Remember How I Love You (Sequel to 'Through Fire and Water')

Waking Up and Falling Asleep

Ana’s P.O.V.

The moonlight presses in on my closed eyelids as I slowly come around. When I open my eyes, still half-asleep, I find it hard to remember where I am but as I look around everything comes back to me slowly, in flashes. I’m in a ravine, it’s rocky and dry and the sides are steep, there’s no way I could climb up them. I can see the forest on both sides of the ravine, but down here there is hardly any vegetation. As my mind slowly wakes up the entirety of my situation becomes visible to me, and it isn’t pretty.

I’m sat in a hideous tangle of branches but the majority of my body is resting on the ground. There’s a hard lump of something against my back which may be earth or may be rock, but whatever it is landing on it has given me an almighty bruise, but at least I have something to lean on. My ankle is still jammed in between the those two infuriating branches only now one of them is half broken, sticking out away from my ankle and digging some splinters into my already mangled appendage, which is much less than pleasant.

A little to my left is the contorted, lifeless body of the warg who caused all this trouble. Its eyes, perfectly reflecting the moon, are empty now but they stare at me sadly. “Nice little mess you’ve gotten us both into, isn’t it” I say to him “It’s not quite so bad for you, you’re not trapped. And at least you’re not hungry anymore, I’m starving. But then, you are dead, that’s got to be a downer”

The warg doesn’t reply, rather unsurprisingly.

I’m not quite thinking straight. I know that I’m trapped in this ravine and I know my chances of escape are probably slim. But no one told my brain that. I can get out of here. I know I can. It’s probably not as bad as I think it is.

The foremost problem I face is my trapped ankle and so that’s the one I set to dealing with first, I can address the fact my bone is probably smashed once I’ve freed my limb, and after that I can address the fact that the sides are too steep for me to climb out of here injured, and after that I can – no, I have to stop planning ahead. One step at a time, Ana, one step at a time. Ankle first, everything else later.

My first attempt to free myself is a simple one, pull my leg out. That may have been the worst idea of my life. As soon as I start pulling everything from my knee down explodes in pain and I scream, immediately stopping and trying to slot my leg back where it was before. Tears spring to my eyes and I slump back, trembling from the shock.

“That was such a dumb thing to do” I whisper into the darkness. The wind whispers back at me, incomprehensible murmuring as a breeze cools my face, chilling me. “The wind is not talking to you” I berate myself “Goodness Ana, been stuck a few hours and you’ve already lost your mind. This does not bode well”

‘Stop talking to yourself!’ My mind screeches at me. ‘What good will talking do? Step one, remember. Free your ankle’

So I sit back up and stare at my trapped limb and its captors. Maybe if I take out the captors I can free the prisoner.

I lean forward, taking a firm grip on the 2 bothersome branches. Then I try to pull them a part, using all of my upper body strength to try and prize the 2 pieces of tree apart, and I have quite a lot of upper body strength. Nothing happens, maybe they creak a little but nothing more. I look around for something to use to lever the 2 branches open, snapping of a substantial part of tree from near my right side. The branch, although quiet substantial, just shatters when I try to use it to liberate my leg and the sudden snap sends me falling forwards, jarring my leg and causing me to cry out again. I can feel my bone moving under my skin, hopelessly out of place and broken. Beyond staring at the branches and hoping for the spontaneous development of telekinesis, I am now out of options when it comes to step one. Maybe I can skip step one for now. What was step two? Oh, deal with my injuries. As I imagine the horrible and painful things I will have to do to my body to try and limit the damage done by a ridiculous attempt to get home, suddenly step one is looking like it might be worth another shot. Anything to put off the reality check brought by inspecting my ankle.