Spectator

Chapter Seven: Now

Kali hoped she wasn't expected to survive any more explosions today, because she was just about at her limit. There was a throbbing in her head this time, a stickiness at the crown of her hair, and her limbs barely responded to her desire to get up. She'd been thrown back, fortunate to land in a fairly soft pile of lichen, though her shoulder blade had been knocked against something solid and heavy. Most of her screamed in pain. The tree was in splinters, the top half nearly obliterated, and fires now littered the branches above her, encouraged by the endless foliage, dampened only by the moisture in the air. There was a battle here, and fire would get the upper hand eventually. The engine was still there, although little more than a skeleton now, its entrails strewn across other trees and the forest floor; she hoped there wasn't anything left to explode again.

She wheezed for breath, realising then that her would-be captors were gone. Dead? Yes, their meeting had been a short and threatening one, but they were still people. They hadn't asked for this. Then she saw the two maybe siblings, running back with a carved wooden bucket between their hands, the edges overspilling with water. Sh'an was there too, twenty meters away, on his back in the grass. His nearly bare chest was still rising and falling; he was breathing, but there were fresh burn marks on his skin, his shoulder wrap nearly scorched away. His eyes were closed, mouth tight with pain. She wondered if the siblings had even seen him. They seemed more focused in trying to stop the fire from spreading.

Kali knew without a doubt that this was the perfect distraction she had been waiting for. And, yet, she hesitated. She'd helped bring the fire here, hadn't she? Shouldn't she at least try to help put it out? She knew it wasn't all altruism - inexplicably, she didn't want to just abandon Sh'an without getting a closer look to see if he was really alright. The blistered skin looked painful, but also what was she supposed to do without any medical equipment? Her survival instinct told her to leave him, but the inherent leadership qualities they'd tried to hammer into her for the last two years said she should stay.

Kali had never been the best learner. She turned on her heel and abandoned him to the flames.

Smoke had permeated even the ground floor, and there were no longer the same amount of critters inhabiting this section of the jungle, and everything seemed almost eerily quiet. Too quiet - there was nothing to distract her from her growing guilt. What should she care for a man she'd met for five minutes? Just because he'd run his hand over her face and touched her lips? Ridiculous.

She caught her breath at the base of a smaller tree, the wallow it provided with its roots enough for her to sit virtually unnoticeable between them. Sh'an wasn't the only one who had been burned, she saw; now that she could properly take stock of the equal parts numbness and pain in her body, one of her sleeves had been set on fire, though her skin was only tender. Come to think of it, she had been wet when she'd come to. They'd doused her first, and then started on the forest. Well - now she felt even worse. Her thigh was probably the worst of it, an angry red and bloodied gash that was nearly the size of her palm. As if waiting for her awareness, there was a pain so sharp that she felt she couldn't breathe, wheezing for a few moments before her lungs decided to work again. Her head was throbbing too, but at least she didn't have to try to run on it.

Kali had nearly worked up the courage to try to move again, because dying at the base of the tree wasn't a fun option, when she saw figures through the trees. Her stomach twisted. Great. They'd found her again after all, except now they'd know she had tried to run away.

Except, it wasn't tribals. Silver hair, same paler skin as his companion, shorter but slim. Jae and Nari. They looked worse for wear, but they were moving, even if it was in the wrong direction.

"Nari! Jae!"Kali called out, aware it was probably a bad idea, but she couldn't bear losing them now. They froze for a second, like the blue coloured, six legged fawns Kali knew from Mars, but when they sighted her, they ran towards her.