Bittersweet (Book #1 Evening Wings Trilogy)

Chapter 9

9

The cold reached me through the cloud of haze first. Like winter’s chill, with the sting of frostbite. There was also heat. Desiccate heat, right in the pit of my stomach, like a big, scorching ball of sunshine.

The coldness and the heat took my awareness away from a throbbing ache in the epicenter of my spine. I seemed to float on complete nothingness, feeling only the chills and the heat coming from so many places in my body. It was impossible to feel comfortable. It was impossible to feel like I was me.

I didn’t dare open my eyes, because then it would really occur to me that I was dead. The chills that kissed my skin got stronger; the heat in my stomach, sitting on my hands, caught in my throat began to become unbearable, as if I was stupidly singing myself with a lighter’s flame.

To top off everything else, I felt sick. Violently sick, like I wanted to throw up as every minute passed, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t submit myself to it. It would rise in my throat then sink back down, leaving me with an uncomfortable feeling down in my gut that couldn’t be helped. The sickness I felt was coming from inside. I felt weak and unable to help myself. The sickness stuck in my throat.

The tenderness in my spine got out of hand. I was aware of it as it throbbed and moved up my back. It felt like something was growing there, some sort of bizarre mutation.

I could feel things growing in my body. Things were changing.

I wasn’t dying.

The orb of sunlight in my stomach spread toward my lungs, my heart, with the sting of summer heat and cooled by the frigid winter on the thin membrane of my skin. The winter and summer fought at my toes, fought for control, but it was a losing battle on both warring sides.

Something exploded within me, it felt like the presence of sunlight, and then something warm and delicious ran through my body. The ache in my spine was treated by its touch, but not completely. I still felt the mild sting of something growing there, folding over under the skin, pounding my vertebrae with its movement.

If it wasn’t for the summer and winter battling through my body, I would’ve been sore all over. I felt my hands clench into fists as something hot passed through them, instantly suppressed by the cold. My heart beat hard in my chest as summer passed over it, and then winter. My body was stuck in two seasons right now, and a conclusion was eminent.

They warred over each other as I lay, locked in my brain unable to do anything about the feelings that were running hurriedly through my comatose body.

Then just like that, summer and winter collided inside my heart cavity and my heart almost jumped out of my chest with shock.

I felt myself arch.

My heart sped up, beating faster than it ever had in the basis of my chest, slamming against my ribcage like an insane inmate struggling to get out of an asylum’s prison.

Every slam hurt, every return hurt even more. I’d never experienced a pain like this in my life. Summer and winter were no longer fighting for the win in my body; they were working together, the winter placing a thick layer of frostbite around my heart, the summer sliding through my veins, slowing my circulation.

Warm orbs of what felt like light fit themselves under the skin of my palms, under the skin of my feet, they hurt a little at first, but then they were calming, soothing my nerves easily.

In the midst of all the warmth and pain, my eyelids opened, but I could only see the looming sun in a sky of white. My pupils whirled, my eyes wheeled, but I kept my eyes open, even if I couldn’t see anything.