Settlement

[zopyrus]

Title: Settlement
Challenge/Prompt: Yesterday
Original Fiction
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mention of self-harm.
Disclaimer:  Plot and characters are mine.
Summary:  Hippothoe's marriage ends messily; she goes to live in her brother's house.

She hasn’t moved since yesterday, hasn’t made a sound since I brought her home. Her hair tangled, her dress askew, and the angry scratches she made, from throat to breast, red against the pale of her skin.

The house feels huge, and empty. Even the servants have caught her sadness, like another kind of plague, choking the sound from their throats.

When I sit down beside her, I can hear the rustle of cloth, raw and loud. I take her hand, but she flinches away.

I wish, desperately, that she would scream--that I could scream.

The silence gets louder.

Comments

[zopyrus]

I wondered if I should italicize "she"--I tried it without, and the sentence just didn't sound right. I can definitely see why you'd think it was referring to another character. (In fact, if that were the case, I would also have been tempted to italicize it!)