Another one-word and open-ended prompt! What comes to your mind when you think of the word "forlorn"? As always, I hope you enjoy and happy writing.!

Sylin knew pain. She knew heartache, and bone-ache. She understood what it felt like to beg for death, because it was so gentle and kind, whereas life was nothing but agony.

She knew the void that opened up in one's soul when they stopped feeling.

Even when she looked back upon the faces that abandoned her, she only remembered faints smears of faces.

Nothing hurt her anymore because she was in a constant pain deep enough to make the average person buckle.

Sylin didn't cling to hope. She didn't cling to anything. None of it mattered anyway.

Nobody cared enough to find her. No one cared about a blood-sucking demon like her.

And she was okay with that.

The first sound in nineteen years was a knock.

Sylin did not move. Dust had settled into the creases of her sleeves, into the hollows of her collarbones, into the corners of her open eyes, and she did not think it worth it to move. The knock came again, softer, the sound of knuckles rapping their knuckles against the old stone of the stairwell.

Rats, Sylin decided. Or wind.

But rats did not breathe that fast. And wind did not whisper hello? in cracking voices.

A pale yelow light bobbed down the stairs, reaching the bottom step before it stopped. Behind it stood a girl of perhaps fifteen, drenched to the skin, a lantern clutched in both hands like a shield. Her boots were torn at the toes. A satchel hung from her shoulder, and she held it close, as if it were the only thing in the world she owned.

"The storm," the girl said to the dark. "I only need somewhere to wait it out. I won't touch anything."

Then the lantern swung, and its light found Sylin.

The girl made a sound halfway between a gasp and a hiccup. She stumbled back against the wall, and the flame guttered. For a long moment neither of them spoke. Sylin watched the pulse in the girl's throat, a frantic little flutter beneath wet skin, and felt something stir in her chest that she had believed long dead.

Hunger.

"You're..." The girl swallowed. "You're one of them."

"Yes," said Sylin. Her voice was rust and ash, unused for so long that the word scraped on the way out.

The girl looked at the iron shackles around Sylin's wrists, the rusted chain bolted into the floor, the thick grey cobwebs that bridged the space between Sylin's shoulder and the wall. She looked at all of it with an expression Sylin could not name.

"How long have you been down here?"

"Long enough," she said.

"Did someone put you here?"

"Yes."

"Did they come back?"

Sylin said nothing.

The lantern lowered a little. "That's awful," the girl whispered.

Don't. Sylin thought. Don't pity me. Pity is a door, and I have nailed that one shut.

"Leave," Sylin said. It came out harsher than she intended. "Go back up the stairs. Find another shelter. Do not come down here again."

"It's flooding up there."

"Then drown."

The girl flinched, but she did not leave. She sat down instead, slowly, with her back against the far wall and the lantern between her knees, twelve feet of cold stone between them.

"I'm Samira," she said.

"I didn't ask."

"I know." Samira pulled her satchel into her lap.

"You should be afraid of me," Sylin said.

"I am." Samira's hands tightened on the strap. "I'm just more afraid of up there."

The thunder rolled overhead, muffled by the weight of earth and old prayers. Water began to trickle down the stairwell in thin, glittering threads. Sylin turned her face toward the wall. The hunger pulsed again. Twelve feet. Eight, if the chain allowed. The girl's heartbeat filled the cellar like a drum.

She closed her eyes.

Nothing matters, she told herself, like she had told herself ten thousand times before. Nothing matters. Nothing matters.

"Samira," she said at last, very quietly, not turning around. "If you want to live through the night, do not fall asleep."

"Okay. Then will you talk to me? So I don't."