The Puppet Master - Part I

She clasped their dirty hands in her own white ones, the dirt smudging on her pale skin even as tears slipped from her face to wash away the streaks. Their faces were hollowed out, eyes sunken and filled entirely from corner to corner in pure black. Mouths gaping slightly in their state, they looked so pitiful to her, less than human, more of walking marionettes in the hands of a bad puppet master. Their skin was deathly cold and filthy. They left black streaks of dirt all over the front of her dress and hands that she knew would never really get out of the material no matter how many washes it would be put through. The question was, would she be alive after that to even think about washing her dress afterwards? She shook her head, a wry expression crossing her face for a moment at the thought of her own vanity. The male sending slipped his hands from her grasp and backed away silently into the fog, his dirty clothes blending into the night. The female sending remained kneeling by her feet, her hands still in Mel's grasp and turning colder by the minute.

The air was frigid, a cloak of fog covering most of London and the streetlights sputtering uselessly through the dark they could not penetrate. The sending whose hands she had been holding moaned softly, her sightless eyes filling with a black tar-like substance that Melisande had come to believe was a sending's tears. The male sending had shuffled off while she had been busy checking her surroundings. It was a cold, damp night and nobody would venture out as late as this. She would be alone if anything happened. Placing a careful hand over the sending's forehead, her thumb covered in a light dusting of yew ash, she spoke a single word that resonated.

"Idad."

The sending folded in on itself, the body collapsing into a pool of dirty rags and white skin that began disintegrating. Mel looked around for the rest of the sendings that she knew were hiding in the fog. Their master had to be around somewhere, pulling their strings and making them move against their will. She had to be careful.

~Rei Shiori