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girl in red... girl in white
Deeper in they crept oblivious of the bears and darker terrors or none were there. How did they dare?
only at grandmother's house can Scarlet rest her eyes a moment
Day One: The Girl in White
The girl in the woods was caught in the snare.
So she pulled herself free, and left her shadow bound.
In the forest she wandered, a splash of color between the slate gray trees. Her home was somewhere far behind her, so she made the woods her home. The forest sheltered her, offering herbs to cure her ills and fruit to fill her belly.
She saw her shadow, white dress stained red, watching her from a field of wildflowers. Petals and pollen drifted past hard black eyes. Accusatory. Fixed.
One day, wandering through brittle grasses, searching for the clues the forest had laid out for her, the road revealed itself to her.
A wide and unpretentious dirt path, lined on either side with dew-dappled wildflowers that glistened in the bright morning sun. Down one way, a small island cottage. Down the other, a city, vast and strange.
A city that had not been there when the girl first entered the woods.
How long had she been in the woods, wandering overgrown dales and fleeing her red-stained shadow? Was there anyone left, in the world beyond, who remembered her? Who would take her in their arms and kiss her hair and say I always knew I’d see you again?
Empires of steel and concrete had grown over the bones of villages, burying the memory of the cottages and farmlands of long-ago years.
She stood on the path and looked upon the unfamiliar city. She turned to look upon the cottage, the forest, the path.
Above, the sky was vast and cloudless.
Nervously, she stepped onto the path. The flowers seemed to beam at her. She stood there, picturing a crossroads. There lay the city, foreign to her. Full of fear, and possibility. There lay the cottage, charming and cozy, and yet something seemed to snarl and salivate within the white painted walls.
To her back, the forest. Beneath her feet, the path.
Her feet moved in no direction at all.
Where to wander? Where to seek? Where to run?
What did she hope to find? What did she hope to flee?
She moved, with slow and delicate steps, toward the city wondering about the people there.
But as she did, she pictured the shadow.
Hers.
Bound, and lost, and furious.
And scared.
She stopped, and turned back to the woods, where the echo of her, she knew, waited in the snare. Fashioning snares of her own, now.
She could leave the woods, flit like a firefly from place to place. But she wouldn't truly be gone from this place.
Not while her shadow remained.
She turned from the path, feeling the coolness of shadows on her back as she slipped between the trees. There was a teddy bear in the woods, two halves, each with a full, ragged head, clumsily stitched together.
She walked to the place where the snare still lay, wondering how a lost thing could be found.
Wondering how a broken thing could be made whole.
day 1: girl in white
after drawing her for a couple of times (i have drafts for this prompt) i started warming up towards her since when playing the game she'd give me constant jumpscares and i was Not happy
The Path Week 2023!
Day 1: Grandmother / Girl in White
Is this partially cheating as it's both of them? ...I'm gonna say no I'm just ambitious as hell. Doing the wallpaper absolutely killed me to the point I just made a brush to do it instead, oops!
And Happy first day of The Path Week! I hope everyone has fun and I can't wait to see peoples work!
THE PATH WEEK 2023
day one • the grandmother
The Path Week 2023 - Day 1: Grandmother or Girl In White
I decided to sketch GIW :) I will finish it as a full thing… one of these days…
Day Two: Favorite Interpretation
Death takes a while.
The body doesn't surrender easily. It labors and struggles through blood spilling from wounds in rivulets; through age and infection and mutation; through ischemic cell damage and faltering brain tissue and the insurmountable armory of death—the body endures, until it can't anymore.
The mind endures as well. Or it tries.
People are stubborn. Bullheaded. Stupidly convinced that eventually, they'll push past the wall and find themselves in some transcendent tomorrow. She's stubborn too, she supposes. Clinging to false hope of some grand, sweeping change that will give her the life she wants, some karmic reward for—what exactly? Doing what was asked of her? Not throwing her own family to the wolves? Does she really think she deserves some splendid future of music and passion for doing the bare minimum?
A stupid hope. She clings to it still.
Her dreams of ancient concert halls, reverberating with symphonic majesty, have not yet been snuffed out. Not for lack of trying. She throws herself into her work, tries to make housework her art, redirect her passions to something sensible. Nevertheless, her mind always wanders, caught up in fantasies of keys beneath her fingers, handwritten sheet music before her, and a gentle hand upon her shoulder. A voice in her ear saying “look, dear, at what we have created together”.
When she crawls into bed after a long night of hand-scraping dishes and frowning over bills, her brain betrays her, casting her in the role of a talented up-and-coming musician, respected and liked by her peers. Living in a modest but cozy apartment, composing by day and playing to hushed crowds by night. She imagines herself in a larger, nicer bed than this one, still replaying the sonata she played that night, safe in the arms of a kindred spirit.
She tries to kill these dreams, but deep down she wonders if they're not, in turn, killing her.
Death takes a while.
Morning comes. She rises. Cooks. Drives her siblings to school. Works. Picks up her siblings. Comes home. Cleans. Cooks. Helps with homework. Works through the family's finances after the others have gone to bed (they don't need to worry, they don't need to know). Sleeps.
Rises.
Cooks.
Cleans.
Sleeps.
Rises.
Cooks.
Cleans.
Sleeps.
Rises.
Cooks—
A theater hidden away from the world, decked in red and black and green. Secluded and splendid. A place no one knows. No one but you. You could stay there, for a while. For as long as you wish. Stay, and create, alone in this perfect refuge. Stay, and retreat from the endless procession of identical days. Stay. Stay. Stay.
“Scarlet?”
