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“Safe,” the other stick says, her hands clasping his, and the wanderer feels everything inside of him grind to a halt.
“Safe,” he echoes. He can’t stop the sobs that jerk free, sending tremors through his body.
“Safe,” the other stick whispers again, trembling too. Pain twists her face, and she looks tired and sad in the gray half-light.
A high, shivering wail drifts through the wind, and the wanderer’s eyes snap up to the horizon, scanning the hills with fierce intensity.
There’s no sign of movement, but his gut twists with fear. Dread slithers down his spine, cold and deadly.
“No,” he breathes, and his fingers jerk. “We’re not safe.”
The other stick is staring at the hills with wide, terrified eyes. He can see her breathing quickening, see the sharp, mindless fear digging into her mind. The hunting calls of the Twisted are dangerous. Claws may tear and teeth may rend, but the hunting call freezes.
When you hear it, you know.
You are prey.
And they are coming for you.
“We’re not safe,” the wanderer says again, more urgently this time. He shuffles even closer, and before the other stick can say anything he scoops her up, holding her close with desperate strength. “Come.”
She gasps with pain as he stands, but her hand grips his shirt with sudden, panicked strength.
“I’m sorry,” the wanderer says, shifting slightly to get a better grip on her slight frame.
And then he runs.
He runs, because the scent of blood is fresh in the air. He runs, because the hunting calls of the Twisted are getting closer now, sharper.
He runs, because he knows that they are coming.
The stick in his arms trembles, and her entire body is taut like a bowstring pulled back for a last, desperate shot. She keeps her face buried in his shirt, and her shaking, uneven breaths are warm against his collarbone.
They reach the foot of the hills on the opposite end of the small valley, and he turns, following a small gully. Gravel crackles underfoot, the last remnants of what was once a ditch, and he can’t stop the sob of relief as he sees the mangled iron grating of a culvert up ahead.
He knows this place. He spent three days here once, holed up inside the culvert, while the Twisted prowled outside. Three days of mind-numbing terror, three days curled into a ball with his hands over his ears and tears running down his cheeks.
A high-pitched screech echoes off the hills behind them, and he runs faster.
They’ve been spotted.
The ground grows damp, the dirt almost damp enough now to squelch, and the wanderer flies. His heart is racing, pounding so fast and hard that he can hear it roaring in his ears.
They reach the culvert, and the wanderer almost runs straight into the grating. He stops himself at the last moment, and quickly, desperately, he crouches. Two of the bars are mangled and twisted, and they’ve pulled apart just enough for a stick to slip between.
He shoves the other stick through, feeling guilt stab through him at the sharp, low gasp of pain she gives, and then he tumbles after her.
“Go,” he gasps, and it isn’t until they’re a good twenty feet down the culvert, panting and muddy, that he stops.
He twists to look back just as the first Twisted crashes into the grating, screeching and snarling.
Next to him, the other stick gives a low, choked gasp. Then her hand, bloody and soaking wet and covered in filth, comes up and covers her mouth.
She screams into her hand, eyes squeezed shut, and when the scream stutters to a halt she doesn’t move her hand. She stays where she is, pressed against his side, crying in huge, gasping sobs.
The wanderer can feel his panic mounting each time the Twisted outside claws at the bars, snarling and hissing, but he shoves it down again.
He keeps his arms around the other stick and his face pressed into her hair.
She is alive. He is alive.
They are not safe, but they are alive.
For now, anyways.