isolt griffin
The fallacy that Isolt had constructed for herself in the notion that this was all somehow a waking nightmare had all but crumbled with the reappearance of her emerald-eyed executioner. There was only so much wool to be pulled over innocent eyes, only so much honeyed potion to distort the ghastly thing that was her present... and finally the young woman's desperate imagination had forfeited its wares to reality. It is for this reason perhaps, this bankruptcy of any other viable avenue, that the thick oil of ire finds its way into the otherwise pristine pool of her demeanor. She has come to fear him, even in so short a time frame, at a level that is nothing if not wholly primitive... instinctual and ancient in the way that any prey shall fear its predator.

"It matters to me," she whispers into the ethereal silence of the clearing, the dazzling sapphire of her eyes fixated upon him, peering at him from beyond curled lashes. Whether or not this statement was axiomatically viable was debatable. Perhaps it did matter in some offhanded way, perhaps it mattered in some clandestine manner that Isolt was hopeless to explain or justify. Regardless, in this moment she found herself unsurprisingly bereft the wherewithal to attempt to glean this information from him. Instead she crumbles still further, the majority of her weight pressed into the gnarled trunk of the tree at her back as a series of inquires fall from her trembling lips. Inquiries that Isolt could only suspect would go unanswered, morbid curiosities that would forever go unsated for surely he would not indulge her. And then... he does. The care, the tenderness, of his words has the quivering redhead taken aback, his declaration giving her pause for a few lingering moments. For a time, the barest of moments, Isolt begins to succumb to the seduction of his caring, the belief that they might actually prove true blossoming as some delicate bud within her. However the memory of what had been contends too violently with the suspected salaciousness of what he says, shredding the illusion with practiced vehemence. "Then why did you let it happen? You just watched... you just stood there and you watched."

He moves to venture forth and Isolt straightens in immediate response, the entirety of her slender figure pulsing as some taut coil of muscle and bone. With every step he draws nigh the canvas of her flesh crawls eerily over the sinew below, fearing his presence and proximity at a nearly cellular level. His apology wretches at her innards, igniting a battle between character and circumstance; forgiveness had always been a fixture amongst the young girl's various personality quirks, maybe the most practiced of her many virtues. And yet here, now, she finds herself fighting the urge to succumb to the gentleness of his tone and what was surely genuine repentance on his behalf. Apologies could undo so very many transgressions; however, it would appear that in this moment the sins he has perpetrated against her are far too great to forgive.

He reaches for her and, instinctively, she cringes from him as if burned, as if he had moved to strike her rather than offer her the kindness of his caring caress. "No... p-please don't." The command leaves her lips in a cluttered jumble, the copper-crowned vixen finally seeming to assimilate control of her limbs once more and maneuvering with surprising ease around the tree trunk upon which she reclines. "Please just... just leave me alone," she whispers, offering him this final plea for solitude, for sanctuary, before turning and coalescing into the darkness that lies beyond.