another thread.

[Frozen Smoke]

((Lara Bullock continued from Elsewhere))

The tracks had disappeared into the slush hours ago, but Lara felt it was a safe bet Evie would stop somewhere in town to rest, and she was going to find her. That would be the best time to reach her after all, with bread in her hands not steel. She had her little speech prepared now, all coiled up in the pit of her stomach. Calm. Practiced. Ready to look her dead in the eye and tell her what she thought, but couched enough with forgiveness that they could still work together.

As long as Evie forgave her.

Her pace slowed to a crawl as she she heard voices, straining to make them out over the sound of her own heartbeat as they were muffled by the timber of the church. They were calm, she thought, but not ones she recognised. Three different boys and a girl, and the tone of the latter was too soft and melodic to be Evie, even if the words were impossible to make out. It was only as she turned around to walk back down the hill that she noticed the twin smears of purple, the shade of one in particular burning in her eye, accompanied by another black clad one. She was already moving in that direction, boots crunching into the frozen mud as she blinked a few times, every word she'd spent hours carefully crafting - down to the very inflection - suddenly impossible to remember.

((Lara Bullock continued in Return the Slab, or Suffer My Curse))