The Archer Princess

Captivity

A clink echoed through the darkness. A rubbing of ground, a dragging of feet, a disturbed puddle, and sticky footsteps filled the darkness. The sounds went on for what felt like long excruciating hours. Closer..closer..louder..louder.. Angel's intake of breath was quickening into gasps. Desperate breathing gasps. She was lying down right next to a cold black stone wall.

Her arm touched it unintentionally. A shiver vibrated throughout the rest of her body. She shook. Her eyes were shut wanting to run in tears, but the cell was so frigid she was afraid her tears would freeze on her face. The pit pattering of the footsteps made her anxious. Her eyelid opened a bit to her surrounding, but out of exhaustion, her eyelids dropped closed. All she saw was a black and a dancing shadow from a man with a hand held light source.

The light danced with the shadows in a game of tug of war.

Angel whimpered. She didn't know where she was.

The footsteps were uncomfortably close.

It stopped.

Angel wanted to open her eyes, but she willed them not to. She didn't want to know what she was dealing with. She wanted it to go away, and she wanted to disappear to someplace more suitable. More safe. That's what worried her most. That she wasn't safe, and she didn't know what was endangering her.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Angel whimpered. The metal bars reverberated. The man with the light source must have been the one clanging the front of her cell. Her cell. Angel realized what she just called it as. Her own cell. She shivered at the thought.

God help me.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

She winced shaking even more. I think he wants me to look. Maybe he'll stop once I look. She opened her eyes, full of terror. She didn't know who it was. She didn't recognize the man and that scared her even more. Angel tried to recollect what had happened to her in the last hours before she found herself here.

It wasn't connecting. Her head hurt. She didn't want to think. She stared at the man with a worry stricken-pitiful face.

He was tall, gruff, and pale. Hair covered his arms, head hair waved in a dark octopus frenzy, and hair speckled the burns of his face.

"Here's your food." He slid it under the bars with an emotionless look.

Tossing long stretches of shadows on the stone floor and walls, the lantern he held swung back and forth carelessly. Angel just stared at the man making sure she didn't recognize him.

The man lifted the light to his face. It made his face sinister, more frightening. "I said, here's your food. Now, stop staring and take it. Or else I'll feed it to the rats."

As if on cue, a squeaking chattered from the dark corridor from Angel's right in the cell. "Looks like someone wants it if you don't." He snickered. It almost seemed like he's said the lines so many times before.

Angel couldn't budge. She didn't want to get close to the man in front of her even if they were separated by a wall of iron bars.

"Well then, if it suits you." The man left, echoing the pit pattering of his footsteps once more. Angel looked at the tray of food that lay in the front of the door. She heard the squeaking noises again in the background so she scurried over to the plate of food. She took it to her bed cot, and set it on top next to where she sat. She just stared into the blackness in front of her, and then thought she should have asked the man where she was at. She would have been sure that he would have never answered, but at least there was a smidge of hope that he could have.