Pocketville Lost Diamonds: VOLUME 2

Chapter 18: waking up

Ava was surrounded by darkness. 

She was landing on a soft invisible cloud, despite she couldn’t feel her body at all.
She was warm, relaxed, and safe.
There was only her, nothing else. She couldn’t even say there was a place, because all she could feel was herself.

Ah, what a beautiful feeling.
Her mind was so free…
Heart was less heavy now, it could just exist together with her soul.
Nothing mattered, nothing was going to matter now.

-… n...ces...s…

A weird sound reached her mind.
She wasn’t sure she heard it, because she couldn’t hear anything. What was it? It felt far-away, across a whole ocean…

- … ss..ge…
n..t…. ox...gen… 

What was happening?

The cloud felt more, and more, and more hard and uncomfortable. Something was pushing her above through an invisible ocean, from the depth to the surface of water.

She opposed.
It was scary and unsettling, she couldn’t really understand what was going on.

She tried to move, going back to her safe lying in the void, but it was stronger, stronger than her....

Ava woke up.

She opened her eyes using all her strength, believing for a moment they got heavier than rocks. She couldn’t see well, her sight was obfuscated in no-sense colors.

Slowly, her ears located the sounds she was hearing: voices, undecipherable words. They were toward her, but she couldn’t understand their meaning.

An unpleasant scent of disinfectant grasses, dusty wood furniture and old blankets hit her nose like maces.

She blinked and tried to raise her head, but then found out how hard it was.
Breathing was hard too, but the worst thing was the terrible pain on the ribs she felt immediately later. It hit her like a rock throw down from a tower.

- She’s awake!
- Princess Ava!

Colors moved toward, surrounding her and closing her field of view.

The princess blinked and instinctively retreated, but pain immobilized her.

Slowly, everything seemed to be less clouded and she could recognize all those weird scents, which felt immediately more familiar.
William, Balloon, Mela and Danny were standing next to her, each of them with an anxious expression on the face.

She was...lying in a bed that wasn’t hers, but she was sure to be in the castle.

Something was terribly wrong with her body, because she could feel only pain.

- What… what happened…? - mumbled, confused.

She looked up and found William’s blue eyes, distressed but filled with the reassuring promise to be there.
- Ho-how do you feel? Are you okay? - asked him, overlapping the other voices she still couldn’t exactly recognize.

- I…

Another voice, much higher, interrupted him:
- Your Majesty, how do you feel? Do you feel pain? Can you say what day is today?

Someone flashed a torch in her eyes and Ava meowed upset, hiding her snout into paws.
This action gave her a sharp pain, both on her side and on a paw. She noticed that she had a drip stuck deep into a vein, right where the brown fur mixed with the white one. A long and thin tube was connected to an infusion bag, hung on the bed head.

The feeling of sickness and vulnerability choked her, blocking the blood inside her broken body.
She felt like a small kitty, alone without her mum and totally terrified of what happened and what was going to happen.

- It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re safe now, okay? You’re in the Castle Infirmary. You fainted and had been unconscious for hours. Do you remember something?

Ava took a long moment to assimilate all those informations, just like her mind could work only slowed down.

- It was close, Your Majesty. If your Guards weren’t ready to give you a perfect heart massage, you wouldn’t have made it. - said again the voice.

This time Ava recognized the gray hare dressed with a white coat; Doctor Pepita was trying to test her pupils' reaction to light by a small torch, but the princess was curled up like a scared whelp.

- Heart...massage?
- Yes, you had a heart attack.
- A... heart...?
- Exactly. You lost consciousness due to this, don’t you remember? We still don’t know why it happened, since analysis didn’t relate any cardiac defect or related sickness, but we still can't exclude…

All the pictures of her last memories filled Ava’s mind, excluding the meaningless words of the doctor.
The Fountain, the Shell, Kate’s voice, Ambra, the jewel and...

- Eva! - the princess almost jumped on paws, despite the pain. William reacted holding her down, worried she could hurt herself falling.

- You have just risked to die and you think about her? - Danny tilted her head, surprised. Balloon hit him with a paw.

- Say calm, princess! She’s safe, don’t worry!
- I need… to see her!
- She’s right behind you, but please don’t panic like this.

Ava lied on her chest and turned her head on the bed next to hers.

Alone in a sea of white old blankets like her, here was a scrawny cat with white dirty fur and silver snout.
She was immoble, lied on one side and chained with lots of intravenous to the cold bed.
She wasn’t how her sister remembered her: she was so, so thin and sick… she seemed to be almost alive.
She couldn’t be the same cat she could remember, strong and lively, the sister she grew up with and built their lives with. She was… so… broken…

But it was Eva.

It was her sister, and she was there.
Her face, the one that always filled Ava’s mind for months and months, the one she built her dreams and nightmares on and the same who blew card castles away from her heart, now was there.
She seemed more dead than alive, but her ribs slowly moved up and down.

It was enough to see: the weight of the whole galaxy, that the princes carried on her back so far, now fell down and let her breath again.

- Is she… okay?
- Yes. She’s still asleep, but she’s fine. We saved her, princess.

Ava closed her eyes and tasted the taste of relief.
After a few seconds she bursted into tears, despite how painful it was for her limbs.

- I-i-i i’m SORRY! - cried - I’M S-SO S-SORRY!
- Princess, please don’t fret, you…
- I s-said… t-t-terrible things… I didn’t think them… I d-d-didn’t w-want t-to! Y-you.. I sen-t y-you away… but you… I… I’m so sorry!

Ava hid her face into the pillow. 

Princesses don’t cry, it was her grandmother Jocelyne told her time ago.
Princesses don’t cry.
Princesses are always strong.
Princesses don’t show their weakness, because Pocketville doesn't want to see a weak monarch.
Princesses can only cry alone.
Princesses can’t cry wearing their crown.
Princesses aren’t affectionate to their subjects, they don’t ask to apologize for being rude.

But now she was.

Ava was crying.
Ava wasn’t alone and was glad to not be.
Her friends were there for her, despite how selfish she had been. Ava was saying sorry to her friends.
Her guards were her friends.
They were worried because she just risked to die.

Ava was crying in a hospital bed. Ava didn’t need to act like a princess.
But princesses break down too.

Royal Guards lightened on her, putting their heads on her and rubbing, enveloping a warm and huge hug all around her.
They were there for her.

But not all of them did.
Balloon didn’t join the hug.
She just stood up and walked out of the Infirmary, giving her back to Ava’s bed.