Her Hunter, Bound By Her Curse

Phoenix

She was running over the fields as fast as she could. Her feet were bruised and so was her soul. Blood trickled down her spine where the weapon was still lodged. She ran as fast as her body could. But they were catching up. The hounds and the hunters were close in pursuit. Zonish kept running as the field went up into the hills. She pulled herself up. Higher and higher. The rugged stretch peeled her skin off. Though they grew back well, the pain was unbearable. But Zonish didn't give up. She kept climbing higher and higher.

All of a sudden, she started feeling the entire place heat up. It was accompanied with a strange rumbling and grumbling. She looked back and felt the hunters slow their pace. Zonish looked around, something didn't feel right. Then she looked below her feet. The ground had turned bright red and yellow. She moved back in fright. But the entire place was starting to boil up. In her desperation, she had completely ignored the fact that she was mounting a active volcano. She looked around herself . There was no way she would be able to run out of the place before it erupted. She looked around.The lava started seeping out. She moved herself to find shelter but a portion of it trickled down from above. She screamed in pain and she jumped to the other side.

There, her entire left foot got swallowed whole by the boiling lava. She shrieked. If she was human she might have passed out with the pain. But her curse doesn't allow her that. She remained fully awake and felt every bit of the pain. Zonish looked over and could see the hunters gathered on another nearby hill top, to watch the spectacle of her demise. Though she was a cursed demon, she thought the men standing and enjoying the sight of another creature being burnt alive were more evil than anything she had ever known. She yelled and begged, cried and growled, but to no avail. The lava was slowly eating away all her body parts. Desperate and scared, she gathered the last of her stamina and courage and decided to jump off the place . As she concentrated, the colour in her eyes changed. It turned blood red and so did her nails. They became sharp and elongated as they turned crimson. Her hair, too, braided itself into knots. It swished like the tail of an animal that is wild. Her face shifted its features that were a million times more refined.

Zonish leaped, bracing herself for the impact , but she found herself suspended midair, soon after taking the leap. She opened her eyes and looked around herself. There were a pair of pitch black wings behind her back. It had grown itself from where her shoulder blades were. Zonish looked at her hands and nails. She tried pulling them off in horror. But she was thrust aside with a terrible force as the lava finally erupted with grandeur. Everything around was engulfed in the fiery heat of the molten liquid. Zonish, however, found herself rising above the fire, like a Phoenix . Though this should have been self-satisfactory, it wasn't. She found herself disgusted at her alteration as she bent over a spring, trying to clean herself off the debris from the explosion. She couldn't believe herself as she kept staring at her face, hands and body.

"I truly am a monster " , she thought to herself, " they have every right to be scared of me. "

It took Zonish some hours before she changed back to her previous self. She had stationed herself in an abandoned house, a few miles away from the place of incident.It was a deserted locality, scattered with a few old houses and a worn out road. Zonish had been trying to catch up with the smell of the hunters' trail, but they too seemed to have vanished in thin air. It was good news, hence Zonish didn't bother to get herself distracted by it much.Instead, she was busy looking for some clothes to make her look human again.

"This looks decent ", she said as she picked up a pair of shorts and a T-shirt , hanging on somebody's lawn, put out to dry. " I am sorry but will be sure to pay you back. Thank you. " She murmured to the invisible owner before leaving.

She kept walking down the road, aimlessly looking around. Zonish normally looked like an average schoolgoing girl with average features. She could easily be mistaken for a geeky child because of her sluggish body language and high intelligence. Her sweet natural was easily likeable and her reservations were easily mistaken for an introvert. Which worked perfectly fine for her.

Zonish kept walking down the road, lost in her thoughts, when suddenly a car came speeding by and crash landed on her without any warning. Though the shock was intense, it wasn't enough to injure her a lot. She just felt a few bruishes on her legs and hands.The car, however, had sustained severe damage. Within a few moments, an elderly man and woman came rushing out.

"Are you alright? Oh! My poor child. " The woman yelled as the man bent down to check on Zonish's vitals. Though she was perfectly fine, she had to pretend to act normal. She kept lying motionless with her eyes closed.

"She's breathing. It's better if we could just rush to the hospital. It's not far from here. " The man suggested as he picked her up and laid her inside the car, on the back seat.

The elderly man and woman were quite hurt themselves but they kept checking and re-checking Zonish all along the way to the hospital.

Zonish marveled at how it felt so good to have anybody worry over you. She smiled as the woman kept stroking her hair with affection and patting her hands with care. In all her life, she had never had the fortune to feel something so simple yet so special.