The White Feather

Bright light

LÉON'S POV:

Year 1893
"Wake up...wake up... Léonardo...wake up...my dear son."
I hear her calling me. The soft voice around my numb ears, sounding like a pleasant melody and causing a slight shiver running down my spine. And again there it was that voice of hers echoing through my ears. From where? From fucking where was I perceiving it? Why was she calling for me? "It's time for you...wake up."

The full moon is lighting the whole area with its white bright light, replacing nearby the power of the sun. And the cold wind, which is also a guest for tonight, blows gently against my messed-up hair and cooling me leisurely down.
It is cold. I could feel it...
Silence wraps my surrounding. Not even the chirping of a nightingale is hearable. Only the killing silence, her voice from far away, which I gracefully want to reach out and me,
Léonardo Álvarez.

A reinforced pain starts to discern out of nowhere on my whole torso, commencing from a small point and moving from there like a giant wave in direction to every inch of my veins and vascular. I faintly knit my eyebrows and scrunch my nose to the icy cold feeling on one of my cheeks, my full body dazed and the ache slowly enhancing. Keeping my eyes closed, I try to move my half frozen fingertips, without any success. Abruptly I gasp short and at the same time I open my eyes widely cause of the frustration not being able to move. I needed a few seconds to finally come back to myself. I narrow my eyes back and preserve my calmness. "Where am I?" I confusedly thought, looking around. The cold snow under me is like a soft bed which is donating me a bitter feeling all over my body as I realise that I am laying on the ground on my aggrieved stomach.

My mind was empty. I couldn't remember anything before I passed out neither why I was here. How I came here and how I end up like this. An enduring mystery " Hs-sss...a-agh-h fuck" Groaning with pain, I endeavour carefully to twist myself around on my back which is easier to say than done. The deep cut wound on the side of my stomach hurt from second to second more and the pain is getting insufferable. My warm red blood starts to mix with the white snow under me, looking like a contrast of good and evil, hate and love, light and dark and peace and war.

Symbolic for the existence of the white feather...

A beginning which will never have an end...

After a few efforts and struggles, I am finally able to push my body from the soft ground up, supporting myself with my hands from both sides and turn with one swing around, landing on my back. It was as the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs and I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything. This is the situation I am in right now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak and totally stunned from the few movements.
My hand is set on my stomach where the painful injury is sensing. I slowly sit up with my last brawn and keep panting hardly while looking at my trembling hand. "Blood. Blood?" I mumble terrified to myself. My own warm liquid covered in my own hand. My glance got immediately back to my surrounding, to investigate any possible danger. What is happening? Why is my mind so black? Why am I injured? Who did this? A part of memory is missing. I need to fill the puzzle but neither a hint nor an idea I have.

I wipe it off on my thigh and clench my jaw together, biting on my teeth to suppress the soreness. Tilting my head back on my neck to the left side, I exhale with satisfaction and close my eyes a bit more. I couldn't take the pain anymore.
It is like a virus which is wrapping and devouring me. I lightly shake my head and am finally capable of to make a 180° rotation with my head to the right side. Nothing. It is only me in the middle of the forest. In the middle of nowhere. No one. Not even the nocturnal animals are scarcely audible. It is like the silence before the death. The last meeting before the abandonment and the last feeling before the extinction.