Free The Plain White Room by Oliver Phisher Page B

She moved his hand from her hip to under her chin.
    "I wish you could stay all night," she sighed and rolled her shoulder, almost to see if he was real.
    "I know" he smiled, nothing else in the world seemed to matter, except the next few hours and being there.
    "I wish it was raining louder, the sound of the roof is so beautiful." although she mumbled it, he heard it as clear as crystal. It was the thought on the tip of his tongue already.
    Earlier that day the sun had been bright. Throughout the day, people had made off-the-cuff comments jokingly about the weatherman's predictions of heavy winds and rough seas.
    It seemed so strange to him to think that he had wished for louder rain then. Even though the storm hadn't  yet started.
     
    ***

Quiet Friend
    Lepus trudged through the forest, dragging the sword behind him. Dazed and exhausted, he no longer cared that he could see no further than an arm's length in front of him. The field had long given way to a stony path as thin as a doorway, surrounded by deep shrubs with dense foliage above. The trees blocked out all moonlight. Tears streamed down his face after slaying the invisible creature before falling to the ground. He stayed there for a time until rolling back and forth to force himself to stand and enter the forest. Lepus’s feet grumbled through the stone covered path. His shoes were pulling up gravel as he moved along. Through the brush and vines, he heard a crow calling but looking up he could still not see through the wall of foliage. There were no cracks and in front of him further down the path there was only black. It looked like an endless pit that was pulling him forwards. But there was no way he would go back and face the monsters he had left behind him.
    He had walked for what felt like hours; he would collapse alone in the dark before he could make it back to the field. The crow called again and, this time, seemed closer, looking up Lepus thought he saw something in the distance through the dark. He lifted the sword from the ground and started running. Lepus reached out to grasp it. Pulling it towards him so he could make it out what it was. With the little light seeping through the creeping vines. He held it close to his face, but it was only vines that he had clasped. He moved further forwards and reached out with both hands. Feeling with feeble hands, he felt only more and more of the vines. The path had taken him nowhere. The vines to his left and right had converged to this point. The only way was back.
    Lepus pushed against the vines, his arms sinking into them until his face pressed against them. Again the crow cawed, and in response Lepus let out a curdling anguished cry. He hacked and hacked at the vines with the sword, but it made little difference. As he hacked, he felt something brush his feet and then his shoulder. He turned around but saw nothing in the dark. Then a hissing came from above. He stepped back from the wall of brush and held the sword to the sky in defence.
    Then the chant started. Delicate and soft at first. Lepus could not make out the words, at first, it sounded only like melodic hissing, until he caught a word or two. Then one more; “Feed”. He tightened his grip on the sword as the chorus crescendo, “promise… serve” Lepus started to hack around him. Thrashing towards the sky, then at the vines. Trying to get out and trying to hit whatever was descending from above.
    “We serve… we serve” the chant continued. Lepus began to distinguish shadows moving above.
    Only his eyes had adjusted from being in the dark for so long. He realised they were far above his head in the trees. Wielding his sword above his head was not helping. He continued to cut in front of him at the vines. All the time his head turned up, watching the shadows in the dark. “We serve, we serve, we promise not to feed” they chanted.
    “Gives what we need.”
    The voices got clear and louder as he hacked until he could take it no