Eli

Chapter 5

Eli

She had a fever.

It was no wonder...She was lying on the frosty ground in a cave without any sign of sunlight, in wet cold clothes sticking to her body with no chance to dry up.

Eli's head was spinning, she was shuddering with cold, covered in mud, while coughing hard into her frozen fingertips in which she was slowly losing a sense. The landscape was obscured by a heavy mist, cloud; near, a scene of storm-beat shrub and little trees... She was squeezing her knees to her chest firmly in order not to let the last remainder of warmth out of her body. She watched through her ebon-black eyelashes clouds of moisture, warm air, slowly leaving her lips and nostrils at exhale as if another amount of her diminishing warmth were evaporating into the lethal embrace of freezing air... Her cheeks were sticky from times when her tears were streaming down her face...Eli closed her eyes of exhaustion and fell asleep.

She was sitting on the (carriage's) driver seat of a carriage wearing a beautiful light-blue dress with puff sleeves, observing two harnessed horses, which were setting the carriage in motion. They had beautiful ginger manes and copper-red coats. She wondered if she could strike them when they stop... Then she realized she wasn't sitting alone on the seat. There were two other people, each one sitting on one of her side. A man and a woman. She looked up to see their faces – she had to tilt her head back to see them. She realized she was in body of a little girl...

The woman was beautiful, her long dark hair was coiffed into a bun and few of lively strands were loosen, falling freely into her warm pale face; her eyes were green-brown where green colour was mostly predominating; her dense eyebrows and long eyelashes were dark like a night at waning moon, darker than a shade of her ebon hair. She had a tiny little nose with full captivating lips under, and high cheeks that were delicately blushing from a cold evening air. Her beauty was unearthly...She looked like a fairy queen, Eli thought... Then she notified she was holding her breath all this time, so she gasped for air. She looked at the man sitting on her left, wearing a suit with a tie around his neck, having sharp lines and bigger nose than the woman, the same shape as Eli's, she thought, with curly copper brown hair and clear sky-blue eyes. The man was holding reins in his left hand, and his right hand was put around her shoulders.

There was something weirdly familiar about this couple...The eyes...the hair...the face...the smell...Then her heartbeat fastened, and she felt her old wounds reopened. She began to recognise the lines of her own in the woman – her mother – the hair, eyes and sharp lines and nose of her father...

She looked at them breathlessly, happily but they didn't look at her. Now, she noticed her father's tensed jaw and mother's uneased eyes and clenched fists in her lap. She didn't understand...They were finally together, why were they so cold and stressed when they ought to celebrate? She looked around her to find answers for her parents' cold behaviour. They were passing buildings – shops, houses, beautiful gardens, statues, but then she felt it – a smoke. She turned backwards and saw people franticly running from homes, which were set on fire, with a dread and fear in their dilated pupils. The scene showed a chaos, an anarchy. She couldn't hear people's yelling but she saw their open mouths in cry for help, for salvation. She looked back at her parents for the carriage had suddenly stopped. Both were looking blankly in front of them. Her father was saying something. Eli concentrated on his lips.

"...house in flames...innocent...just a child...Let her and mother go..." Her mother looked frightened at her father. "Andy no..." she mimicked and squeezed Eli closer to her. Eli didn't understand...What was happening?

Her eyes widened in horror when she followed a direction of her parents' stare. She felt tears in her eyes. The two horses with ginger manes, which she had been admiring just a moment ago, were now lying and writhing in agony on the ground, covered in blood. She looked vacantly at the slaughter in front of her and her breath sharpened. She wanted to jump off the carriage and run to the dead animals, to be there for them, but her mother held her firmly despite her deep compassion and a reflection of horror and terror in her own eyes. She should cry, yell or show a sign of emotion, which a child of her age would certainly do, but she was just sitting there on the seat, feeling exhausted, numb, as if someone blew out candle that was embodying her senses...