Gone

4. Delaying Quests

I wake up on a foreign mattress with a dry throat and a throbbing head some uncredited time later.

I should seriously stop fainting and all, this is getting aggravating already!

I try to open my eyes but when it starts taking enough effort to make me see black dots dance and wobble, I just resort to searching for some water with my bare hands and closed eyes.

Except that I don't know where I am or what to expect.

As a result, my hand ends up meeting something really cold and wet after an encounter with some unidentified metallic frame. It feels sticky and disgusting on my fingers and my lazy, sleepily sitting posture straightens, while I rub my eyes with my other hand and force them to open.

Light stings them and my eyes flutter close again before I have to repeat that awkward blink some undesignated times before my eyes actually decide to take my brain's curbed instructions.

Oh god, what is it? What did my pure little hands touch!?

Some black visual dots have to be fought off before I discover myself on a red couch with a dark brown table nearby.

My eyes fly to my hands as soon as I begin registering these colours to see some dense translucent fluid on them which matches my drool's shade on the cushion which was earlier supporting my heavy head.

I groan, sagging my stiff shoulders into the couch's support. My head feels oddly light at the contact with the bolster but soon that numbness is replaced by consistent throbs and my right leg starts getting a tingling 'pins-and-needles' sensation as I feel blood rushing through my veins after the long rest.

I'm guessing the fainting posture cursed my right leg. Urgh- I don't wanna have to limp through the painful tickles!

I test my leg by putting a little weight on it tryingly. A small pain erupts alongside the pins and needles, likes a small confetti bomb bursting within my foot. It makes me wanna laugh at the torturing tickles and cry at the blinding shivers simultaneously, like a mad person is assumed to.

I huff a deep breathe. Baby steps

I sway my left leg and feel a soft carpet beneath me. It feels better than the one in the bedroom and the overall finish of the living room also seems much better than the bedroom's in this soft sunny glow that's seeping in through the light red curtains.

Okay, back to those steps that babies take!

Suprisingly, the memory of my brother's first steps unrolls in my mind in the form of his ferocious determined steps that always ended up in failures. He always picked himself up after every fail, before he ran his first successful step on 16th September.

I hold back my tears that begin sprouting at the lack of that homely warmth in this snug, summery cabin. Baby steps it is.

I ready my hands so that they push me to stand and my feet are shaking as I force my eyes to stare straight at the fake fruits on the wooden table to calm down my frenzied breathes.

I feel a cold metal graze my fingertips as I push myself off the sofa and my feet wobble before my hands reach out instantly to grab the armrest of the sofa.

I walk with my hands grappling at the support, my feet regaining their senses as they creep shivers up, onto my spine.

My throat feels dry before they remember how to yell, my hands failing me before they recall how to grab. My heart beats louder with ignored lulls from my brain and my feet give up before I realise...

I'm falling,

and unlike my brother's determined sequential tries, I know for a fact that all I'm gonna do about it, is cry.

-.-.-.-.-

My tears dry up faster than memories do and I'm still thinking of my old life as I push myself off the floor and sag into the couch, my back feeling slightly weird at the sudden change in posture.

Old house, Old Land, Old people.

Nice ol'life.

I sigh with just a tinge of hope, maybe I could go back?

My vision's back to the fake apple at the top of its fake friend fruits and my hand's back on the mattress, ready to push when my nail strikes a metal plate. A sound similar to a small metal bell echoes around me and I give myself a whiplash as I turn to see the steel like it's the first time I've seen anything that glimmers.

Wide eyes take in the shape, trembling hands hold it up. It's heavier than I had expected.

I had expected a mountain, so guns might as well be the heaviest thing on the planet.

Because that's what it was, a gun.

A gun?

A GUN!

Hey, gun's a funny word, like GUN. GUN. GUN!

Wait, A GUN!?

Oh my.