Chapter 62000
The ground was hard beneath her, the dirt firm. Slowly, hesitantly, Sweet Sweet lifted her head, her body trembling, her hands shaking in her lap amongst the pleated folds of her school skirt. In the sky above her, the moon was full and brilliant, milk-white radiance washing over her, over the old, tumbledown stone ruins, columns wreathed with holly and ivy—over the shape of the gathered assembly looking down upon her, passing judgement on her.
The wind stirred, early autumn leaves turning brown, heralds of the end of summer. She stared at Astarte’s back, the dirt on her torn school blouse from where she had fallen in the forest, the blood that ran from her finger tips and fell like drops of rain upon the parched leaves, beneath the skeletal branches of the old oak trees.
