Hi all...

Here's a (very) little story I knocked together one evening.
It probably doesn't make much sense, for which I apologise in advance,
and Deity only knows where I got the idea from.  Consider this your
surreal darkfic warning...

(C&C welcome.  Replies by e-mail, please, as my little modem can't cope
 with the volume of traffic here :(  TIA.)



     Vampire Princess Miyu : A Lonely Place Of Dying
     -----------------------------------------------


Footsteps.  Even, unending, stretching away through the ashen landscape.

A young girl walked slowly, falteringly beneath the low, leaden sky.
Around her the snow blew gently through the broken, skeletal remnants of
a forest, charred, dead fingers clawing at the sky.

Her arms were clutched tightly around herself, her body wracked with
cold.  She was tired... thirsty... so thirsty...

Ahead, the footsteps marched relentlessly on.



A small, shivering figure lay huddled in the lee of a ruined building.
Around her the wind howled through the shattered, cauterised bones of a
city, biting through her worn, tattered clothes, rasping icily across
withered, blackened skin.

The snow whirled and drifted all around her.  And before her the
footsteps lead onward, unseen.



"Please... help me..."

The voice was little more than a whisper, forced painfully through
cracked lips.  Sightless, sunken eyes turned towards the sound of her
footsteps and one hand was lifted slowly towards her, the fingers burnt
and shaking.

She knelt, clasping the young girl's shivering, blistered hand in her
own.

"I... I'm sorry.  You would not want that which I could offer."

Her body shuddered violently.  So close...  Her throat burned as she
held back the tears she felt beginning to cloud her eyes.  She rose
slowly, turning to leave, the girl's cold fingers slipping slowly
through her hand.

"No... please... don't go.  Wait with me.  Please."

She stopped, looking into the distance.  Footsteps... endless footsteps,
leading her onward...  She turned back to the girl and sat slowly on the
frozen ground, their hands clutched softly between them.

"If you will also wait with me" she whispered.


Slowly, mercifully, the cold began to recede.  It was so warm here, and
she was tired... so tired...



Two figures sat motionless amid the blackened ruins, cold hands held
together, waiting, as around them the ghosts walked silently through
the gathering darkness.



***

Hope somebody enjoyed that.  As I said, no idea why I wrote it, but I
just had some... disturbing ideas I felt like putting down - I've got no
idea whether or not they even make sense.

--
Adam Jones (adam@yggdrasl.demon.co.uk)(http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~mauei/)
"Mr Jones is your dick, right?"  -- Anon      (If you know what I mean.)
"worries about my saneness"                        (And I think you do.)