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C'mon through a Portal to Hell - Chapter 12

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Spilling Over




Snow littered the meadow in patches and clumps, flowers of every shape and color pushing through it. They sat near each other on Moo's shell, blankets wrapped around their forms. A make-shift shawl was tied around Moo's neck. She groaned. “I know it's cold,” Winnie told her. “But warmer lands aren't far, right?” She looked to Cashile.

“We still have a long ways to go.”

She slumped. “Nevermind, Moo. Just hang in there.”

“She'll be fine. I've seen turtles like her handle worse climates than this.”

“She's a tortoise.”

“Whatever.”

Moo gave another loud moan, tossing her head. “What's the matter now, Moo? It's not like you to complain.” But she kept whining, and started backing up in circles. Winnie tightened her grip on the reins. “Moo? Moo!” She suddenly retreated back in her shell, wobbling beneath them as they fell the short distance to the ground. “Moo?” She leaned all the way over, trying to peer into the crevice that Moo had shrunken into. “What's gotten into you?”

There was a strange combination of a bird's scream and a roar. They both looked up to see a large dark shape swooping low over them, making Cashile grab at Winnie and throw up a green barrier around them, before flying back up high in the sky. “Stay down,” he ordered, standing up. The creature circled in the sky.

“What is it?”

“A griffon.” His hand moved restlessly, fingers twitching. The griffon circled higher in the sky, moving in a wider pattern from them. His hand vanished. In the distance, a flash of green appeared near the griffon. It gave a shrill cry, and it dropped to the ground. Cashile clicked his tongue, his hand reattaching itself to his wrist. “Missed.” He hopped down to the ground, and started walking to where the griffon had landed.

“Where are you going?”

“To finish it.”

She watched him go for a moment, then scrambled to her feet and trotted after him. “I want to come too.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her, then shrugged. “Suit yourself.” It lay in the field, tawny feathers and fur gleaming in the sun. It had the front legs and body of a lion, but the head and wings and hind legs of an eagle. Its tail seemed to be a strange combination of the two, a lion's tail ending with a spread of feather instead of a tuft of dark fur. Its chest heaved as it lay in the snow, bright red blood staining its fur and feathers from a deep wound in its side. Winnie halted, clutching at her blanket, but Cashile went closer to it, claws starting to materialize around his fingers.

She looked between him and the griffon, then glanced down at her hands. “Wait, Cashile.”

He paused, looking back at her. “What? If you want a closer look, then you'll have to come closer on your own.”

“No, I mean,” she twisted her blanket, “maybe we don't have to kill it?”

He stared at her. “What?”

“It's just, it seems like such a shame. It's the first griffon I've ever seen.”

“It's a wild and dangerous animal, Fred. Not a fluffy bunny. It was hunting us.”

“Well...wasn't it just leaving?”

“You mean when it put some distance between us so it could dive again?” He turned away from her, claws extending. “Forgive me for not wanting to test our luck after it nearly ripped your head off the first time.”

“But it-” His arm moved in an arc, and the griffon's head fell off its body. It kicked violently for a moment, wings flapping, then went still. The words in Winnie's throat died off.

His claws dissipated, and he faced her. “Besides, it was suffering. We couldn't have saved it even if we wanted to.”

She looked back down at her hands, clenching them into fists. “Yeah.” A wind whistled through the meadow, and she drew her blanket tighter around herself. She heard the grass and snow crunch rhythmically, and saw his feet come  into her line of sight.

He brushed back her bangs. “I know I must seem callous, and that you're a gentle soul, but you have to trust me.”

She looked back up at him, quiet for a moment. “You have blood on you.”

“Yeah, I- oh no.” Little droplets of blood were all across his front, most landing on the blanket and his leather vest, but a couple had fallen on his scarf. He pulled at it, inspecting the fabric. “Damn it.” He brushed past her, unwinding the scarf from around his neck. He opened up Moo's shell, taking out the soap and a scrub brush, and knelt down in a snow drift. Winnie crept up behind him, watching as he started rubbing at the spots with the snow.

“Funny, I didn't think you would be squeamish over blood getting on your clothes.”

“I'm not.” He didn't look up from his work, now lathering the brush with soap. “I just don't like it when it gets on my scarf. It's bad enough the thing's falling apart, I don't need it getting covered in stains as well.”

She glanced over the ragged edges of the garment, and the holes worn through. “If you knew how to sew, you could patch it up, and add a new trim on the ends.”

He scrubbed furiously at the blood. “I know how to sew. I just don't want to change anything about it.”

“Why not?”

“The holes and damage to it remind me to be careful with it. If I just kept sewing patches onto it, I'd be less careful, causing it to be damaged more often, requiring more repairs. Then if you sew and repair and replace the fabric enough, it stops being the same scarf completely. Just a mess of patches added over the years, and I don't want that.” He paused for a moment to inspect his work, then kept scrubbing.

“What's so special about that scarf?”

He slowed, and packed in more snow. “It belonged to my mom.”

