isolt griffin
In the tumult of the present it cannot rightly be said what it is about his eyes that has her body react as it does, that has her flesh squelching tightly over muscle and bone, pulling into uncomfortable gooseflesh on her extremities. It also cannot be said why the usually demure young woman chooses to spit her curses at this creature who has, by all appearances, acted so valiantly on her behalf and spared her from whatever brutal fate their armed assailants had wished for her. Perhaps it is the shock of the vivid nightmare within which she currently resides, surely beyond her waking self; or, maybe, it is her inability to decipher the axiomatic truth of his assistance from the fact that his eyes set her skin to crawling. Whatever the latent line of reasoning, the young woman does not seek to stay his departure, her slender arms moving to cradle her now wildly-quivering body as the ebony feline skulks into the dark beyond.

A cascade of panicked and sorrowful sobs falls from parted lips, echoing in the eerily deserted space, the young woman seemingly frozen to the spot, her stature homage to the depth of her terror. Rising above her whimpering symphony though is a resounding snap as one discarded twig gives way; Isolt herself spins to face whatever fresh batch of horror fate has seen fit to bestow her with. And it is surely a horror that awaits her. The moment that her dazzling blue eyes meet the emerald of his the illusion that panic has built shatters, familiarity and remembrance bursting forth as a tsunami through some hopelessly massacred levee. A strangled gasp flitters in the space left void between the two as the young auburn-crowned woman stumbles backwards upon shaking legs, colliding solidly with the towering mass of a nearby tree. Crimson tears fall anew from her eyes as she lifts a hand to halt him, the entirety of her slender frame nearly crumbling with the anxiety bred from the sight of his all-too-familiar face.

In truth he is faultlessly handsome, the alluring hue of his eyes coupled with the helplessly enticing angles of his masculine figure combining into a wholly attractive image... or so she might have believed. So she had believed. But beyond this handsome veneer crouched something sinister, something malevolent and deceitful... something she had seen far too late for the knowledge to have delivered her from the fate he had sought so vehemently to impose upon her. He had watched, silent and still, as his... lover or whatever she was to him had tormented and tortured her, had squeezed from Isolt every drop of terror before snuffing out the brightly burning flame that had been her life. One of the very last memories before the darkness of death had seeped into every last corner of her consciousness and stolen her from everything she had known had been of his face... she had looked to him, weak and afraid, lingering upon the cusp of the waking world, for help. She had looked to him for salvation... and in return she had received naught but the vacant stare of practiced stoicism.

And yet here he stood, swathed in a beautiful fallacy of nonchalance as if the entire ordeal had been nothing but a dark fantasy. A shared illusion. That is, until he sees fit to respond to her, the words surprisingly hesitant as they tumble from his lips... the pause in his words bringing syllables of her own to ruby lips. "You wanted to make sure I was what? Did she send you after me?" The fibrous knot that clenches within her throat nearly severs the words as she delivers them. Try as she might, and as justified as it might have been, the anger that sizzles as a glowing ember in her writhing gut fades, extinguished by the cool wash of panic... of sorrow. Her body slackens, leaden with exhaustion, and Isolt slumps into the tree at her back. "Why did you do this," she whispers, reddened eyes looking on, the oceanic blue piercing in the somber light of the watching moon. "Why did it have to be me? I didn't do anything wrong, I-I just wanted..." Words fail her then, pilfered from her lips and leaving nothing but a pregnant silence to linger between Isolt and the man who had helped to kill her.