as if he could shake the images from his skull. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm his heart, his body. Once he can think straight, a voice rings in his ears.

"--mind has been touched by the damned!"

The boys head snaps up, and finds himself under the harsh gaze of a hundred pairs of eyes and the tip of the mans finger accusingly pointed in his direction.

"He has poisoned her frail mind with his wickedness and thieved the purity of her soul," the man walks swiftly over towards him, dark eyes burning through the rusted bars before turning back to his audience, "Will we let this creature roam our earth, our homes, our town much longer? Let him plague our minds with the devils work?"

The crowd is as silent as death, faces still like stone statues, hands pressed tightly against their sides. Finally, a womans voice shatters the barrier of silence.

"We should send it back where it came from! Let it's wings burn to ashes!" she cries, eyes like reptilian slits in her anger. It is her voice, her anger that is the right amount of weight to make everything fall from grace and into the fiery depths of chaos. With her voice, the tension in the crowd breaks out into a frenzied chorus of voices condemning him to Hell, surge of fearful men and women swooping down onto his cage tipping it off the wooden cart and colliding with the ground, hammering the boy against the gritty bars. Their hands clawed through the gaps, reaching for his flesh with grimy fingers. He screamed as someone tore a fistful of feathers from his wings, as someones nails burrowed into his skin. He tried to pull himself from their prying hands, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.