Afraid of the Dark

Chapter 5: Let Go

(She was breathing heavily. She could hardly hear with the sound of her heart drumming in her ears. She barely knew what was going on. All she knew was in front of her were the bad guys. The soldiers that wanted to hurt her for something she didn't do.

Or she didn't mean to do, anyway.

And behind her was a cliff.

But standing between her and the bad guys was Cree.

And holding her tightly in his arms was Regan.

She clung to him with every ounce of fear, trust and love she had within her. More fear, trust and love she could ever have imagined feeling for her own father.

What did he look like? What did he sound like?

All she can remember are Regan and Cree.

She watched Cree almost surrender to the mean lady who was trying to take her. It was all a blur. One moment she wanted to scream and cry and beg that they didn't hurt Cree.

And the next, she was falling.

Regan clung to her for as long as he could. He held on so tightly that she swore she couldn't breathe. All while she felt paralyzing fear. She closed her eyes and waited for the nightmare to end. To reach the end of the fall.

But then Regan let her go.

She hit the water, and he was gone.

She thought she lost him, but he came back. He always comes back.

She watched Cree pull Regan onto the shore. She watched Cree make Regan breathe again.

All so she could hear Regan's promise to her.

"You won't let the bad guys take me... Right?" she had asked him.

She remembers his smile. "I won't let them hurt you so long as I live."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

But as she tries remembering closer, only one question rises to her mind.

After falling, did Regan let go of her?

Or did she let go of him?)

Reela's head pounds with her swiveling state of consciousness and her drumming heart. Her entire body aches, her hands and shoulder throb with her burning pulse.

But the rest of her trembles. She shivers against the biting cold that surrounds her.

She groans as she forces herself to squint her eyes open, and through her blurred vision, she sees his face. She sees his dark red hair. His green eyes.

His smile.

"Dad?" she gasps and snaps her eyes open as she pushes herself to sit up.

But when she looks around, she's alone.

It's just her, sitting in a bed of powder snow, surrounded by a seemingly endless mountain range. Looking up, she can see the towering walls of the Nerithal Keep, but it must be miles overhead. She can't see where the prison cell was that she fell from, or if Avinalyn is still up there, but it doesn't matter now.

She can't tell how long it's been since she fell. If this were a fairytale like she always read about as a kid, she would have woken up in a handsome and/or beautiful stranger's house beside a fire, bundled up in blankets and possibly naked because her clothes were 'too cold.' The handsome and/or beautiful stranger would enter the room with a bowl of soup that happened to magically be her favorite flavor and they would share an awkward but endearing moment of almost seeing her naked to build sexual tension to be addressed in a later chapter.