Sarah and the Morlock massacre

[x-marrow.livejournal.com]

She is twelve, headstrong, confident in her abilities and her strengths. It's the way the Morlocks brought her up to be... not meek and scared of the rest of the world, but prepared to take them /all/ on if need be. The uplanders were never to be feared, resented a little, yes, but never feared. The Morlocks feared nothing.

They let her wander. They might have been more cautious if she had actually been one of theirs, but even here she was adopted. The tunnels became her foster home. One that wouldn't shun her for the way she was. One that wasn't scared of the way she looked, or scared of her powers. Here she was normal. Here, freaks were everywhere.

She'd been gone for days, wandering the city, lurking, seeing what the upland had to offer. The sun left her reeling, the heights left her quaking, but soon she was bored with the uplanders.

She returned to the tunnels at half-past-six on a Saturday afternoon. The tunnels were trashed, debris and machinery strewn all over the place. She hurried to the main complex, heart racing. The tunnels stood eerily silent around her.

When she saw them, she didn't recognize them. Masque's work, she figured later, changing them for protection. They lay dead on the ground, heaped in a pile in the middle of the complex. Nothing was untouched. Some of them she identified by their belongings. That night, as all the people she ever loved lay dead around her, she cried for the last time in her life. After that day, the tears never seemed to come when they should.

Comments

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

Well, I meant more "it tends to be a bad idea to surprise someone with a hug when they're twitchy and carry lots of sharp pointy things." ;)

[x-marrow.livejournal.com]

Oh. Well, yeah.