fleured | the woods are lovely, dark and deep (Reply)

( it was extraordinarily difficult, for one to keep track of the days of the week when one just so happened to be held captive within an ornate, luxurious prison, but a prison nevertheless, and perhaps she would have gone mad if not for her necessary and instinctive sense of timekeeping. she didn't need a window to look out of - and all of the curtains had been charmed shut anyway - to know that the full moon was rapidly approaching, and with each day that it neared, aurora felt the dizzying effects of it already beginning to sink into the marrow of her bones. she found herself waking up in the middle of the night, warm and flushed all over with an ever-present heat that colored the milkmaid porcelain of her skin a delicate shade of seashell-pink, and the cradle of her thighs would be slick and glistening with the proof of her need for something bigger than her, something greater, as her blood pounded its way through her veins like water battering its way through a collapsed and broken dam.

if she hadn't already had an immediately pressing need to leave - to escape - then she certainly did now, and so when a half-formed opportunity presented itself, the young nymph had no choice but to reach out and take it. servants came and went from her chambers with the reliability of a well-oiled clock, and though it was painstaking, aurora was able to glimpse the tiniest bit of the world outside of her magicked-shut door every time that it opened and shut. the king was away for the night, she overheard in a series of hushed, reverent whispers and quiet murmurs, he's supposed to be gone till morning -

and the next time that the heavy wooden door opened, when a pair of maids arrived with aurora's third meal of the day - it won't do you any good not to eat, lass, not when you're already just a little slip of a thing as it is - the two matronly women would find themselves sent flying backwards suddenly, as a surge of bright, golden light scattered out from the tips of aurora's fingers like an infinity of sunburst constellations. instantly, they were rendered unconscious, and the would-be queen felt a painful jolt of guilt despite herself, but there was no time for her to wait for their pliant bodies to fall assuredly to the floor - she had perhaps seconds until her captor's well-trained army of both beasts and men would be thundering into the corridor like a pack of bloodthirsty hellhounds intent on cornering a rabbit, and so aurora took off running, the dark blue of her velvet-lined cloak cascading in her wake.

she'd had no choice but to disarm no less than a half-dozen guards by the time that she finally made her way out of the castle's hallowed, haunted halls, a dangerous amount of sunglow spilling from the palms of her hand and scorching - purifying - the grounds of the royal gardens, and the moon continued to rise higher and higher in the foreboding night sky, the bronze sheen of twilight long gone as it was replaced by vast, inky darkness. think, aurora, she told herself desperately, but it was nearly impossible to work through the heat-addled mess of her mind, and she could barely hear herself over the pitter-patter of her pulse, every bit as quick and as frenzied as the beat of a hummingbird's wings. hastily, she drew the wide-lipped hood of her cloak up and over her glimmering blonde head, shielding the sunlit glow of her with a shield of satin trim, and with one last frantic glance over her shoulder, she made her way towards the forest that bordered the castle gates.

she liked the woods. she'd grown up in the woods, and she'd learned to know and love every tree, every plant, every creature that called it home, but these weren't her woods, and so there was no telling what lurked within their depths, especially on the night of the full moon. still - she'd been left with no choice, and already she could hear the shouts of aleksander's men as they armed themselves to the teeth behind her, and so it was with a helpless onslaught of desperation that aurora all but flew into the gnarled and twisted foliage, catching the silk of her cheek on a sharp, errant branch and gasping as it drew fresh blood, the crimson of it harsh and stark as it glimmered upon the pale luminosity of her skin.

she couldn't stop, though, not with a band of hunters nipping at her tail and the constant threat of the man who commanded them, and so she continued onward - rushing blindly, recklessly into the thicket, and praying that she'd make it somewhere, anywhere, before the moon rose fully to fruition, or the king's army caught up with her. she had no idea what would be worse at this point, and so there was no pausing to even consider either option, even as her lungs burned with each exerted inhalation that she drew in, and the small, pert swells of her breasts rose and fell frantically with her resulting breaths, even as she cut her hands open on thorn-tipped branches and the hood of her cloak came tumbling off of her head to reveal the spun-gold of her waist-length hair. she was panting, little puffs of air turning to mist in the snow-dusted wood, and she made a sharp left - turning towards a clearing, which would hopefully lead to a trail.

she just needed somewhere safe to wait out the moon; she just needed somewhere safe to make it till morning. after that, she'd figure out the rest. )