Page 2 of A Soul to Touch

Her heart raced with delirious hope, and she headed straight for the noise.It’s Shadow. It has to be Shadow.Of course, it was her cat – nothing else couldpossiblybe lurking in the dark.

Unwittingly, Mayumi sprinted straight into danger, her mind foggy and her fever getting worse by the second.

A creature, so black it made it near impossible to see how big it was in the dark, turned its head to her. Yellow eyes caught her attention, big, just like Shadow’s. Mayumi smiled brightly. Like Shadow’s mask, their face was white, and with how blurry her vision had become, it was easy to mistake what it really was.

Yay! I found her!Mayumi tripped in the snow in excitement. It distracted her enough that she didn’t notice the reflective slick of the snow that revealed the yellow glow had turned red.

Their maw was opening as a growl echoed, but she took that bass as a rumbling purr. They were coming to greet her.

A black paw landed right in front of her as she got to her feet. Mayumi leapt blindly with her hands reaching.

“Kitty!” she squealed joyfully, wrapping her arms around their thick neck.

All rumbling sounds suddenly went quiet.

Mayumi started rubbing her face into the familiar soft fur she was used to. They were warm, and she lost herself in it, her body seeking the heat.

“D-don’t,” she started, her voice raspy and growing softer. “Don’t l-leave me again. I missed you.”

Mayumi grew weak. All her determination faded now that she’d found her pet, and eventually her arms loosened their tight, hugging hold. She fell to the side, knocking into a fluffy limb, as though the creature had been standing on all fours.

Out in the open, thinking she was laying in front of her cat, Mayumi fainted as her fever took hold...

“Fuck!” Mayumi yelled, the blanket falling from her chest to her hips as she quickly sat upright on her bed.

Her long black hair swayed forward. The ends settled against her chest while the length of it framed her face.

She panted, breaths sawing in and out of her rapidly heaving chest as sweat dotted her brow. She looked around, making sure she knew where she was before bringing her legs up.

She placed her left elbow on her bent knees so she could cup her forehead, ignoring the perspiration there as she stared at her blanket with wide eyes.

It’s that dream again.A dream... or a memory?

Mayumi didn’t actually know. She had been too young to remember what she’d seen, too sick to really believe what her eyes took in that night.

All she knew... all she knew was that she’d never actually found her cat. Shadow never returned; she never saw her again.

But whatever her four-year-old self had stumbled upon... whatever the fuck it was, it hadn’t eaten her. At least, she didn’t think it had tried to.

After collapsing in the snow when she was four, she’d woken in bed, fever-stricken, to her parents panicking – mostly her mother. Someone orsomethinghad taken her home.

They didn’t knock, didn’t yell for her parents, didn’t stay around to explain anything.

Her parents had found her in front of the porch steps laying in the snow after they’d beensearchingfor her. Of course, her parents had realised she was gone in the middle of the night.

They thought she was dead, most likely eaten by a Demon that attacked her while she was stupidly walking around. One would have stumbled across her frozen corpse and eaten her eventually.

With the help of Priests coming to their home to aid her, they’d healed her fever over the course of many days.

The scolding and punishment she’d received from her father after she’d gotten better had been brutal enough that she never left their home after dark again.

“Fuck,”she cursed again quietly. “What the hell did I see that night?”

It was a question she’d asked herself many times over her life. She’d often had this reoccurring memory-like dream.

There were only two options available: a Demon or a Duskwalker.

Blindly, Mayumi reached out beside her roll-out futon bed. She patted the ground before her fingertips grazed a cool ceramic bottle that tried to roll away. She grasped it.

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