Palms pressing firmly into the ground, her eyes shut as tightly as they could, squeezing out the excess moisture that formed at the corners of her eyes. In turn, they transformed into saltine lone tears that were quickly absorbed into the fur by the corner of her crimson eyes before they were able to run down her cheeks. Hearing her raging heart in her ears, the slightly cooled atmosphere of the evening was heaved down her esophagus and billowed into her lungs, inhaling as much as possible in order to calm her frayed nerves down, but the quicker and the more intense she attempted, it didn't seem to work as much as therapists with anxiety would say it would. Spasms of chills burst down the length of her spine, raising every guard hair along the exterior of her arms, her legs, her back.
Night terrors. They plagued her at spontaneous intervals. Sleep was frequent in Talitha's world and usually a dead space of black oblivion, but there were certain nights to where her darker subconscious lurking in the shadows of her mind would come out during these hours, taking its finger to swirl about a chemistry of chemicals that would create a nightmare so ground shaking. The dark phantom that invaded her dreams cursed them for quite sometime now, and every reoccurring dream, there was no escape from the balmy breeze nor the profound crash of the waves of the ocean within them. Every nightmare held a theme to it, and the dark phantom always changed its preferred method of hunting Talitha. Sometimes it would run on six legs, sometimes no legs at all, sometimes it would swim through the air with a large, evil fin, sometimes it would snake through the grasses like a constrictor ready to strike.
Wiping a strand of her chocolate hair that was uncomfortably matted away from the crook of her neck, there was a heavy sigh given as she rose to her legs then. Talitha did not want to stand, but didn't want to remain crouched down at the entryway of the guest house either. Her eyes, which were stinging due to the way she was jolted from a deep stage of sleep so quickly, squinted toward the fullness of the moon. It's silvery light comforted her, as she took a moment to where she inhaled the night air around the guest house, further calming herself more.
Then, her heart beat leapt at the cords of their arteries, and the pace of which spiked considerably.
From that shadows approached a figure that blended in perfectly, down on all fours. Black as the midnight, black as the shadows, black as the stagnant oblivion of her sleep. All that registered in that moment was the sheer hue of black, and what later appeared in a dull gleam in the background was a pair of emerald eyes, and a revealing of flashing white points that could only be denoted as fangs. There were words to come from the dark figure that approached, and even while there was a stark contrast between gold and green, Talitha didn't see it. Talitha didn't even process what the dark figure even said, for her mind was too wrapped around the axle to pay attention to the details that would distinguish between an ally and pure enemy. She was stuck on the black form, stuck on the nightmare that still reoccurred, and it was beginning to be evident that this wasn't reality after all, that the dream was still in motion of itself.
The dark phantom was here, alive again before her, and this time it changed forms. Down on fours, and adapting green eyes, and a feminine voice. The nightmare was still playing, still on cue. Talitha stumbled back into the frame of the doorway, eyes wide. She knew the guesthouse was behind her, and there were only a number of rooms in there before the phantom was able to bust down a door or simply materialize through it. She didn't have any options, but out tricking it with running might be one. Turning swiftly on her heels, there was not a word said to the phantom before her, as she dashed back in the guesthouse, with the darkness engulfing her. She was making a beeline right for the room in which she resided in, to where she would fumble right in, and slam the door behind.