The Reaper's Curse #1 - Complete

Meaningless Name

Alicia moves gingerly, eyeing the simple pants and shirt draped on the edge of the bed, a woolen coat folded neatly on the chair against the wall. She touches the coat, the fabric expensive, something she would never have worn in the slums if she didn't want to get robbed.

She turns to the other clothes before she gets sucked into memories of the life she left behind.

The under-bust corset with them is a dark brown, the leather supple and the edges frayed, but she'll need it if she has any hope of making the clothes fit. She stands and begins the painful process of getting dressed in clothes too big for her, but she can't complain because at least she isn't being forced into a dress.

She takes this time to prepare herself for what awaits her as she dresses. She's in the Commons, and her aunt trusted this place and these people. They saved her life, having enough supplies to spare some for a stranger.

If anything, it says something hopeful about this place that they were willing to help her.

She finishes dressing, feet also bandaged as she pulls on her black boots. She rests for a long moment, hand clenching the frame of the bed as her head swirls and her throat aches.

Alicia pulls her satchel to herself and digs through the contents until she finds what she's looking for. The crimson scarf is dirty and darkened with her blood, but it offers her a morsel of comfort.

It shouldn't. She spent two years with this scarf wrapped around her face, drenching it in blood, wearing it like a token to all those who looked into her eyes as they drew their last breath. But the familiarity of it eases some of her burdens, like a salve to a burn.

Thumb rubbing against the crusted blood on the material, Alicia decides she needs to clean it. The goal plants itself in the forefront of her mind and she clings to it, hoping it'll keep her sane and out of the memories that claw and thrash like the walking corpses beyond those walls.

She lets out a breath and faces the door that'll take her from this room she's stayed hauled in for the past day, too terrified to see what waits for her beyond. It can't be any worse than the land she found when she left the capital.

She moves for the door with stiff limbs, pushing it open as she wishes for whiskey in her belly to help dull her delicate nerves. She's made it through worse with less.

As Alicia wanders through the house, uncertainty begins breathing down her neck, following her into a large sitting room of old, worn sofas and a rug that was perhaps once clustered with vibrant colours, but has now been dulled to a lackluster brown.

Her fingers twist in her scarf as she continues walking, passing through a set of open double doors and into a dining area. The table is covered in dust, the six chairs around it too, and the flowers in the vase have been dead for a long time, their petals littered amongst the dust.

"Hello?" she calls out, but the house seems to be holding its breath, like it's empty apart from the ghosts that call this place home.

The space adjacent to the dining area is occupied by a kitchen, the place dwarfed by a bench in the middle, this one not covered by dust. Hope lurches through her as she spies a sink and she rushes over to it, turning the iron tap to watch water spurt from it.

It's a small thing, seeing water flow from the pipe before her, but such a small thing warms her stomach. For two months she's been living in a cabin in the woods, hauling buckets of water from the stream nearby, being careful of her water intake. To see such a privileged thing such as water so easily accessible before her makes her feel how she did when she first shrugged on one of her ma's expensive coats in the slums.