The Unnamed Series: Assimilate

Left and Right

Shallow gasps flowed with the crunching of leaves. Stumbling footsteps pushing forward. Further, with no destination, he moved. The algid air bit into the child as he moved, each breath stinging his numbed lungs.

His muscles writhed, his starved body beginning to give up on him.

"Don't stop."

He moved, his feet dragging as he did. The forest jeered at him, gusts of wind sweeping through. That was all his body could take. His stomach forced him to the ground, fragile fingers digging into his own flesh. Shallow breathes turned into dry coughs.

"Don't stop."

A murmur, that was all it was. A pale palm moved to the dry dirt, pushing with every part of his pale body. The boy rose, his glassy blue eyes moving upward. The pale covered him like a blanket, a rare feeling filling his bones. Mouth wide, he stepped; he fell.

Down, uncontrolled, he tumbled. That pale light so quickly turned to darkness.

The young boy laid in the darkness, his scrawny hands tightly gripping onto the loose dirt below him, his mind gripping onto a sensation bubbling in his chest: The feeling of being alive. So long as he was breathing, he would move; even if he had to go left and right at the same time, he would move.

He clawed forward, white knuckles pulling forward with all of the boy's strength. However determined, he could only last for so long. His arms trembled, and the most he could muster was shallow breathes. 

His eyes shut.

He laid in the grass, face in the dirt. His dirt-covered body had no energy left in it, and all he could do now was hope. Death was closing in; he felt it. That feeling before, the feeling of being alive, was fading. 

There were voices, quiet but clear. Humans. The boy's eyes opened ever so slightly, and in the darkness, he saw an orange glow, a faint glow of hope.