They were broken. In all of the wrong ways. This hands held the scratches of someone who constantly itched themselves. She was hungry. They were all hungry. Many of them were starving. All of them were broken. She knew it, knew it more than anything else. When she bothered to pay attention, she knew it. And when she didn't bother, it was still there, niggling at her head.
One of them slammed a fist onto the table to get her attention. She blinked, head turning to the thing as her breathing intensified. Was she panicking? Was now a proper time to panic? Why was she breathing to begin with. It was not necessary, especially since she was not speaking. The dead did not need air, nor did it need them. They did not need air to survive, and even when they breathed it in it would not be released in the proper form to feed the rest of the planet. They existed in apathy of the air. It despised them for it, she knew it.
It was the other one who had found her. The one who was standing firm and tall, her blue skin glistening so bright in her shining armor. Not the one with the scratched hands. This one had a tired look in her eyes. A look hidden beneath pounds of make-up. She didn't want to be here. None of them wanted to be here. But they were here, and they had nothing better to do, so they might as well all play whatever parts they were meant to play.
She wondered if one of them might consider switching roles.
Scratches approached her first, after Pounds took her time slamming her fist into the wooden table. It was a fine table. Old though. It hadn't aged well. So perhaps it should be considered to have been a fine table. At some point in time it had been a fine table, but it was a fine table no longer. It looked pale and sagging. The result of never seeing the outside world, likely since it had been tossed into this room eon ago.
"Would you like to explain your presence in our city, Outlander?" Scratches said. Her voice was hoarse in a way. It held the same scratches to it that her wrists did. She wasn't losing it, though. It sounded as though she had screamed her entire life. Perhaps she had.
Her head turned to consider the other elf. The blue elf to her deep shade of purple. The elf whose white hair stretched well past her shoulders, while her own green hair was pulled back. Or it had been tied back when she had come in. Maybe that had changed. Things could change so easily.
Scratches took her face in hand, jerking it to the side to force her to stare her in the eyes. She stared back, unblinking. She could see her glowing blue eyes reflect off of the elf's skin. She could see how much the elf was disturbed by her. The rotting shade of purple. To think, this may be the closest one of them had been to their kin, or at least kin from outside their city walls.
And their kin was rotting. They were rotting too. She saw it in them. They craved, like she did. They wanted, like she did. She knew they fed off of something else, but it was a hunger all the same. Something that would drive them mad. All of them were going to either die, or live long enough to go mad.
Pounds approached just as her colleague. She stared, bent over, looking her over. Tried to get her attention a few times to no avail. Once she realized it wasn't going to happen, she gave up. They left.
They left here there. To rot. But she knew something they didn't want to admit. They could lock her away, thinking it punishment. But she was barely here anyways.
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