Amanise didn't need Hamlin to tell her when they arrived Devon. She could feel the energy palpating in the air. She moved the curtain shielding the small carriage window aside. Only to see a peculiar division. There was a dark thick fog that veiled Devon. While the rays of the sunset was still going on strong and visible in Elsworth, the town they just crossed to enter Devon. Devon was rather strange. The inky fog twirled up in the sky above the small town, freely.
A guardian of some sort.
She felt like she was walking into the land of the Dead.
They made a stop in Elsworth after a straight two hours journey to rest and eat. Though the coachman didn't complain she sensed the in-depth gratitude he had while he led the horses to drink water by a river.
Elsworth was bright. None withstanding that it was filled of slums of peasants going about their daily life even admist the suffering the looming darkness wasn't as thick and heavy as Devon. At least she could breathe in Elsworth.
Devon?
She was choking.
Devon felt cursed.
Someone sneezed from the front. Probably the coachman she found out was named Dicken. Even from where she sat she could sense his uneasiness and an overwhelming sense of alarm to ditch the carriage and them to flee back to Elsworth.
But he didn't.
Instead the carriage moved slowly almost hesitantly into the rough path surrounded by uncanny twisted like trees that loomed over them like bizarre monsters. A chill ran her spine.
The speed of the carriage picked up but not in a way that could outrightly discomfort her. Her limbs ached, sore from the long journey.
Unperturbed by the things around them, Hamlin didn't as much flinch from the view. His face was as blank as she thought possible. Sometimes she wondered if he was human. Wondered if he had ever felt discomfort, anger or any form of weakness. Real feelings.
Feelings that wasn't acted out for display. She also wondered sometimes what his story was. His past that made him this way, that shaped him in this.
She looked outside the window once more. To the sky, the fog made it hard to see but the sky was dark.
Night.
She picked an apple from the bowl Hamlin bought for her in Elsworth and bit into it, chewing. She focused on the taste of the red apple forcing the bile that rose at the back of her throat.
Red apples reminded her of blonde hair, emerald green eyes and a shy smile.
But recently, it reminded her more of red mass of pale mangled skin, lifeless eyes and an ugly monster.
Very rarely her cursed memory made her recall a certain black card and a reddish black book depicting the same bitten red apple hinged with thorns.
When Hamlin asked her to order anything she wanted because he stated where they were going she mustn't be hungry. A basket of red apples held by a young girl caught her eyes. The same bile threatened to escape her breath.
Marveled yet skeptical she wanted to test whether she could still eat red apples. Even after all that had happened.
To overcome her trauma.
In Mistorn she couldn't afford to buy apples. Too expensive. Though there was a certain time she saved money from what she stole to buy one. She snuck out and ran away from the orphanage almost got lost severally in the process but after series of asking for directions while praying that none of her past neighbourhood would recognise her. She escaped to the forest.
To where she lost him.
Hoping to find a clue of what happened that night. But as she suspected the trees that were thrashed then by the monster was still brimming with lively energy.
Devoid of scars. Unaffected. Thriving.
Opposites of what she had become. She remembered how malicious she felt. Sitting on the forest floor with the red apple.
Only to take a bit and vomit nothing but saliva because she had been starving for days. Disgusted. She threw the bitten apple away. The waste twisting her guts then burst into tears.
Hoping the monster will come and take her away. When she woke up again she found herself back in the orphanage sick from cold and hunger. Discovered by some hiker who found her body burning up. The orphanage couldn't afford to take her to the hospital in fear that they would be discovered for neglecting children. So she was nursed poorly back to her quivering feet. Her life more miserable and abused.
As if it wasn't already enough she was severely punished with a stick that reduced the chances of ever walking again for weeks.
Each time she hoped she would die, her body stubbornly refused her will.
She lives.
She chewed down on the apple again. Forcing herself to enjoy it. But it only tasted like sandpaper scraped onto her tongue. Ignoring it she kept biting her way to the core.
No waste this time.
She swallowed, feeling something vile crawl up at the back of her mind.
It's here.
Her monster spoke with such savageness, intruding her thoughts.
Intrigued, she leaned backwards controling the lingering uneasiness that pulled out of her. She chewed the core and seed throwing away the stem.
'What is here?'
She was met with silence.
'Self entitled bastard', she cursed inwardly, amused. She had expected it. Destroying the nagging thought that she might be mad, imagining it. She only laughed instead.
Her eyes widening at what was sitting infront of her.
Damn. Seems like I'm really losing it.
Amanise looked beside her, there was a chance he must be seeing it too. But he made no reaction to the sight infront of her. She blinked.
Once. Then twice.
It was still there. She blinked again. It was still there.
Instead it was shooting bullets at her with it's eyes.
She opened her mouth only to close it, slowly looking outside the window.
Ignoring it.
"Are you going to ignore me?"
The voice snickered.
Yes I am.
She watched the carriage she was in enter into the slums from the town's square people from all works of life entering and leaving Devon from the station. There were few workhouses in the slum like a coal factory down the street. She saw some women exiting it from the distance. Their clothes stained with black residue from what Amanise assumed was the coal.
Unlike the people from Elsworth that still had the will to live, survive even though it was just a spark. Devon was rather bizarre almost everyone Amanise saw walked about their day with empty gazes. No energy whatsoever. Going about to work with no sense of life.
Just empty shells. Being controlled by someone else. Someone she couldn't see.
There was an old woman, old enough to be a grandmother from her grey hair and badly wrinkled face, lying down on a side walk.
Dead.
People passed her, crossed over her body as if she wasn't there.
Her corpse rotting.
Her gut wrenched, Amanise seized her breathe uncomfortable on where she sat. She mindlessly took another red apple taking a bite. Forcing herself to focus on the taste instead before she spilled the food she ate on the carriage floor in front of Hamlin. Not that she minded much. She just didn't have the conscience to suffer the carriage man by cleaning up her vomit. Carrying them here while witnessing everything in front was already enough.
Her skin itched. She scratched it, still staring.
All of a sudden, the grandma sat up her bones snapping into a position that was technically supposed to be impossible for her age. Amanise's heart jumped at the sight. Still watching, the old woman's head diabolically made a three hundred and sixty degree turn. Her hollow gaze meeting hers.
Time paused. The carriage slowed.
The old woman withering lips that drooped threatening to fall from her face. Widened into a bestial smile.
She knew Amanise was watching her.
And somehow she was now alive from the dead.