#kahente.interactions

I’d get a new piece of paper and start over, but you’re not ever going to have to read this, so there’s no point. I’ll make it back home and snag it from the hiding place near your bed before you find it, I’m sure of it.

But if you’re reading this, I’m either worse at hiding things than I think I am or I’m dead. (If it’s the latter, I hope I went out in a blaze of glory. I’d be disappointed in myself if I didn’t.)

I know that we’ve known each other for like five seconds in the grand scheme of things, but finding you was like figuring out how to breathe for the first time, as if I had been living my life without oxygen for the past twenty years. And even if it’s all over now, at least I got to breathe for these past weeks.

Please don’t beat yourself up about this, this is not your fault at all (blame the person who killed me, I’m sure they deserve a nice punch to the face), and I’m sure that you’ve been helping me as much as you could from the outside.

Thank you, for everything that you did and every decision that you made and the life you let me have, thank you.

Also, please tell Satine that I lov really appreciate all she’s done for me. I don’t think I can write the things that I feel for her on a piece of paper, but she’s been the one person to stick by me through everything. Don’t let her beat herself up about this either.

I’ve attached the compass my dad gave to me when I first started hunting, that way, you can always find your way back to me.

Take care of him, please, I owe him everything I am.

See you eventually,

For as long as she could remember (which in this moment was not a long time), her biggest fear had been drowning. There was no recollection of the overcoming of that fear, no recollection of all the other, far scarier things there were in the world to be afraid of. All she knew was that the thought of drowning terrified her, and there seemed to be no escape from the never-ending stream of it.

As the water levels rose, she attempted to seek higher ground, tried to find some place to hide to wait out the incoming storm, but there seemed to be no way to avoid it, and she only got farther and farther from the terrain that she had been pacing for the last hour or so. 

The water was up to her chin in no time, and she prepared herself for drowning, prepared herself to die with no recollection of more than half of her existence. However, muscle memory took over from there, and instead of drowning, she floated to the surface.

She had no idea where or when she had learned to do this, and the very fact that she was lying on top of the water as more was added underneath her scared her more than the water itself, but she waited it out, readjusting herself every now and then like she had been doing it for her entire life.

By the time the water began to drain, Kahente had lost track of time, had no idea how long it had been since she woke up that morning, but a memory suddenly came crashing back into her brain. Why her father wasn’t with her, why her father might have been dead at home while she was...wherever she was. 

Cancer.

It was at this moment, her head in her hands trying to massage out the pain she felt from the new memory in her brain, her hair dripping water all over her freezing body, that she ran across another person for the first time since her last kill.

“P-p-please,” she managed to squeak out, involuntarily shivering, appearing the weakest she had ever been. “D-d-don’t kill me, I have to get home to my f-f-f-father.” // starter for @huntedhunter

Later that evening, sleeping in her bed felt weird. The sheets didn’t feel right against her freshly shaven legs, and none of the pajamas left for her went past her knees. So, she made her way out towards the kitchen, gathering ingredients from the fridge and placing a pan on the stove. She was so invested in her work that she barely heard the faint sound of footsteps behind her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, turning to face whoever was in the main room, smiling a bit when she saw it was Hunter. “Did I wake you up? Didn’t mean to be loud.” // starter for @huntedhunter

By the time other people began landing down below on their own feet, Kahente was even more confused. People were not meant to be able to stand on clouds, right? Or maybe everyone lived on clouds, slept on clouds. Maybe jumping was the wrong choice. It was too late now, it seemed as if she as stuck on the ground with these other people who seemed as if they were just as confused as she was.

That didn’t stop her from looking up at the sky, from seeing the colors that were surrounding them. It made her smile, she didn’t know why the colors appealed to her, but they did. The sound that filled her ears now was that of rushing water, something else that was made her feel overly peaceful, until she heard the sound of someone screaming in the distance.

There was someone who wasn’t confused. A man, older, running at her as if his life depended on it. Maybe his reaction to this confusion was violence, was fighting, was figuring out how he could survive. 

Why her, though? Why was he targeting her? And then she looked behind her and saw the only three objects in this entire place were right there, she was standing in his way. 

As the man continued to charge closer to her, she turned back around, this feeling in the pit of her stomach warning her that him approaching her meant danger, it meant a bad situation for her. But she froze, unsure of what to do, of how to react to this.

Lucky for her, the man paused and grabbed his head as some sort of memory must have come back to him, and a searing pain was sent through Kahente’s head at the same time. A memory, as vivid as if she was reliving the moment all over again.

