Olesya sat in the hot water, life prickling through her limbs in delicious, painful waves. Pinkish clouds swirled around her as she lazily scrubbed the blood from her arms, her chest, her face. 

Now that she was no longer in danger of freezing to death, Olesya had the luxury of considering who might have murdered her. Her hands slid slowly down her face, eyelashes spangled with droplets as she opened her eyes. Fingers tentative, she traced them over the thick scar on her throat. A scar that had not been there mere hours ago.

No matter how she stretched and wrestled her memory, she couldn't make herself remember. Her afternoon blurred into streaks of color before it disappeared, her mind only offering coherent images after waking up in the forest clearing. And the only thing that offered was material for a plethora of new nightmares.

Olesya tipped her head back, resting it on the rim of the tub. She'd been murdered. The only answers that really mattered were who had done it and why. The question of how she was alive was too deep and terrifying to contemplate just yet. She wasn't ready for the answer.

So she threw herself into considering who might want her dead. When the realization that possibly the entirety of Straga was on that list occurred, she stopped thinking about it. Instead, she began to consider why.

If she'd woken in an alley, Olesya might think it had just been a mugging gone horribly. But she hadn't woken in an alley. She'd woken in a clearing in the forest, her body laid carefully in the center of the trees.

Her death had not been tragic circumstance. It had been thoughtful. Purposeful. Likely premeditated and flawlessly executed.

A grim little smile crooked the corner of her mouth as she swept her hands through the water. Perhaps flawlessly wasn't quite right. What with her being alive and all.

She slid down beneath the surface of the bathwater, the world going silent and blurry. Her heart beat in her ears, the same steady tempo it had always kept thudding in her ears. When her lungs screamed for air, Olesya sat back up and carefully stood, water streaming down her body. 

Stepping out of the tub, she wrapped herself in a large towel, wringing her hair out before hitting the switch to drain the water. She took a deep breath before walking over to the mirror. When she'd discovered the wound, she'd been too afraid to look at it. 

She was a little braver now that her flesh didn't feel frozen and her pale skin wasn't covered in a sheen of blood.

Slowly, Olesya allowed her gaze to travel down to her throat and the ugly, healed wound now gracing the skin there. A white rope of scar tissue perhaps half the width of her pointer finger sat just a few inches below the edge of her jaw. It had been a deep cut. A lethal one, with no evidence of hesitation.

Whoever had done this had meant to take her life. She had not been meant to survive this.

Olesya ran her thumb over the gash. How she had died hardly answered the question of who had wielded the blade, or why they had done so. She closed her eyes, still touching the scar. Fear began to creep icy fingers back around her heart and she turned from the mirror, leaving the bathroom.

She walked down the long, dim hall to her bedroom, slipping into a thick dressing robe and toweling her hair dry. Olesya dropped the towel to the floor and flopped onto her bed. A draft stirred the open bed curtains, the cold an entity still looming too near.

The fireplace stared at her, logs ready and waiting. Her tired muscles would begrudge any more movement. Something tingled in her fingers. Something she shoved against. Olesya flung herself off the bed and stalked to the fireplace, snatching up a box of long matches.

It took several tries before the tinder lit and flame crawled onto the bigger logs. That tingling in her fingertips grumbled and stretched toward the flame. Olesya returned to her bed, slipping under the thick covers this time. She shut her eyes, squeezing them tight.

The tingling receded, reluctantly slinking back into the cage she'd relegated it to behind her heart. Olesya let out a slow breath, rolling onto her back and staring up at the canopy of silky red cloth above her.

Her fingers found the new scar on her throat of their own accord.

Who had killed her, and why?

The questions burned through her and finally, finally anger began to grow. Why had they taken her out into the middle of the forest?

Why had they taken her shoes?

Olesya supposed that last question wasn't terribly important. But the cuts and bruises on her feet were painful and would make searching for answers that much harder.

And Olesya wanted answers. She needed them. How could she not? Anyone would be compelled to find who had murdered them if given half the chance, and that's just what she'd been given.

Exhaustion began to pull at her eyelids, unbidden but hardly unexpected. Unwanted but undeniable.

Where do I begin? Where do I go?

The answer floated through her sleep-hazed brain. The image of a small, dingy shop, tucked deep into an alley. A shop that wasn't always there. That had no sign and no purpose as far as most people could tell.

A place few people went, if they even knew of its existence. 

A place Olesya had sworn to never set foot in again.

Word Count: 919

Total: 2,064