She raised her eyebrows, and crouched down beside him. “Your mother?”

He nodded. “She gave it to me one day when I was little, because I wouldn't stop complaining about how cold it was. It's all I have left of her.”

She studied him. “What was your mother like?”

A small smile touched his features. “She was incredible. Really strong and brave and tougher than anything. She raised me all by herself, and did everything she could to keep me fed and clothed.” His ears twitched. “We were poor, you see. Kept moving around, never slept in the same place twice. But she did her best to make me happy anyways.”

“Did you ever know your father?”

His face fell a little. “Yeah. I knew him, though I only ever saw him about once a year, during my birthday.”

“He came to visit you?”

“No, we came to visit him. He was too busy to come to us. He was like a preacher. Had a whole group of followers to keep track of while he went around, spewing his creed.” He sighed. “I was never close to him. He had an annoying way of trying to be involved in my life, like he wanted me to be under his wing, but he never offered to take me with him in his travels, or made that much of an effort to get to know me.” He shrugged, and started rinsing some of the soap out. “But my mom loved him, despite everything. I think he made her hopeful, like there was such a thing as a better tomorrow. She really believed in the things he preached.”

She tilted her head to get a better look at his face. “Do you believe in the things he preached?”

“Nope.” He wrung his scarf out. “It was all pretty far-fetched. My dad was a radical, giving speeches that contradicted what was accepted by everyone else. It's a miracle that people listened to what he was saying at all.”

She furrowed her brows. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked ahead of her while Cashile repeated the scrubbing process. “My mother taught me my religion. But she was very private about it, and told me to be the same way. She thought it was very important that we seemed the same as our neighbors, to avoid any trouble with them.”

He nodded. “Wish my dad had the same line of thought. In the end, all that proselytizing backfired on him.”

“What happened?”

He finally stopped, staring hard at his scarf. “It was during one of his sermons. Me and my mom attended, waiting in the wings, when... I can't really remember what he said, but it was the wrong thing, and the crowd turned on him. Suddenly those loyal disciples of his weren't so loyal anymore, and they dragged him down from where he stood. At that point my mom grabbed me and ran, so I didn't really see what happened next, but when I came back later, I found that he'd been ripped to pieces.”

She gasped, pressing her hand against her mouth, eyes wide. “How old were you?” she whispered.

He shrugged. “13, maybe? It's hard to say.”

“I'm so sorry... what happened to you and your mother?”

“While most of the crowd was focused on my dad, a couple people saw us leaving, and gave chase. The first chance she got, my mom stuffed me into some hidey-hole, and told me not to come out while she took on the 3 brutes.” His face twisted. “I wish I hadn't listened to her.” His hands clenched, bones becoming defined under his skin. “If I'd just, not been such a coward, I could've saved her, I know I could have.” He relaxed again, shoulders drooping. “She succeeded in fighting them off, but... they really hurt her. She died of her injuries just a little while later.”

Little tears beaded in her eyes. “So you were all alone? From then on?”

His tail twitched. “Yeah. I'm all alone.” He went back to scrubbing. She twisted and tugged on the laces of her boots. “What were your parents like?”

She wrapped and unwrapped the cord around her finger. “Well...They were alright, I suppose. We were just an average middle-class family.”

“Were you an only child too?”

“Er, sort of... I used to have six older brothers and sisters.”

His ears perked up, and he paused to look at her for a moment. “That's a lot of siblings.”

“Yeah, but when I was a baby, we all got sick with scarlet fever. And they all died but, for some reason, I was the only one to recover.” She picked at a flower pushing up through the snow. “Sometimes I think my mother wished she could trade me for one of the ones that perished.”

“No, what makes you say that?”

The flower grew blurry in her vision, and she started shredding it. “I was just such a disappointment to her. The runt of the litter. Never satisfied with what I was given, on account of my lofty ambitions. Towards the end she was desperate to get rid of me.” She adjusted her blanket around her shoulders. “Well, I suppose that was one thing I was able to do to please her.”

“Don't talk like that.” She looked up to see him giving her a stern look. “Don't talk like you're worthless.”

She shook her head. “But it's true. We were so close when I was little, but as I got older, it's like we became strangers. What kind of daughter can't even fulfill her mother's most basic wishes?”

“Stop it. You're wrong.”

“But-”

“No. You're not-” he took a deep breath, closing his eyes and reopening them, “you're not a disappointment. You're just not, okay?”

She held eye contact for a moment longer then looked away, sniffling. “You're wrong too, you know.”

“I'm not wrong about this. You're so much more than whatever expectations your mom had for you.”

“No, I mean you're wrong about being alone.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. “You have me.”

For a moment his features went slack, staring at her. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
Tired of her life, Winifred seeks to change it all, but accidentally ends up in a cruel new world. Now stuck there, she searches for a way to live without compromising her morals.



Work © me.
Critiques are welcome.
EDIT: Chapter content has now been updated with the gamma draft.

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