Beautiful Freaks Fest – Day 2

Welcome back, lovelies! I’m glad you enjoyed the first bit of story from yesterday. If you missed it, then you can click HERE and read the beginning of Dagne and Mourda’s story. ❤

I hope you enjoy this second bit, which is a little bit longer than the 313 word limit for stories… but as a beautiful freak myself, I sometimes just can’t help but bend/stretch/break the rules on occasion. ^__~

And another great big hug to our fabulous hostesses, Magaly and Emma! Visit their blogs to find links to all of the other fabulously freakish partiers this weekend. And without further ado… a continuation from yesterday. ❤

And with that, Dagne fell fast asleep. When she woke, she was in a place filled with shadows and tree roots, but she wasn’t afraid; that feeling had been beaten out of her long ago. Now, instead of feeling fear when she probably should, she felt calm and kind of far away. She had lived through many nights of fear, so many that she’d used all of hers up. She could live through most anything now, she was sure.

She walked amongst the roots, great big ones that were thicker around than she was, tiny ones, only as thick as her littlest finger. She came to an opening in the roots and peered out, squinting in the sunlight that shone through the clouds here and there. There were police at her house, a lot of them. She stayed where she was and watched. She felt a presence behind her and turned and looked up into Mourda’s face. “What are they looking for?”

Mourda sighed. “You, child. They are looking for you.”

“But, why?” Dagne asked. “They’ve never come before. Not even when Ms. Adams told them… things.”

Dagne’s teacher, when she had been allowed to go to school, had seen some bruises when her shirt climbed up too high after she’d fallen off of the jungle gym one day. Dagne hadn’t been allowed back to school after that.

“It’s different this time,” Mourda explained, “Since your father has traveled to a different place.”

“Is he dead?”

“Not precisely, my dear, but as far as the police are concerned, yes.”

“Oh. Where is he if he’s not dead, then? I thought I might be done with him now.”

“You are done with him, child. He is with my cousin at the moment, although I’m sure he would rather be elsewhere.”

“Where is your cousin, Mourda?”

“Gretje is kind of here and there… your language doesn’t really have a word for it, Dagne. It’s kind of an in-between type place.”

“Ah. I think I understand a little bit,” replied Dagne. “The in-between places are what I travel through when I go into dreams and then come back out.”

Mourda’s head tilted to the side a bit as it considered the girl’s comparison. “Yes, I think you are right about that, Dagne. It is a little different, but still kind of the same.”

“I like being able to travel into dreams. I can make things better there.”

Mourda went very still as it looked down at the small girl-child standing beside it. “How do you make things better in the dreams, Dagne?”

Dagne shrugged, “I will it to be, and it is. It is my dream, and so I can control it. That’s what the old woman in the woods told me, and I tried it and it was true.”

Mourda raised its eyebrows, “Old woman in the woods?”

“Yes,” said Dagne, “There is an old woman that lives in a cottage, deep in the woods. Kind of like the beginning of a fairy tale, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed,” sighed Mourda, who had a sneaking suspicion that its involvement with this child was not the coincidence that it had originally thought. “Would you like to go talk with the police, Dagne?”

“No,” she said decisively. “I don’t see what they could want with me, or what I could want from them. I’d rather stay with you, if you don’t mind.”

Mourda smiled big enough for almost all of its needle-sharp teeth to show. “I would like it very much if you would stay with me. Would you rather go see if we can find the old woman in the woods? I would very much like to meet her.”

“Yes,” said Dagne, “I would much rather do that.”

And so off they went, the smallish girl child, Dagne, hand in hand with Mourda, the largish, monsterish creature from beneath her bed. An unlikely pair, but one that would rip apart the weave of what was and reweave it into something a little better.

And so Dagne and Mourda begin their journey into the in-between places, the places that we see at the edges of our vision if we squint just a bit, the places that we easily access in our dreams. ❤