When Worlds Collide

It's All in the Ears

The last of the originally written chapters.

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Waking up was tedious. A chore, if you will.

The young woman became aware that she was no longer asleep, but still hesitated to open her eyes or make any other movement that would indicate to the world of her status of being newly awake.
She was deep in denial, you see.

Memories of the day prior were bright and irrefutably there. She knew that none if it was simply a part of her dream. She did dream of a silver doe. But she only dreamed of one due to chasing it through the forest. At least, that much she remembered. Unfortunately.

There was no way to deny it. Her body still ached from hours of running around the woods and there was still a light, but no less annoying, sensation of discomfort in her left ear.

Still, she hesitated, in the same variety of hesitation which prevented you from opening that rejection letter from your university of choice or a dream job, be it online or on paper. You know immediately what the letter contains, as the headline wastes no time in informing you, yet somehow, somehow, there is still a part of you which against all odds hopes that not opening the letter immediately would, perhaps, change the contents of it. It never did, but people still got lulled by the sweet delusion. Its the dreaded notion of finality, that they avoid. The second that the dreaded hammer of reality hits them right in the face, denying any possible maybe, what if, and it still could be.

That's why she stayed still and didn't open her eyes. She didn't want to find herself anywhere but her own room and her own bed. She didn't want to evaluate her surroundings, to try and figure out where she was and how on earth she managed to get there. After all, she could remember losing her consciousness but couldn't recall anything that would happen after that.

There was still some information that she could gain employing senses other than sight.

For example, she was fairly certain she was in a bed. In a nice and comfortable bed, with her head resting on a soft pillow and the rest of her body covered with light, yet warm, blanket. Therefore, she was most likely to be inside of some building, at least. She could also hear some very distant, but regular, footsteps. The sound was muffled, as if there was some barrier preventing her from fully hearing anything. So the second conclusion would be that she was located in a closed room and in a public institution of some sorts. Third, there was the smell. The smell was vaguely familiar. The young woman couldn't say if she ever had a chance to experience this exact smell in particular, but she could recall a situation when she was acquainted with a scent of similar nature. It was when she was still a child and scraped her knee while trying to climb a garage with a group of local kids. The knee was bleeding and her worried mother applied some herbal smelling stuff to the aggravated skin while scolding her for the lack of foresight, and her father stood to the side, laughing about how he had managed to actually brake his leg climbing that exact garage as well.

The blonde smiled to the memory, while arriving to a conclusion on her whereabouts.

Public institution, small room, the smell of medicine. She must be in a hospital, after all, what other place would fit into that criteria.

Feeling content, she opened her eye and regretted it immediately.

If it was a hospital, then it was a strange one indeed.

Everything around here looked wrong.

She was in a bed, that much she wasn't mistaken about, a fairly regular looking bed, save for the ornamental metal headboard and a silky looking blanket. The walls were made of tree. No, not wooden planks, as one might have guessed, but a tree. A single one. As if the room was carved into one. Or was it a trick of light? The dim light coming from what looked like an elaborate oil lamp, which served as a single source of any lighting, for there were no windows. There was also a small bedside table, with a carafe full of clean water, an empty glass and some herbs.