CharHistory - Ta

by ~theGhostWolfe

Speed is prey’s truest friend.  A perfect camouflage, an ideal hiding place, all of these will fail you.  Behind the instinct to run is fear.  Whispering in the ear of every hunted creature is the voice of survival, the voice of the beast, telling them to flee.


BRITISH-CONTROLLED IRELAND
THE TIME OF THE DRUIDS…

A child wanders in the forests.  Dappled sunlight plays on the soft moss under her bare feet.  The animals do not react to her presence; they have seen her here many times before and they are no longer scared of the little girl.  It grows late.  The child is lost.  She is not afraid, the forest paths can be deceptive, she will find her way home in the morning.
     The child curls in the roots of a giant oak in a thick bed of fallen leaves, her strawberry blonde locks shimmering silkenly in the low light.  Such a little girl, merely eight years old, could not know that in the depths of this forest the distance between our world and theirs was shorter.  The faerie isles were known for their connection to Arcadia, but this child could not know that in places where the world was thin and Arcadia overlapped with our existence, sometimes things slipped through.
     She slept in the way only the innocent can, deep and peaceful, untroubled by nightmares.  The light fades away completely, the sickle moon sailing high over the top of the forest, the thinnest arc of silver adorning the sky.  The forest is shrouded in darkness.  The paths melt away into the fey night.


ARCADIA
HUNDREDS OF YEARS LATER…

She woke to darkness; darkness unlike anything she had ever experienced in her short life; darkness deeper and more intense than moonless nights deep in the forest.   There is nothing but silence.  Not a single owl hooted, not a cricket stirred.
     The leaves stick to her dress when she pushes herself up.  The child looks about, but the familiar paths have vanished, the trees look wrong.  The girl shoves her long hair from her face with chubby hands and set off resolutely in a direction she hopes will take her home.
     The first licks of fear crept into the girl’s stomach, a sensation she was not familiar with.  The trees rustle with ominous movement.  Branches reach and clutch at her dress, tearing it and scratching her white skin.  At the edge of her hearing a voice whispered.  Run little girl, run!
     The rustling draws closer.  Heavy breathing fills the space where the sounds of life should be.  The fear rises from her stomach to embrace her heart in black tendrils.  She feels her throat starting to close.  The darkness presses in.  The fetid stench of the predator’s breath fills her nostrils.
     She runs.


EDINBURGH
ONE YEAR AGO…

The years pass.  The girl has grown some, and she has changed.  The beast is no longer the voice in her ear, she is the beast.  Her form has changed to become the creature she has been.  Chased, hunted, hounded.  He legs have become those of a fox, strawberry blonde fur covering from her hips to her white-furred toes.
     A long and plush tail, the same silken red and white fur, flows from the end of her spine, fur spreading from the small of her back.  Her long hair is now tangled and filled with briars.  Elongated ears sweep back, furred and elegant, tufts of black at the tips, her eyebrows sweep upwards towards her temples over chocolate brown eyes.
     Those eyes are inhuman.  Large, the pupils can expand to fill almost the entire space between her long-lashed eyelids; no white shows anymore, just the liquid brown of dog-like eyes.  Her skin is pale as the moonlight, having not seen the sun in centuries.
     For several years, the only thing she has known is the fear.  When she finds a place of safety, she sleeps.  When she wakes, she runs again.  The thing in the darkness pursues her endlessly, relentlessly, tirelessly.
     One miserable night, the naked child bursts into a thicket.  Exhaustion drags at her, breath coming in ragged gasps.  There is something there.  She doesn’t have time to think.  She collides with the tall and lanky form and collapses.
     The girl wakes with a start, heart racing, breathing silently.  Darting eyes taking in her surrounds.  The sunlight burns her eyes, it has been centuries since she has seen daylight.  Centuries since she has slept on something softer than the dirt of a thicket.  Centuries since she has touched anything softer than the stinging down of nettle leaves.  Such a young girl, merely twelve years old, she cannot even begin to fathom what has happened to her.
     She finds herself in a soft bed, beneath a quilt of down.  Someone had placed a freshly-laundered nightdress on her sleeping form, the white cotton so clean she felt as though she bespoilt it by allowing it to touch her skin.  A new and novel scent comes to her and her stomach finally registers an emotion that is not fear.
     Hunger!  There is a tray next to the bed.  Eggs and bacon and toast, hot and smelling divine after her long chase.  She eats uncouthly.  A tall glass of cold orange juice washes down her meal.  
     The lack of fear is like a dull ache in her mind.  She crawls off the bed with some trepidation.  Nosing about the room, she touches, smells, examines.  Everything is new to her.  Movement in the hall causes the girl to freeze.  Footsteps.  Fear explodes in her heart, it hammers in her chest.
     Backing away.  The door opens.  The tall man enters the room, looking upon the bed in disarray, the empty plate and glass.  The girl is pressed tightly into the corner of the room, still as a statue.  He strides across the room efficiently, staying as far away from the skittish beast as possible.  He reaches for the tray, reaches towards her corner, TÁ! she cries in panic, the only sound to leave her mouth since the day she got lost in the forest.  The man takes the tray and leaves without a word.  She watches him leave with a twitch.


