INCIPIENT ➵ EDMUND PEVENSIE

03 | Blood on Her Hands

03 | BLOOD ON HER HANDS

She wakes up on the shoreline, waves of salt washing down and stinging her throat. The constant splashing of the sea against her head makes her light-headed.

    Her blurry gaze trails to her left hand, where a swath of bandage - now dyed red - uses what is left of it to protect her wound.

    The roads on her palm scream in pain from the salt.

    She lays there for a while, gazing upon the clouds, unable to muster the energy to stand. She takes in the sounds of this peculiar place - the roar of waves, the murmur of leaves of trees in the wind, the silence of beasts.

    Ultimately, she rolls onto her side, flour-like sand fluffing her damp skin. Crawling onto her knees, she scans her surroundings - a shore, a sea, a hill. A hill with structures that show signs of habitation long ago. There is a lake of glass and thicket of deep green to the right, whereas it's opposite end holds a heavily built up cave of bright fulvous.

    Is my delirium biting at my sanity? The thought runs in her mind.

    She stands up on bare feet, wiggling her toes through the wet sand and brushing off patches of the particulate solids that stuck to her body. She draws the clean air into her lungs, something new from the musty and tense atmosphere back home.

    She exhales, knowing that she hasn't felt so liberated for as long as she can remember. It is as if the adamantine shackles round her ankles have finally shattered, setting her crestfallen heart onto a whole new path.

    She allows her feet to carry her to wherever she desires to go. A little exploration in a utopia like this can't hurt, can it?

    She tells herself that she can't let a second go to waste. Any minute now, her mind will be conscious, tearing her back to the place she belongs, the true reality she detests. Except, what is around her seems too bona fide to just be yet another of those fervid escapades of hers.

    "While it lasts," she sighs to herself, running her fingers along the waxy leaves of the apple trees, the giants that guard the roseate-bricked stone structures on the cliff. It appears to be an old ancient ruin; every last wall has triturated into rubble.

    She plucks an apple - ripe and succulent - from its branch, padding her thumb across its red, lustrous skin with blemishes of saffron.

    Then, she lets it roll onto the bushes with a stifled rustle. She isn't planning on devouring it anyway.

    Delusions aren't meant to be consumed.

    She finds herself at the edge of the cliff, peering downwards as fiendish waves crash relentlessly against the rocks below, a twenty to thirty meter drop.

    Her eyes meet the sun again. It is soft; the sunset.

    "Who is she, a Telmarine?" says a soft voice, scantily heard above the song of the sea, making use of vocabulary she doesn't quite comprehend.