Fooled You

8

He knocked back every soaring arrow that came my way, the crunch of wood echoing to where I lay, frozen with cold and paralyzed under death.

Hak was yelling, his words convoluted and absent of clarity in my ears. His figure was quickly slanting, slithering in a hazy film of water and dirt and blood.

My consciousness was flatlining; everything was blurring.

Poison, the realization dawning upon me as slowly as they come.

That explained the burning.

I took a slow, painful breath. The air tasted faintly of rust.

It felt as if the world was crushing me under its weight, as if my bones were draped with lead and my chest were pricked with stone.

As if the earth and the sky were working to compress me into a thin fabric of nothing. 

The pressure dragged me under; I felt my chest constricting and my lungs suffocating. 

Then, my head fell back and I realized I was being lifted into the air. 

The devastating weight left me. I gasped.

"No...no....Bal-"

The weakness of my voice rang a dim shock through my limbs. But I forgot it immediately.

Bal, where's Bal-

Then I realized the rawness of my throat, and understood my own piercing screams once more. 

What is it because of the pain, because of the loss, because of the forgotten, I didn't know; I wouldn't know--

I just screamed to forget.

***

Hak's voice filtered through the thick ice to form a coherent word: my name.

"-Anouk."

My feet tingled, a restless warmth that trailed upwards to the rest of my body.

I shifted, groaning, muttering, tremoring.

"Anouk. Hey, wake up."

His hushed, urgent whisper was a shot of clarity. I pried my eyelids apart, blinking rapidly.

Hak formed clearly before me, leaning over my beaten body, shielding it from the ongoing rain. We were surrounded by undergrowth. The skies thundered overhead. I couldn't tell if it was night or day---how much time had eclipsed?