Bleddyn wasn't seeing anyone- to her, she wasn't even existing in this plane. A dark mass approached her from within the heart of the numbing mists and spoke in foreign, threatening tones. She shied away, stumbling toward where she remembered the door to be.
When she came to it, she frantically grabbed at the handle until the door yielded and she was freed. She pitched down the ornate stone stairs, simply getting back up and surging forward every time she fell.
Get away, get away, get away, get away, get away, get away.
And so she ran. Her feet followed a path only visible to her mind's eye. She was finding that everything she knew now seemed to locked away through transparent glass, still usable but not accessible. Though a part of her knew where she was going, she didn't really know at all.
When she came to her yard, she finally let herself fall. She crumpled into a shivering heap and shrank away into the turtleneck, her only cloak her from the world.
She was unaware of how much time had elapsed before strong arms unfurled her.
Connor pulled his daughter into his lap, his own arms shaky with fear at having seen her motionless at the edge of their lawn. He propped her head against his shoulder, cradling her like the breakable doll she'd become in the past- the fragile, terribly mortal little girl that he'd hoped would stay exclusive to his nightmares.
He swallowed hard when her eyes locked onto his; they were so horrifically devoid of recognition that they might've been mere holes in her head without a function. "Dyn. Dyn. What's wrong? Why are you out here?"
Ash came up alongside her husband and squatted beside her daughter. Her narrowed eyes probed her daughter's, but unlike her husband, she didn't flinch at the hollows that greeted her. Her hand came forward to gently trace the spreading purple that marred Bleddyn's chin, but she said nothing.
Bleddyn stared up at them both blankly, mouth soundlessly gaping and closing again like a fish deprived of its breath. She turned her face away into her father's chest, away from her mother's prying fingers. Her whole body shook soundlessly, as if Connor's hands were made of a substance so jarringly cold that one couldn't resist submitting to it.
She couldn't expose anyone else to the reality that was turning her own veins to ice and ripping tears in her lungs.
She couldn't possibly be the one to do this to her mother.
Ash stood up and exchanged a long glance with Connor. He slowly got to his feet, lifting his tortured daughter up with him into an involuntary bridal carry.
By silent agreement, they walked to his truck with urgency. Connor carefully climbed into the passenger's seat and handed his wife the keys. He pulled Bleddyn's legs in and arranged her on his lap, then shut the door. Seatbelts were completely insignificant to both adults.
Ash plunged the key in and turned over the ignition. After the electric blue Ram had roared to life, her fingers searched for her phone in the pockets of her sweater. When she found it, her hands were a blur of motion until a dialtone began playing.
She didn't give her hapless quarry the courtesy of a preparatory greeting.
“River, I think we need to talk, and not conveniently over the phone,” Ash growled in a dark monotone that had Connor shivering. Her foot threateningly danced over the gas pedal despite the fact that the truck was still facing the garage. “Where are you?”