Blind Date

Something semi-quick for the Monthly Art Challenge. Because I need to be doing other things. But it'd be a shame not to participate in my own art challenges.

I think working with minimal colors is my thing now. It's mah thing, ya'll! Read onward to find out what the hell's going on in it!

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Autumn found herself focusing as tightly on his story as Michael was squeezing her hand. Her wolf felt the pull to leap out more intensely with each passing moment.

The energy seemed to reach a plateau. It finally smothered out the lights and for a moment the two were trapped in darkness so absolute, it felt palpable. Even with her enhanced senses, Autumn's wolf-eyes could not penetrate it. She continued to stare at the spot where she was sure Michael's face had been a moment before. With only their breathes audible between them, she tried push away the thought that this was what death must be like.

Suddenly, the howling began somewhere deep within the bowels of the caves. It echoed relentlessly off the walls and seemed to gain in pitch and agony. Autumn's heart raced more and more the closer it came, gaining speed as it wailed through the blackness, moving through the impossibly narrow spaces as easy as it did the open ones like a locomotive. Her own hand was clamped firmly around Michael's and she squeezed her eyes shut, surrounding herself with the familiarity of her own darkness, waiting for the presence to reach them.

Something large and invisible in the darkness sped by them, causing a great gust of wind to tear at their hair and clothes. Autumn felt the energy reach a peak as it passed through her body like a gel and tore out the other side. It was frigid, colder than any Canadian winter she had ever weathered; it numbed her insides completely, freezing any burning desire to shift in that instant. The howling came and went with it. It deafened her ears just as the cold had done to her innards. It passed what felt like only inches just behind her head.

She was shaking violently as though hypothermic when the lights came back on. They flickered timidly at first. Her features were slightly distorted from where she had begun to change without her realization. Her skin and lips pallid with fear and from the touch of whatever it was that had passed through them.

As soon as the howling started again, Michael felt his struggle renew violently, heart pounding thick in his ears, and he clung to Autumn for dear life, the beginnings of claws pressing against her skin. His headache reached its peak, filled with the wails of that horrid presence. Bones burned as if to leap out of him, and he opened his mouth to yell.

Then the rush hit. It was as if his flesh froze down to the marrow, and all of his senses with it. His throat stung with the gust, tongue dried to a skin-crackling cold in an instant, muting whatever sound could have come out. Whatever awareness he had of himself or his wolf was whisked away for a split moment, his being wholly and completely numb.

And then it was gone, rushing down the caverns past them, taking its muting presence with it as the lights flickered back to life. The first bare flashes lit Autumn's distorted face in a way that brought his breath back to him in a stammered gasp. He finally pried his trembling hands off of hers, one lifting to cup over his mouth, his gaze still fixated on her. He could feel his teeth knocking awkwardly, laid against one another in a mess of half-formed fangs, still stinging with cold.

He was unable and unwilling to speak a single word, all that he needed to say visible in the wide, terrified silver of his eyes, until his legs finally gave out underneath him with a violent tremble, his back grating down the wall all the way down.

Text taken from Silver & Bone RP forums, between and .