Wind Arrow

Chapter 10: Bittersweet

Chapter 10: Bittersweet

“Weakness, use it as your strength. Fear, face its eye. Mystery, unlock it. Enemy, eliminate them but choose your battles. You need to obliterate fear to protect your comrades.” voices out Zora in the whist of silent winds.

I lodge in obscurity as I stare dazedly on Zylle’s lifeless-like body. Guilt masks my memory of that death defying incident. Yet, abhorrence overpowers all of these emotions I feel.

“I’m so sorry.” I aforementioned plainly.

“It’s not your fault. His job is to protect you.” He answers in a regrettable solitude in his voice.

“Because of me, he was almost…” killed.

I don’t want to mention that word. For death is painful. It takes everything away from you without you heeding the truth.

“Get your rest. You haven’t slept since yesterday that we found you.”

“No.” How can I rest when the person who protected me is fighting for his life at the moment?

“I’ll leave you alone with him first. Just call the royal guards outside if something happens.” He makes his way out of the room, leaving Zylle and I in eerie silence.

I scrutinize Zylle’s unconscious structured body, covered with light scrapes and hardened blood having the cells heal themselves eventually. The deep wounds are swathed with bandages mainly on his bare chest where the arrow hit him. He still wore his dark jeans stained with blood. The more I stared at them, the more I felt fear. Not the horror of being eradicated but rather having the fear of not knowing who the enemy is. Everything seems like a puzzle unsolved with many missing pieces.

I can’t stop myself from looking at his face. He seems sleeping like nothing happened, like he’s just resting and dreaming of something happy.

My hand reaches out to his hair touching the smooth ends until it reaches his scalp like I was just patting a dog. I trace the fresh scrapes on his forehead then it trail off in tracing his nose and lips with my fingers until I reach his jaw line.

He’s quite mysterious even though I already know his family, even though he showed me his world. Yet, I still feel too far from him. Like his enigma makes me want to trespass more space in his world, letting me invade to his volatile persona… to let me know more about his life, his past. And yes, he hasn’t told me anything about himself but he seems to know my precedent life and has more knowledge to it than I have.

I’m unaware that I was still tracing his nose line until Zylle’s hand swiftly gripped my hand tightly that it makes me recoil in pain and surprise.

He quickly removed his tight grip once he saw my face in the light. “Umm… Sorry.” he apologizes in shock.

I massaged my wrist which is now swelling red from his tight grip. “What was that?! Your kind of natural defense mechanism when you’re asleep? It’s like you can even kill with your eyes closed!”

He sat down properly as he held his breath and slowly closed his eyes. He let out a heavy sigh seemingly like thinking deep.

“What’s the problem?” I asked candidly.

“We need to go back to the temple.” He says as he quickly stood towards the door.

“Wait. You haven’t gotten enough sleep yet. How’s your wound?”

“It’s fine.”

I don’t believe him.

I touched his abdomen and he kind of drew back. “See?” I laughed trying to lighten the mood.