The TwiceBorn

Irritation Is Another Way To Express Love

" No normal man can very long endure another's tragedy, and that friendly weeping will some day turn to irritated kicking."---Sinclair Lewis

She hadn't ridden as far as she'd planned. Alora lay down on the soft Juxun grass, taking in air with light,shallow breaths. She felt as though someone had poured hot pitch on her side then set it ablaze, the pain from her injury so great her entire body throbbed in unison.

Being scraped off of Alderon's back by a tree hadn't helped

She turned her head and studied the horse. He was grazing, nonchalantly snatching up hanks of Juxun but immediately stopped and fixed her with his straight-on peculiar stare. Alora had ridden all her life, stayed mounted during battle, had ridden so much that there were times she felt odd when afoot but this...this was different.

It's like trying to stay mounted on an angry tom cat.

"Alora?"

Another mistake

Alora closed her eyes at the sound of Blixen's snotty little voice. Yzebel had probably danced a jig when she'd left, finally rid of the little pest.

"What?"

Even speaking caused her pain to crank up another notch.

"We didn't get very far. Felt like it. But didn't." Indignation wound its way through his words and Alora suddenly understood the torture of the UnderRealms and why so many feared it. To her, it had always felt like home but now she could see why people went to the lengths they did to try and avoid it. The ghastly, terrible, whining, screeching voice of the UnderRealms.

"Shut. Up." Alora said through clenched teeth. "I'm having a religious moment."

Blixen's greasy eyebrows shot up and he quickly stepped away.

"You're having...what??" Fear added an extra level of shrillness. Alora lay still and closed her eyes, her scabbard digging a hole into her back.

"A religious moment," She wearily repeated. "Good is too powerful. I realized this when Alderon shoved me against that tree. And you. I feel like a Sentinel and you, you're the whip."

Blixen sat on his haunches, puzzled. He suddenly sneezed, blowing a long, ropy strand of snot then wiped his arm across his face.

"Alora?"

She clamped her teeth tight, refusing to answer, as she struggled to sit up. Her stomach was on the edge of revolt and the only thing that kept her from vomiting was the realization of how much it would hurt to do so.

I can't do this

That was something the voice inside her head had never said and that awareness, along with the words themselves, caused pure terror to race through her heart. Like some kind of horrified spectator, Alora suddenly saw herself, laying in the grass, pale, almost unable to draw a breath and surrounded by everything that needed her...to be completely different. To be The Twiceborn. Her knee-jerk response was to burst into tears and this was enough to drive the terror even deeper into her bones and she began to pant, feeling like she couldn't breathe. Dimly,she saw Blixen looking at her with some kind of alarm on his smeary little face.