Koala woman in the jungle# 12

Katie is going crazy, there is no doubt about it. When you see a demon, you avoid it. You run away from it. Whatever you do, you do not follow it into silent forests. And yet even with a lifetime of warning, that is what she has done.

It is a woman. A sparkling, see through, ghosty, spooky-white woman. And Katie had to look twice to confirm she was a demon, and not just a very pale human.

She definitely wasn't something human, and yet she had no characteristic signs of ghostiness, until her eyes met Katie's. A shiver raced through her body and she thought all the warmth in the world had been sucked out.

The woman waited just under the shadow of the trees, clearly visible from the window of

her room. Before she turned back, and disappeared in the darkness.

Katie had gotten down the stairs and out of the inn before she was even aware she had moved. She halted a step, before moving again. She had to go in there, it was important.

Branches slash her arms and wild growth tugs at her loose pants with every step she takes. And yet panting- she keeps running.

Until she reaches a clearing in the woods. She turns, side to side, trying to get an inkling of where to go next, before she feels as if someone has wrapped their hand hard around her throat.

Her airway closes as she gasps, fighting to remove the hand that does not even exist. Black dots swarm her vision and her knees collapse from beneath her. And then she sees her, that woman from the clearing looking at her desperate for breaths on the ground, as cold, cruel laughter rings in her ears.

She stops struggling, too tired to move anymore. Her eyes catch something else however, something her mind doesn't registers as she gives in to the dark.

Something that is the first clue to a conspiracy far greater than she has expected.

******

Leaves crunch under his feet as Constantine sifts through the jungle. He has to find her, she was real- he had seen her. His wife. His Alina.

And yet even as he scores the jungles for one glinpse of his beloved, she is nowhere to be seen.

When his eyes had caught her face at the edge of the forest, he had almost stumbled, such was his shock. Before he had left everything, including the father he was about to kill- to rush to find her.

Everytime he tried to stop, he would see her again. Standing painfully near, yet agonizingly out of reach. And again he would follow her, wanting to believe she was alive.

And so he ran, until he saw something that made him stumble and lose his footing. There by the tree - a woman, dead by the looks of it.

And all of a sudden, something inside him clicks into place. A rip develops in the curtain of madness clouding his mind, and sanity, hot and blinding rushes through.

He snarls at the things rushing through his mind, thoughts-making him dizzy. It is a pity she is dead, or he would have questioned her. Once he got his answers, a human was easy enough to dispose.

***

She was not dead.

The little, dirty looking woman was not dead. Apparently, he got there just after she stopped inhaling, because he had heard- luckily for her, her heart beating.

There was nothing to stop airflow, she had just stopped breathing on her own. It was queer, but the odd-looking human woman had lived.

Now he sits, as she coughs and gasps pathetically on the dirt. Clawing at her throat like a mad woman.

He lets her be though, if the woman wanted to be crazy, by the gods, he would let her.

He takes that time however, to explore where he is He remembers this part of the forest clearly.

He had come here as a child to play, and then again as a teenager training for battle. This spot was old, perhaps older than most of civilization itself.

It was undisturbed, protected from mankind, as it descended as the plague on the Earth.

His lips lifted in a snarl.

Humans.

Murderers and thieves.

Oath breakers and betrayers.

It disgusted him, as he watched them through the ages. Betraying their own kin. Sons killing fathers, fathers murdering children. Brother hating brother.

A familial bond was one of the most holy things on the planet. It was to be protected, to be treasured. It made bile rise to his throat, as he saw people unable to trust their own families.

The woman has regained some sense he supposes, for she has stopped struggling like a worm and has finally straightened herself.

He looks at her once, thinking whether it would be worth anything to question her , until she starts scratching her head, and he decides it would be nothing other than useless.

He takes a step to disappear when she wraps herself around him like a Koala. He hisses, utterly disgusted by the woman.

Goddamn him.

Had the centuries he had been sleeping, seen human women evolve into spineless gits?

Where was the perseverance he had seen in woman? When they screamed in childbirth and yet managed to hold strong against pain and death? When they managed to leave behind homes and families, and find contentment someplace else?

He tried to peel her off, but unless he used his strength- which would possibly squish her to pulp, there was simply no way she would let go.

And so, after a few tries, he huffed in a breath and dragged a random, nameless woman, he had found in the forest, back with him.

*****

Constantine understood his family would be shocked, but their reaction was unbelievable. They had all looked at him as if he was a walking corpse.

He was sane again, perfectly normal, or so he thought until he lunged at his brother like a feral animal.

It took him three murder attempts and 5 hours to realize the woman was the key, the tiny, senseless, pea brain woman was actually keeping him sane.

And with her unconcious in the upper room ever since they had gotten out, he took in a deep breath and stepped back as King.

****

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