Unfading Joy and Sorrow Pt 1 (Volturi Kings)

Dazed and Confused

Her bare feet sliced across the sharp rocky ground through scrub brush and occasion oak tree. Heart in her throat she could barely keep her child sized legs from stumbling. The snorting and grunting of her pursuers not far behind her. She did not know how she got here, but what she did know was that she was in deep trouble.

Terrified eyes jutted around the barely lit countryside, hoping to spot anything she could easily climb. The noises of the angry beasts grew louder in her search. In a last stitch effort the small human chose a tree that she threw herself on. Her tiny hands held dearly on to the branches desperate to pull herself up before the wild creatures descend on her. As she was pulling up she felt the searing pain of a tusk meeting her lower inner thigh on one leg and the upper calf on the other.

She screamed from the tearing of her skin almost dropping herself to the hard jagged ground. Her bleeding feet found the tree's trunk which helped her start to scale up it. She blindly grabbed onto another one of the tree's branches and cried out when a thorn pierced through her palm. A wild boar rammed into the trunk just below her feet causing her to scurry. Persevering through the pain of the slices on her feet, gash and gouge on her legs, and now thorn pricked hands, she climbed higher into the mesquite tree to get further from the swine.

Her whole body shook up in that prickly tree on a cool summer night. Heart still pounding rapidly she began to cry but not from the impending pain. Her child mind could not handle the trauma of what she had just endured. She did not understand how she went to sleep and woke up here. All she could do was whimper and call out for her mother. She felt herself begin to become lethargic. Black spots clouding her vision, the child passed out still clinging onto the only thing protecting her from death.

"Ami! Amarantha," the hoarse voice of the child's grandmother exclaimed, "Good Lord Almighty, what happened," as her eyes took in the disheveled and bloody sight. "Amarantha, wake up. Jerry? Jerry! Get in here!"

The older woman picked up the pale child from her blood covered sheets not having the patience to wait on her husband to get in there. She moved as fast as her aching bones would let her. Her old heart working overtime with the exertion and trepidation.

"Elizabeth, what is with all this yell- What's wrong," the older man's tone immediately changed as he neared his wife.

"I don't know," she tried not to sound as alarmed as she did, "We need to go to the hospital, now Jerry."

Her husband quickly led the way to the carport, holding the doors open for her while she carried her eight year old granddaughter. Jerry opened the backseat door for her after which she handed the child to him. Elizabeth quickly sat in the back and had Amarantha handed to her. "Go get Jasmine," she told her husband, calling out, "Quickly," as he left to do so.

In her arms, the child stirred, one eye barely opening, "Mama?"

"I'm here, Ami. I'm here," the elderly woman said as she grabbed a blanket they kept in the car and applied pressure to where she believed her granddaughter was bleeding. "I need you to stay awake, Doodlebug, okay?"

"Hmm," came the kid's voice, her eye shutting all the way.

"Amarantha," she heard the urgent call of her mother's voice before black overcame her once more.

March 6th, 2006 5:12 pm PST

Amara's head hung low while the hand that laid upon her thigh, clenched over the familiar deep set groove. Her friend paced before her mulling over what she had just told him. She had just laid everything out. Every dream she's had, all the details of the men she saw and even the intimate moments she shared. He stopped once or twice as if to say something, but continued to walk a hole into his carpet. 'What must he think of me now,' she hoped his opinion of her hadn't changed.