Broken Lines |✔|

8.

He chases me.

I feel him coming after me for days. There is no time for sleep, no time for rest. I continue to move forward, running nowhere.

I had no destination.

Just a place I knew I could never go back to.

The image in my mind that had come to me so suddenly and terribly of him holding me had sent fear through me.

The connection of an Alum was one I had underestimated and never thought of. I had been too focused on my goal and the things that stood right in front of me to think of abstract things such as that.

I continued to run. To move forward. I could hear him. Coming closer. Coming nearer.

Panic would rise in me at the thought of what would happen if he caught me. If he managed to bring me back to that hell.

I would fall so easily. I would toss aside the words I had built up so hard these past five years. Those words that I so easily was running away from now.

But given the two options, I would rather fall at the monster's feet dead rather than alive and breathing.

A week passes. I am still running. I know he is not tired. I know it is any time now that he will catch me.

The only reason why he is still behind is because I had a day advantage over him. He had not immediately followed. Maybe it was because he had not thought I was really running away.

He had thought that just for the moment I wanted to be out of sight.

But away? Forever?

He couldn't accept that.

Not now that he knew who I was.

I can feel my paws split underneath. I was still new to this body. The soul pressed on, it sensed the urgency, knowing we did not have the time to become accustomed to each other and one as how others before us did.

I am smaller than him. I attribute this to cause me to be faster. I had always been a fast runner.

His strides are longer though, I know it is only a matter of time before he catches us.

Nearing the second week I can feel him. I can hear him.

I hear his snarls, him reaching out with his power in an attempt to make me stop. Him trying to extend some form of control to make me slip for just a second so that he can gain the advantage.

No.

I couldn't stop.

All that training amounted to this moment of my life- this moment that allowed me to have the strength to continue on.

I see it then.

Something I had only heard of in legends.

The edge of the forest.

The nearing of the end of woods.

It was real, father.

My steps stumble and it's that stumble that causes me to fall.

I fly through the air, hitting the ground and rolling violently against it.

Just a few more feet.

Just a few more feet and I would be past the edge of the only place I had ever known.

I feel his teeth clamp on my back foot.

I howl at the pain, turning around to snap at him and make him let go.