Hunt

Chapter 80: Following the Current

I find myself opening my eyes in a darkened room, the feeling of soft pillows under my pounding head. The familiar sight of the cabin's ceiling greets me as I slowly begin open my eyes, staring upward. The familiar ache in my bones prevents me from turning my head and looking around, every movement I try to make sending dull pain rocketing through me like small bolts of lightning. Each breath I take is forced, my mouth unbearably dry. It felt like I had been chewing on sand.

As I slowly begin to sit up a heavy weight collides with me out of nowhere, the direct impact forcing the air from my lungs as I find myself enveloped in a tight and smothering hug. Reyna comes into view through blurry vision. Her head buried in my chest as she lays on top of me. The sudden jolt of her embrace brings tears of pain to my eyes, the ache in my body multiplying under her touch.

"You're awake. Oh god your awake..." I can hear her mutter into my chest. Her grip on me growing tighter.

Straining to roll her off of me I gasp for air, unable to catch my breath. "R-Reyna..! Can't breathe..." I gasp out, getting an immediate response as she quickly untangles herself from me.

"S-sorry!" She quickly apologizes. "I was just so worried..."

I strain to sit up, leaning back against the headboard of the bed as I speak through parched lips. "Worried? What happened to me? It's all a blur."

She wipes a tear from her eye, sitting up across from me on the bed. "The ritual didn't work. You've been unconscious for a week..."

"A... a week..?" I stammer. Repeating her words didn't help me process what I had I couldn't have heard right. It really couldn't have been a week could it? The ache in my body was still going strong, surely I couldn't have been asleep that long. "W-what happened?"

Reyna scoots closer to me. Her green eyes reflecting the small light trickling in through the window. "Everything was going good. Or so I had thought. I stepped out for a moment to get some fresh air and when I had come back you were gone..."

I try to rack my mind for any memory of what Reyna is describing. I could only remember bits and pieces of the dreamscape I was in during the ritual. A warm breeze cutting through the grass. A wolf encircling a blur of shadow. The blinding flash from the gun in my hand..? Then I was suddenly awake out in the forest, looking for a way home. Why couldn't I remember it? The ritual feels like a distant memory, long since beginning to fade from my mind. "I... I can remember being out in the woods, before transforming again. Bits and pieces..."

The ache in my body had slowly begun to recede. Moving becoming easier the longer I keep myself awake. But as I recall the memory of the pain I felt when I transformed it creeps back up on me again. The dull ache filling my body once more, seemingly focused around my shoulder where I had gotten bitten. Reyna pulls me into a hug again, not as tight as last time. It was a comforting feeling to be held. It helped slow my racing heart.

"You were already back on all fours when we finally found you. We thought the ritual had worked, but it clearly hadn't. You seemed to be in a trance of some kind. It seemed like you were frantically searching for something when we cornered you." She gives me a worried look, "What happened in there? "

I try my best to explain what I could remember, as little as that may be. Bits and pieces of memories and flashes of emotion. But as I'm telling Reyna about what I remember I'm struck with a familiar feeling. One I quickly recognize from my time in the dreamscape of the ritual. Homesickness. A tugging in my chest that's seemingly pulling at my soul. I try and fail to shrug it off, finding it latched on tightly to my heart. "It... it felt like the ritual was pulling me apart. Disrupting the natural order of things. It still feels like I'm standing in a river, fighting the raging current..."