Dark tides, and darker things.

Evergreen IX

Its been a hard couple of weeks. I've been trying so hard to concentrate on this job and remain professional, but there have been sudden moments when I break down. I was in the village the first time I broke down. A couple of days after my tattoos and I felt fine. I was a few feet away from my partner, he was talking to the guard about any unusual sightings. Draugr are in the sea, that is confirmed, but there seem to be more and more gathering in disturbing amounts. They can't cross the border and they haven't left the ocean. Yet. I was fine and then the smith showed up. Tall, dark hair, dark eyes. And then he marches up to me and says his name.

"Logan is dead!"

He has such burning eyes like the forges he tends. Such similar burning eyes too...

"I said Logan is dead!" he yelled and paced back and forth in front of me.

"I-I-I" I stammer and my hands begin to shake. Dark hair. Dark eyes. The personally deformed, butchered face and the smith's began to merge into one before my eyes.

"Wait a minute" a deep voice, a warm voice said. A familiar voice.
"What happened?!" Elfman had asked and stepped more in front of me. I look at his back and don't look away. He is familiar and safe. And I feel so pathetic needing someone familiar to feel safe. And I know he is lying, he knows just as I do what happened to Logan. And now they are talking about him, and where he was found and what happened to him!

"...He looked like a monster ripped him up..." I didn't do that. Elfman took him away, but he was a werewolf that time...He didn't tell me what he did. I guessed when I saw him come back to me with his arms covered in blood but...I didn't think he would...

He did it to protect you, some awful and perfectly logical voice said in my brain. He didn't kill him, I did. He did to Logan what a butcher would do to a carcass. With a carved piece of meat you can't tell how the animal died. It could've had it's throat cut, it could've been shot, it could've even been poisoned. Or it could've had it's throat crushed and chest caved in. A mortal wound only capable of a vicious beating. You cook up a roast in the oven and you can't tell what happened to the beast in there. Only the murderer and the butcher can, if they aren't the same people. I am the murderer and Elfman is only the butcher that came to clean up my mess.

"...Villager, found what little was left of him frozen in an alley..."

My breaths started heaving in my chest like the waves of the ocean and tears budded in my eyes. It actually happened...I heard the snow scrunch behind me as the guard shifted in discomfort at my distress. I killed a man...I have seen dead bodies, I have mortally injured people and did it easily. But this time I killed someone. He tried to abuse me and I killed him. The smith's dark eyes looked at me, I couldn't see the concern in them through the tears blurring my eyes. My breaths began hitching in my chest to the point where bile began to creep up my throat the dark back in front of me suddenly moved and big warm hand wrapped around my gloved one. Fingers massaged gently up and over my knuckles, in between the joints and over my fingers. I stare at his chest, unable to look anywhere else less there be the burning black eyes I see in the smith. Elfman's hand gave my own a gentle squeeze and continued his gentle work.

"She is just...Stressed" he explained for me. "We patrolled the beach last night and the amount of Draugr seen is disturbing. And now a body..." I could feel his eyes on me but at the time I could do nothing to look back at him. Bile crept up my throat until I found it hard to breathe but then a rough voice began to speak.

"Aye fair enough. The whole village is stressed too, with Logan dead its like mortar in a house has crumbled and now we are just waiting for a storm to blow us over. C'mon, let's leave them to their work".