The second grade, there was this girl in class sitting in front of her. She had long brown hair, freckles, the nicest smile she had ever seen in her entire short life. And there was a mean kid sitting next to her, a mean kid who looked the younger version of the man standing in front of her. He whispered something to his friend behind him about the pretty girl, about how often she cried, about how hard she tried all the time.

Kahente didn’t like that. This girl was kind, caring, smart. This kid saying mean things about her made her mad.

At recess that day, Kahente walked up to the kid and yelled at him for making fun of her friend, told him that he was being mean and that meanness was not nice. The boy laughed at her, told her that she was just a girl, he wasn’t scared of her.

And then she punched him. Hard. In the face.

She could see the blood on her hands now, as if she was back to that moment.

But wait, there was blood on her hands, and a man in front of her grabbing his now bloody nose. And suddenly, she wasn’t in the memory anymore. Suddenly, she was back to real life, and winding up to punch the man again. 

Once she started, she couldn’t stop, as if this mean man was the same kid from years ago and she was making sure that he really learned his lesson.

“Stop being mean,” she said, as climbed on top of the man who was now completely laying on the ground. “No one will like you if you’re mean,” she said, before slamming the man’s head into the ground, watching as the blood began to spill out around him.

“Satine is far better than you ever will be.”

She immediately reached behind her and got a bow ready to fire, just in case. She wasn’t taking any changes. She aimed the arrow towards the man. “Don’t come closer.” // starter for @jasper-beryl

Her next attacker came quickly, holding a wooden cross that look like it was old. At least, older than she was. Well, she didn’t know how old she was. But she was sure that this antique and faded wooden item was older. There was no question about that. 

The girl looked mid-twenties, strong, sort of like Kahente’s elementary school teacher. The eyes looked the same, though there was this anger and resentment decorating the visage of the girl in front of her that provided a distinction between the two. Her teacher’s classic friendly smile was missing, but the way her hair draped on her shoulders was the same.

By the time Kahente was done studying her, she was almost within fighting distance, and Kahente was ready for what she thought was about to happen.

But instead of attacking her, the girl stopped and looked at Kahente with this fear in her eyes, fear that Kahente wasn’t clear as to why it was present. The girl’s eyes seemed focused on Kahente’s hands, on the pink leaves covering her body.

She took the opportunity to look down at herself and saw the red stains on her skin, the pink leaves that were just barely covering her body, the ends of her hair that were stuck together. She reminded herself of the monsters in her nightmares, the ones that kept her up at night and forced her to sleep at the foot of her dad’s bed, the ones full of older kids with bloodstained skin and worn out weapons coming for attack her and take her away from her family.

These dreams didn’t make sense to her in the moment, but the fact that she had become the very thing that she feared made her upset. Where was she? Why was she acting like this?

The girl in front of her, covered in a fair amount of blood herself now that she was paying attention to it, narrowed her eyebrows, as if this was a fight that she would not allow herself to lose.

As she began to attack Kahente, Kahente prepared herself to defend, grabbing at the other girl’s wrists in an attempt to stop her fist and the cross from making contact with Kahente’s face. 

“Why are you attacking me?” Kahente asked, as she struggled with the girl’s arms. “What is this for? Just let me go,” she said through strained teeth, as she managed to force the girl to drop the wooden cross to the floor.

“Because,” the girl responded, wrestling Kahente to the ground and laying on top of her, very similarly to the way that Kahente had done to the man mere moments before. “Only one of us is getting out of here, and it’s going to be me.”

Kahente attempted to wiggle under the pressure of the girl on top of her, trying to free herself. This girl’s words were scary, like they were taken straight from the dreams Kahente had remembered mere moments ago. “What do you mean?” she responded, continuing to squirm. 

The girl continued speaking, beginning to dig her fingernails into Kahente’s arm as she did. “You must have hurt someone real bad to be covered in that much blood,” she spoke, as she began to drag her nails down Kahente’s arm. Kahente cried out in pain as she did, the girl seeming to enjoy the sound of her scream.

“If you’re a threat,” the girl began, taking her nails out and beginning the process again, managing to dig her nails in deeper this time. It was as if they were genetically engineered for this, like someone had shaped them specifically to cause other people pain. She continued, “then I simply can’t let you continue to roam around this arena, now can I?” 

The girl was distracted by the pain she was causing, Kahente realized this, and she managed to inch her hand towards the wooden cross lying on the ground next to them as the girl continued to speak. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it as painless as possible, in fact, I-.”

Kahente raised her hand and hit the girl in the head, watching as she fell over and made impact with the ground, the blood pooling around her.

What was this place?

Was she as monstrous as the girl was?