Broken Glass - Taekook

66

When I come back to, Taehyung's face is the first thing I see. His forehead is furrowed in concern and concentration, his eyes bright blue, and the warmth of his hand is resting on my forehead. As our eyes meet, the corner of his mouth lifts in a relieved smile, and he leans back a little. 

Now that he's further back, I can see the rest of our surroundings. We're still in the forest, and I can see the reflective gleam of the Pauzu Lake in the corner of my vision. The faint scents of damp earth and wood smoke mingle together in my nose, and I can feel the grass below me, soft and unexpectedly comfortable. Somewhere, a blackbird is singing, but I can't see it, and the wind is gentle, not even strong enough to make the leaves on the trees move. 

"How long have we lost?" I murmur, half to myself, and he shrugs, looking up at the sky. It's still dark, and the stars haven't moved far from the position they held just before I passed out. There are a few clouds on the very edge of the horizon, but other than that, everything feels just as it did when I lost track of the outside world.

The fire is still burning, somehow, still flickering in the corner of my vision. As I slowly look around, check on everything, I notice that our friends are mainly gathered around it for warmth, still glancing in my direction every few seconds. There's a small glint of relief in their eyes, when they peek over and sees me functioning again.

"Not that long. Maybe half an hour, at most?" he muses. "To be honest, it's a little hard to tell at this point. You stated your weird prophecy thing, blacked out, and Hoseok caught you. Namjoon noted down the words you said, from memory, and has been analysing them ever since. I've been boiling teas and checking your vitals, Seokjin stoked the fire, someone's sorting out some food. Yoongi's patching up some of the damaged clothes and making them padding for winter."

I nod, and then wince as a brief wave of pain crosses over me. Taehyung frowns, leans forward again, placing his hand against my forehead again. "That's odd. You aren't showing any other signs of a concussion, but it's possible. I think you need rest, more than anything else, but I'm scared of letting you sleep if you really do have a concussion. It wouldn't be safe." 

"We could talk about what I said, see if that gives us ideas?" I offer, a little awkwardly. "I can just sit and contribute from here, if need be. I don't want to be difficult, after all, but I do want to be useful if I can.  We can't really afford to lose much time here."
"We've still got the cart," Namjoon calls out. "Once we get out of the forest, we can take turns on the cart if we need to. Yeah, we have stuff in there, but we can carry some of it." 

I glance around, looking for the horse, and see her grazing a few metres away from our camp, a blanket thrown over her flank to keep the worst of the cold out. "We'll need to make her something a little more waterproof soon," I murmur, worried. "If the snow gets to her, she'll struggle a lot more." 

"I've been making leather for that," Yoongi pipes up. "And once we get to the caves, it'll be easier to control our temperature. We may have to spend the winter there, to be honest. It's the best place to be, if the legends are true." 
"Will we have enough food, though?" Hoseok questions. "Including the stuff that Jimin needs?" 

"We'll have to, by then," I return. "Maybe there's something you guys can do, some sort of ability that helps with that?"
"Just creating food out of thin air? That feels too easy," Jimin murmurs, uneasily. "We'll think of something. In the meantime, we just have to stock up. Hunt when we can, preserve on the road. Get as much as we can. Maybe we'll find mushrooms in the caverns, and we could plant some of the roots and see if that grants more options to us."

I take a deep breath, scooting closer to my friends slowly, as carefully as I can. Taehyung helps me there, placing one hand on my shoulder to support the movement when I get a little dizzy. I mumble a thanks to him under my breath, leaning my head on his shoulder when we finally get there.