"YONA! YONA! Gola panted as she climbed the steps with so much speed that her knees began to ache. "Yona!"
Yona woke with a startle, throwing the thick blankets off and jumping readily to her feet within the blink of an eye. "Gola?!"
"Are you ok?" Gola demanded. Her eyes searching the room worried, wet and wild.
"Am I ok!? Why wouldn't I be?" Yona inquired with a hint of annoyance as she took her sisters side, fist clenched at her sides. She too searched the room with wild eyes. In search of what threatened her little sister so.
The fireplace had died leaving the large room uncomfortably chilly and dreary. Yona couldn't exactly recall if the ghostly room had once been a ballroom or another dining room. Only that it had once been too grande to simply call magnificent.
Once.
Now what remains are elegant ruins. The marble columns cracked, the Paint peeled and the classical paintings faded. Cob webs, sheets and thick blankets of dust rest lazily atop all of a now melancholy broken facade.
The room was hauntingly enchanting. Yet miserably eerie.
Yona had just been having a nightmare about the room. She lay rooted on the couch. Unable to do so much as inch or twitch. While all around phantoms waltzed. Some of the silhouettes of once humans waltzed on the walls. Some even waltzed on the roof above her head. Clad in the finest pearls, opera gloves and ball gowns.
The only music to be heard was the silence in between their weeping.
Oh the god awful weeping!
When the ghost wept she felt it; a tsunami of sadness, fury, frustration and most of all hopelessness. It took everything in her not to weep along with them or for them. She failed hard when she strained to look out the corner of her eye only to see Gola's carcass stiff beside her. She too bleeding where she should have been weeping.
The carcasses blank eyes rolled forward, focusing on Yona as it's pale blue decomposing lips fell open to let out a horde bluish-black butterflies. The butterflies hastily attacked Yona. Swarming her head and nibbling away at her swollen tearful eyes, shrieking 'Yona! Yona! Yona!'
She awaken in a sweat. Feet already subconsciously in action.
The shadows shifted on the window much too claw like to be a silhouette of trees. "He's here, the shadow prince!"
I feared he hurt you. Gola wished to add but couldn't find a speck of courage.
"Oh Gola, you had me worried sick—and all for what? A bed time story told to get young girls to behave?" Yona laughed without an ounce of humor. She was frightened. She was furious.
"He is real! He was here!" Gola protested, her voice cracking as tears overflowed from the damns she struggled to hold back.
Yona started to stomp off to her room.
"Please believe me! The waltz! He trapped me in a waltz!"
Yona stopped in her tracks. Turning slowly to face her younger sister.
A bluish-black butterfly wafted from the window, fluttering to rest on Gola's dampened cheeks. The hair on Yona'a arms stood.
"I don't wanna hear anymore about it, Gola."
