Memory

Part 2

Staring up at the sun, I struggled for breath. My lungs hurt, and my vision swum with little black dots that blotted out parts of the beautiful blue sky. I wanted to just lay there and stare at that sky and watch it turn the most magnificent indigo as the sun went down, but it was so hard to breathe... Why was it so hard to breathe?

I began to hear the shouts of people around me, and the screaming of a child, and the stomping of a hundred boots... Or maybe it was just two? The clashing of steel and iron rang through the air, the sound burying itself in my ears, and all I wanted then was for it to stop... Why was it so loud?

The blue sky slowly disappeared to be replaced with the dull brown of the sun-baked earth beneath me and the scraggly dry grass that had been crushed beneath the weight of several people. Where had the sky gone? Feet entered the vision, and then legs, and then a torso and arms, and finally a face, all in quick progression.

The face looked familiar, but I had no time to analyze it before it was replaced by that beautiful blue sky. And then my eyes moved down again, and found the face of the man now much closer, whose arms and legs were bent in a crouch. Was I on the ground? Of course, everything was on the ground. I couldn't fly.

"Oh, Teyla, what have they done to you?" he asked, and a gauntlet came very close to my face. Had they done something to me? Who were 'they?'

I tried to speak, but gurgles interrupted me. Who was gurgling? They were being rude and obnoxious whoever they were... Something dripped out of my mouth onto the metal of his gauntlet. My eyes found his fingers, and I saw bright red contrasting with the strong bluish steel. I was the one gurgling, gurgling blood... Where was the blood coming from?

There were more pounding feet, quick paced in a run, that sounded like a herd of horses. The man stood, looking around, and ran for something, promising to be back. My eyes couldn't follow quickly enough to see where he was going, and soon I was staring at a confusing combination of brown and blue that kept swirling as the little black things moved in endless swirls and circles.

Soon there was a different color, the shine of metal, and another figure stopped before me. This time, it was harder to make out things that seemed very important. Such as exactly where his head was. All I could see was the shine of metal, and nothing else. Surely it would have been easy to spot hair or skin somewhere...

They moved, and a piece of metal came off to reveal the head I'd been searching for. So it had been a helmet. My eyes seemed to latch onto that head, and refused to focus on anything else. And as I made out his features one by one, all I could think was that he looked like a god. There was absolutely no sign he'd been in the fighting save for the blood on the sword that I realized he was holding bare over his knees.

My mind deciphered that he had war paint on his cheeks, and identified exactly who he must have been with no direction from me. A barbarian. He was going to kill me. I closed my eyes, and waited, waited for the pain in my chest to just go away.

 "Be still, my child."

Those were the last words I heard before I died.