isolt griffin
This was a dream. It had to be a dream, for surely no true reality could exist that was quite so tumultuous. That assaulted every one of her senses so readily and with such macabre vehemence.

Her mind grapples with everything and with nothing all in the same moment. The glistening blue of her eyes flittering, touching every last detail and yet she is blinded to them all by the continuous and crippling blows of her own terror. She lacks precious and vital understanding of the altercation that is currently unfolding around her, a scene in the hellish production within which she has unknowingly found herself. But why? What could she possibly have done to elicit such unwanted attention from the two men who pursue her demise so obstinately? Isolt bears no knowledge of this centuries-old and deadly dance betwixt the races. She is naïve of such things and thusly her questions are many and they are swift. The inquiry comes to mouth almost as readily as it comes to mind, her tongue curling wantonly around every syllable and yet... they fail her. The words dissolve as acid upon a sensitive tongue; however, never could they burn as deeply as the glare that her assailant fixes her with in this moment. So hotly does it sear that it could echo nothing but the deepest and most abhorrent hatred for the woman who nearly cowers before him as a babe might a lion. His eyes bore into her own, the fleshy curtain of his lip pitching upward into the most horrendous of sneers as he advances, whispering obscenities she cannot and does not care to decipher. And yet... he trembles.

The silver blade, glistening even in this deepest dark, quivers in the vice-like grip of his coiled and calloused digits. Somewhere in the deepest, most private portion of his soul he harbors as much crippling fear for her as she does so outwardly for him. Perhaps this is why, when he strikes, it lacks so much of the gusto with which he had advanced upon her; it falls so embarrassingly short of his partner's fervor. Because, for all of the hatred he bears for her, his fear of her is still greater. And it is a mercy greater than she could have ever hoped for. The sterling weapon lands its mark, dragging effortlessly against the flesh of her raised forearm and drawing forth a slender line of suspiciously dark blood. However this wound is only secondary to the immediate intensity of the burn that ensues, the stench of searing flesh following in quick pursuit as slender coils of smoke curl and writhe from the lesion.

There is only time for a small, nearly-strangled cry to extract itself from her thickly-knotted throat before her adversary is driven to the asphalt at their feet, the giant feline striking with surprising and abrupt force. Isolt finds her footing then, reclaiming a considerable measure of strength perhaps because some greater portion of her conscious fears that she may be next to bear the bone-crunching pinch of the creature's jaws. This thought, this single notion, coupled with the arrow that zips passed them both acts as the zephyr to coax away the fog that has, up until this moment, consumed her wholly and completely. For a moment the illusion that the space she currently occupies exists in some dreamland beyond her wakeful consciousness is shattered, her body forsaken and left to linger in the steaming wreckage. The young redhead does not require the insistent pressing of the panther's form against her own to succumb to the flight reflex that exists in all creatures.

The pounding of her feet against the asphalt swallows all else, consuming entirely the shouted obscenities of the armed man who, for one reason or another, fails to pursue them. This small axiom is lost entirely upon Isolt though, for her terror is so all-consuming that she does not, cannot, spare a glance behind her to see if he follows. The auburn haired girl runs until it seems she cannot run any further, her lithe figure ducking into the shaded oasis of a nearby park... deserted were it not for her. She is spared but a moment's reprieve before the sound of another's breath echoes in the eerie silence of the clearing. The young girl turns to find the gargantuan feline there, crystalline blue eyes finally meeting the emerald ones of the beast... a dreamlike familiarity licking its icy tongue down the length of her spine, dread once again sinking its claws into her tender flesh. Isolt succumbs to it then, a thin ribbon of blood falling from a single eye as her otherwise quite angelic face begins to distort into something darkly beautiful. Her voice, when it comes, is a quivering hiss. "What the hell do you want?"