The days continue like this.  He brings her meals and some days she hides.  Occasionally he leaves for her clean clothing, a doll, a stuffed toy cat.  The clothes go untouched.  She knocks the doll to the floor as she nervously examines it.  The sound sends her skittering in fear.
     The man stiffly places the doll on a shelf.  That is when he brought her the stuffed toy.  She takes it, and it is by her side always.  It helps her sleep.  She grows accustomed to the sound of his footfalls, the scent that is uniquely his.  She no longer tries to hide.  She watches.
     She learns to anticipate his arrival.  Like clockwork he comes to deliver her meals.  His arrival heralds food.  Sometimes there are cakes.  She learns to hope for the cakes.  One evening she smells apple and cinnamon on the dinner tray.  When the door opens, she inches towards the table.  She peers nervously around the table legs, trying to catch a glimpse of the tantalizing scent.
     The next night, he brings another apple shortcake.  The girl circles the table warily.  He seats himself.  She can smell the shortcake, it is in front of him.  Her meal waits at the other end of the table.  Timid, shy, she does not take her liquid brown eyes from him as she snatches her plate and retreats to the far corner to eat.
     When she is done, she watches.  He does not move.  She waits.  Eventually he leaves, the shortcake left on the table.  She takes her prize.  They repeat the game again and again.  He brings her different and more enticing treats until she is willing to come close enough that he could touch her to collect her treats.  His patience is unending.  Not a single word passes between them.


EDINBURGH
PRESENT DAY…

In the year that passed, she began to master her fear.  She learnt speech and table manners.  She began to carve a niche in her odd little family.  She began to blossom, a tender thirteen years old.
     She never lost her timidness, still reverting to her beast state when afraid; growling, barking, hiding, running.  But fear was not the defining feature of her life anymore. Fear ruled her life for as long as she could remember and now she saw it as the sole tool that can let her regain control of her soul.
     Restless and easily bored, she seeks the attention of her family.  Defeating Baxter Bradshaw’s innate ability to move around the house like an invisible wraith using her beast senses, she hunts and stalks, ambushing her family members with child-like shamelessness.
     She was introduced to the Autumn Court by Bradshaw, finding some degree of comfort in their use of fear as a tool.  She believes that she has been hunted, it is now her turn to be the hunter.  When she feels safe she is animated and friendly.  She enjoys faerie tales, telling frightening stories, and is talented at weaving intricate and detailed stories.  Secrets learnt from the contracts of fleeting autumn aid her in detailing your most terrifying nightmares.
     Tá has a hollow hidden in the back garden of Bradshaw’s house.  She understands, more or less, that Bradshaw has been going into the hedge.  She understands that she crossed from the realm of faerie there.  She knows that his scent trail has led her to the back garden over and over again.  What she cannot do, is make the mental leap to understand the concept of the hollow.
     Her own hollow is nothing more than a bolt hole in the thick undergrowth behind the house.  Through a patch in the thorns, she has dug a small den under a thicket that straddles the two worlds.  The space is small, unfurnished apart from a few silk throw cushions stolen from the formal lounge room, and that really soft throw rug that Bradshaw would have sworn was in the spare room just yesterday.


Tá seeks to regain control of her life and control of her fear.  She has no ambition, no desire greater than the affections of her misfit “family” – a challenge of magnitude she does not realise considering who the members of family are.  She has no foresight to see beyond the immediate future and can be rash and impulsive.