To Imagine...

Chacda (5)

I awoke slowly. My heart pounded as memories began to trickle in slowly, a panic building even as I struggled hastily to quell it. My breathing picked up, though quietly as I tried to strangle it back to normal. Muffled voices lulled in from the outside, as I had the feeling that they had been ever-present, for... a long time. The bumping and sense of movement led me to the idea that I was back in the carriage...

The carriage?

My body jolted as the memories slammed back in all at once; I had tried to sit up, but instead fell writhing to the ground in a blazing pain that burned across every part of me. My chest seized, stealing my breath, eyes wide but hardly taking in my surroundings. The contraction in my chest was too tight to permit any sound but a high-pitched groan.

Yes, I was in a carriage. Not the carriage. The wood was a beautiful cherry mahogany, untainted by any speck of shaivon. My eyes squinted until my lashes obscured my blurring vision; my muscles had tightened much like my chest, stiff, unable to move from the partially bent angles my limbs had taken when I had tried to get up. I felt as if my bones had been replaced with steel and welded together. My hands were mostly open and stiff. Even as I focused, I could not get a single finger to move.

The pressure on my chest subsided slightly and I let out a long, painful groan. Pins sunk into my body like the feeling after a limb falls asleep, from my scalp to my toes, which curled... they had moved?

I focused on the feeling and felt my muscles become less tense slowly up my body. I was panting again, but now my arms lowered to the floor and I could open my eyes again. The unique array of agony in so many different forms had long since chased away any conscious thoughts. So, when my eyes locked with that of another's, I felt no reaction, much less recognition.

Focusing on my shallow breaths, released into painful groans, I writhed on the floor with my newfound mobility. Nothing could feel worse. My consciousness faded in and out, the temptation to escape this overwhelming, but something was drawing me back... my name...

My eyes opened again, slowly, my body stiff and curled into itself, but when I looked up to her face, I finally recognized Tetherel. Her features blurred as I saw her through a dizzying double-vision haze, but I stared up to her, gasping, holding onto her gaze as if it was all that kept me tethered here. Her hand suddenly appeared in my vision and I flinched, staying very still as she moved the hair from my face. I blinked.

She smiled. It was slightly repulsive.

"You've been asleep for a very long time."

My attempt to respond came out as a quiet breath and nothing more.

She looked up past me and I felt suddenly lost, my head lifting as my eyes darted up to search for her gaze. The world was swimming and distorted again and I made an attempt to swallow, scratching two dried sides of my throat together in a movement that spurred the beginning of a fit of choking.

I felt a hand snatch me up by the back of my shirt and dunk my head into a freezing liquid. The water went straight to my lungs as I gasped in shock, flooding my ears, nose, throat. The panic made it worse, as I was helpless to move or lift my head against the pressure that held me there.

Then I was pulled suddenly from the water and I felt it expel suddenly, vomit dripping from my chest and sprayed across the floor. There was cursing and then my head was slammed back into the bucket. I scrambled to my knees, and this time nothing stopped me from lifting my head to safety. I choked and heaved, but I held back the retch that my stomach threatened to regurgitate again. I...

"Had enough yet?" Through my coughing and choking, I was able to lift my head on my own and look up through my dripping hair to the man towering above me. Disdain grew within me.