Ranger's Apprentice; An Emotional Tale

VIII: Warmweed

It was more falling than anything else, really, the way Will dismounted Tug. He stumbled across the small clearing with indescribable pain flowing through him, falling down as soon as his feet touched the ground. His leg couldn't carry his weight and his open cut side caused pain more severe than he had ever felt before. There was an icy wind, choking the breath from his lungs and making a noose around his neck. Its savage, bitter blasts cut right to his bones and gripped his brain in its freezing claws. 

Oh, how easy wouldn't it be to just lie down and close his eyes? To just lie and let the snow cover him, until the wounds stopped hurting and his heart stopped beating? 

But he couldn't. And he wouldn't. 

Will crawled up, ignoring the ill-making pain and removed his jacket so that he could study his bruises and wounds. 

His skin was covered with great purple welts that would only deepen over the coming week. Against his ghostly skin they were grotesque, but he knew he was lucky not to have broken any bones. His wounds were deep, and blood was still flowing out of them. One thing was for sure, it was going to be very painful to clean and Will's money was on it getting infected too. He washed it with the water from his hiking bottle, grimacing as he rubbed.

The water hurt. Every new sore stung with the water being washed in, but it was the only way to avoid infection. He winced as it swirled without mercy, penetrating to the cells that should be protected by smooth skin but lay open and raw.

Next came the bandaging and treating of the wounds. Will decided to start with the one in his side, knowing he had to stop the bleeding as soon as possible.

In order to treat the wound efficiently, he had to put off his gloves, but the minute he did so his fingers froze immediately, due to the icy cold. 

"The pain must be gone before I can treat it," he told himself, and he knew there was only one way to make the pain decrease. He got out the tube with warmweed salve and opened it.

It was a huge mistake.

Sitting in the snow, accompanied only by his horse, the sudden smell of the warmweed was incredible. There was nothing, nothing but the smell of warmweed, a smell he detested, avoided, feared. 

Tug whinnied nervously, noticing the change in his master and friend, but Will didn't hear him. He was hurt, cold and overwhelmed. Somewhere deep inside him, he knew how he could stop that all; the pain, the cold. The solution lay in his hand. 

As Will knelt in the freshly fallen snow, the tube of warmweedsalve in one hand, memories ransacked his mind. Tormented with what could have been, memories taunted him with a savage intensity. The images were so real, so crystal clear, it was like reliving the months in Skandia once again. 

The coldness.

Will felt the panic begin like a cluster of spark plugs in his abdomen, as thin cellophane, something his fingers could pierce breathing holes in. Yet tension began to grow in his face and limbs, and the panic turned into a deluge of ice water surrounding him completely.

Inside his head, the months in Skandia were replayed. His breathing became more rapid, more shallow, and his breaths came in gasps. Thoughts were accelerating inside his head and he felt like he was going to black out. His heart was hammering inside his chest, and the pain increased even more.

The pain.

The woods around Will began to spin and he squatted on the ground, trying to make everything slow down to something his brain and body could cope with. He tried to scream, to scream for Evanlyn, who had helped him through this once and undoubtedly could again. Yet an invisible hand had clasped over his mouth; an equally ghostly hypodermic of adrenaline piercing his heart, unloading in an instant. His ribs heaved as if bound by ropes, straining to inflate his lungs, and failing every time again.

He didn't want to, he. Didn't. Want to, but it was such an easy solution. All he had to do was open his mouth and get some of the familiar smell in his mouth. His hand was shaking, his entire body was shaking. Part of him wanted to, the other didn't. 

But it was such an easy solution to stop the pain and the cold. 

Will's head was a carousel of fears and memories spinning out of control, each one trying to push his mind into blackness. His pain was an ocean of unknown depths, wait currents and lurking beasts. The panic moved across him, seizing every movement and locking his limbs in place long enough for it to cleave and claim another part of his being. He wanted the pain and the cold to stop, to end, to leave him alone, but they didn't. 

He screamed. But it wasn't the sound of an adult. It was a child's scream, barely sixteen, its scream coming from a place of terror, telling of a mind lost in absolute fear. 

It was the scream of a boy, deserted and alone, far from home and in an unknown land. 

What if Erak hadn't helped them to escape? 

He was drowning in coldness, coldness he had survived once, but maybe couldn't survive again.

What if Evanlyn hadn't been able to cure him from his addiction? 

The tube with warmweed salve. In his right hand. He wanted to. But he couldn't. Or could he?

What if...?

In his intense silence he somehow screamed with his whole body. The eyes wide with horror, the mouth rigid and open, his chalky face gaunt and immobile, the fists clenched with blanched knuckles and the nails digging deeply into the palms of his hand.

Suddenly, the pain was gone, and so was the cold. A moment later everything was gone, and Will was drowning in black. 

>>>---------->

Okay. Alright. So. Yeah. 

I was reading what I'd written and oh. Oh. It can definitely be better but oh. Oh Will. Damn that warmweed!!!

Please please PLEASE let me know what you thought!!! If you have any tips please tell me because I'm not incredibly happy with the way I've written it - but most importantly: let me know what you thought of this chapter!!!

See ya next chapter ;-)

~Rose