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Dark fingers leapt from the flickering flamelight, grasping the wrist of her singed hand. Cold terror flooded the girl's veins. She had been held before, caged by clawed hands that rent the light and had made her bleed. They were the hands that had carved narrow tracks across her delicate, soft throat, forming shallow but permanent scars there. They were the hands that had, in this way, so effectively stolen the dove's song.
The moment of blind terror passed as, with a sigh, her wrist was abruptly released. Fear, not politeness, was what held her still as the dark giantess returned to her seated comfort - Still poised between the motions of fleeing and sitting herself, China could merely gape in her muted silence as the woman's attention returned mildly to the flickering flames and her own body, as she spoke and gestured of where to warm her hands. China surprised herself with her obedience - Her transgression to this land, the perils and horrors that had torn her apart, seemed lesser in this fire-lit glade. The dark woman held her, momentarily, spellbound; The witch luring the wounded unicorn. Whether it was malice or kindness those amethyst eyes held in store for her, the girl did not yet question.
She obediently placed her burnt fingers in the dewy reed-grass, the slender shoots cooling and salving instantly. The wound was hardly prominent, and would be healed before the sun rose. Regardless, the hollow woman-girl delicately ripped up a chunk of the longer blades and held the thick wad in one clenched fist, fingers pressed into the cool foliage.
Then, slowly, she crept back to the woman and sank down again, this time drawing her knees up to her chin. The lesson had been learned, and she sat further from the leaping and twisting orange dancers than she had before. Again, rounded eyes looked to the stranger, this time less weighty and shadowed as whence she had first arrived. The little doe's trepidation was less, now that the sting in her hand could distract her from her abstract fears. The corners of thin black lips twitched up once, echoing a splendid prettiness that had once been hers, before flicking back down into a timid and unsure line.
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