Gravity of the Situation

Who: Skye and Ash
Where: residential streets
when: atrociously early morning

Skye never slept late. She couldn't. It was as ingrained as breathing. You got up early to do chores, you ate breakfast, you did chores, you ate lunch, did school work (even if you never went to school), did chores, ate supper, finished whatever needed doing, and then you had a little while to yourself. Unless something happened, in which case you had to pitch in and help with whatever was happening. It was a very predetermined schedule, and didn't leave room for little things like sleeping late unless you had pneumonia or broken bones that left you quite unable to move or something.

So it was in that magical grey time of false dawn, where Skye was just stirring out of sleep, that suddenly her face hurt like all heck. Figuring the cat that belonged to her aunt had scratched her, Skye swatted at the air and then rubbed at the scratches. Her hand came away wet, and her arm was suddenly raked - deeper than her face - too.

Bolting very awake very suddenly, Skye abruptly realized that she was a) too close to the edge of the bed and b) had managed to mummify herself in her two comforters while she'd slept. Because she a) fell off the bed and b) ended up tangled on the floor. It took a few moments of confusion and detangling/flailing to sort herself, and she finally stood up and took a good long time to process the things, all three of them, in front of her, and presumably caused her some injury (injury that was still dripping from her arm). She blinked twice, and they - apparently not willing to give up such a lovely opportunity of stupidity and confusion from their opponent-slash-prey - went after her again.

Okay, okay. They look like shadows. They look like ghosts or something. They don't look solid. How are they doing that if they're not solid?! Skye's mind kindly put up a block in front of that series of thought so that she didn't have to deal with it any more, and ducking around them (and getting a light slashing across her back, but she could deal with it because she wasn't thinking about it nope), and darn near tripping over herself in an effort to get down the stairs, but she managed to get down them without further suffering gravity's wrath.

"Aunt Darcie!" Skye called, kind of freaked out and kind of bleeding and getting more freaked out now that she realized she was actually bleeding. Aunt Darcie's in Negaunee. She stayed overnight with a friend. She forced herself to remember. She won't be back until tomorrow. Where's the cellphone? Skye chewed her bottom lip, and then abruptly retreated to the kitchen when she saw one of the floating-shadow-thingies heading for the stairs above her. There was better light in there, and the tiles were cool on the bottom of her bare feet. The cellphone. It's in my hoodie pocket. Where's my hoodie?

It wasn't hanging on one of the coathooks in the kitchen. "It's upstairs, you idiot." Skye scolded herself sharply. "In your bedroom, that you just abandoned." Skye looked around, gnawing on her bottom lip. Knives. There were knives here. But how much help would a knife be against something that seemed so... insubstantial? Beyond the fact that those things? She'd never seen or heard of before and they looked like they were made of shadow and couldn't be real and NO. She wasn't going to think about that anymore. Instead, she got a good-sized knife out of the knife drawer, and held it in front of her like a holy symbol as the things drifted into the kitchen and zeroed in straight on her.

The kitchen was brightly lit by numerous windows, which were developing the orange glow of a proper sunrise.

These things were much more frightening in the light, honestly.

It wasn't a retreat, Skye could reassure herself later. It was strategic withdrawal. You couldn't defeat an enemy you didn't understand and didn't want to believe in. So as they got close (and actually managed to rake her back again), Skye headed for the exit, stage left, barefoot and in panda bear pajamas with blood spatter, clutching a knife and moving away from the house as quickly as she could - and Skye could run pretty darn fast when she was running for her bloody life because of unpleasant shadow things. Looking over her shoulder. Often.