She pulls herself free from the fantasy. In her distraction, she’d minced the vegetables they were supposed to have for dinner into an inedible dust. The knife, clean and sharp, gleams in the flickering fluorescence of the kitchen.
She turns away from the counter and looks down at her sister. Rose’s brow is furrowed. She hugs herself and grimaces as she looks up at her de-facto (distant, foolish, absent-minded, poor-excuse-for-a) guardian.
“What’s the matter, Rose?”
“Is everything okay? You seem a little…” Rose gestures absently, fumbling for the right word. “…Troubled.”
She considers, for a single insane moment, telling her the truth.
No, Rose, everything isn’t okay. Your siblings are acting out, I'm having to choose between rent and Ruby's medicine, and your grandmother is probably dying. Everything’s falling apart and I can’t even bring myself to care because the only thing that feels real anymore is the fantasy I can’t kill.
But she stops herself, and forces her face into a convincing smile.
“Everything’s fine. I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.”
Rose looks as unconvinced as Scarlet feels.
That night, she dreams of a duet. Of a lilting dance of harmonies so perfect, so sublime, that she wakes up in tears. It’s an odd sensation. She hasn’t properly cried since she was ten. Feeling childish, she goes to the bathroom to splash some water on her face and school her expression into its usual placid mask. As she’s heading into the kitchen and start breakfast, the phone rings.
Mother.
Someone needs to bring food and wine to their grandmother. She’s not feeling well, you see, and she would just be over the moon to get a visit from one of her lovely grandchildren.
Well.
She could use the exercise.
The drive to the path is uneventful. The soft morning sun and the cries of countless birds don’t even register as she walks the familiar path without straying.
Until.
Until, a stone’s throw away from her grandmother’s house.
She hears the music.
The duet from her dream.
In the woods. Close enough to taste.
Before she knows it, her feet are off the path, and her mind is a thousand miles away, wrapped up in sonatas and symphonies that promise to silence her every agony.
Into the forest she walks.
To a theater hidden away from the world, decked in red and black and green.
I’ve been wanting to redraw the illustrations I did for my The Path playlist for ages, and this prompt felt like a perfect opportunity to do this one! Shout out to Bobby not only for organizing thepathweek but also for pulling some fab references out of their pocket when I was jokingly complaining about not being at my computer where I have screenshots 🖤
tw burning alive
day 2: favourite death
this is very self-indulgent but i thought of the car crash interpretation but with ruby dying not immediately but in a fire caused by the crash
(self-indulgent because i love drawings fires)
Scarlet fascinates me; she’s one of the ends that I can see either as a literal death or a metaphorical one. I’m convinced she’s trying to force herself to give up on her dreams to look after her siblings, but who’s Fae Wolf? A music teacher, luring her in the other direction? Her own vision of Art, irresistible, dragging her into what she sees as both heightened beauty and as unacceptable hedonism? The temptation to run away rather than resigning herself to playing mother?
"911 what is your emergency ?"
THE PATH WEEK 2023
day 2 • favourite interpretation
• ruby and her wolf get intoxicated together under his influence, and he ends up getting her almost killed after losing the control of his vehicle •
The Path Week 2023
Day 2: Favourite Interpretation or favourite death
My favourite interpretation out of the entire game is that Rose is disabled. It means a lot to me as someone who's been dealing with a hard to diagnose disability since I was 15. Her wish to escape from the body that hurts her and her knowledge of her possible oncoming non metaphorical death hits really hard.
Day Three: Favorite Headcanon
Carmen pauses in the middle of modeling a shoplifted necklace as she feels beady red eyes burning into her back. Something bestial is staring at her with alien intent.
The rabbit.
The fucking rabbit.
Ever since Rose brought that demonic little rodent back from the forest she’s felt its eyes on her. Why Scarlet didn’t throw the mangy thing out the second Rose brought it into the living room, Carmen has no idea.
Maybe Carmen really is the only sane one of the family.
It never sleeps and rarely eats. It makes no sound; not even its feet on the floor of its oversized, over-decorated cage. Sometimes, when Rose starts stroking it, it reaches up to her ear, like it's whispering something to her.
It's the only non-bird animal any of them have ever seen in the forest. It acts more like a phantom than a pet. And yet they always take it to a vet, and not an exorcist.
Lately, there’s been little changes in the apartment. Accidents. Disappearances. Sabotage. Some of her lipstick tubes will vanish, only to turn up days later with little tooth marks in the casing. Her homework will be partially chewed or trampled. The charging cord for her phone will be gnawed clean through.
Granted, both Robin and Ginger enjoy biting and trampling. And Ginger especially enjoys messing up Carmen’s entire life for a laugh. But Carmen’s no fool: the bite marks are too small, the footprints decidedly leporine.
Leporine. What a word. Sleek and menacing. Utterly unfitting for a rabbit. Carmen picks up the strangest little details in the rare moments she pays attention in biology.
And yet, leporine, that strange and dark sounding word, fits this calculating little monster far more than any cute or harmless word.
Carmen turns away from her position at the window and turns. The rabbit is on the table, staring. Its nose twitches.
“I’m onto you,” Carmen hisses.
The rabbit scratches its ear with its hind leg.
Carmen flips it the bird and leaves the room.
Beady red eyes follow her.
The Path Week 2023
Day 3: Favourite Headcanon
This wasn't my original art for today as I literally scrapped it last night but oh well. GINGER AND THE GIRL IN RED ARE MALL GOTHS!! Come on look at Ginger's belts they're a mall goth. All she/theys are baby mall goths in spirit