The Swords of Memory: Second Chances

Chapter 2

                Zara woke up to moonlight. It was brighter than any time she had seen the moon. She was on her back in a field looking up at the sky. It was a perfectly clear night. There was a slight breeze. Its warmth felt good on her face. She wondered at the beautiful moon and then at why there were no stars. She had always been able to see the stars on clear nights. It was what she did almost every night when she couldn't sleep. There should have been stars. That fact just kept bugging her. She tried to sit up and a grimaced in pain. Her shoulder was killing her and every muscle ached. She managed to sit up but it took a couple of tries. When she had managed to sit up she found a small wooden chest in front of her. Her curiosity was piqued. Why would there be a random wooden chest in the middle of a field? And why would it be right next to her when she was unconscious? These thoughts ran through her head and led her to remembering what had happened. She had been in a car crash.

Forgetting about the chest, she looked around for the cars. If she was alright, for the most part, then it was her responsibility to make sure that the other people in the crash were okay too. She had never meant to take anyone with her when she left the world. And she knew inarguably that the car crash had been her fault. She looked around but saw no cars and no smoke. There was no evidence that a crash had even happened. She struggled to get her bearings. The crash had happened; she knew that for sure. If there was no crash around, then maybe she was in heaven? She doubted it. She wasn't religious and didn't do enough good deeds to make up for it. With nothing solid to cling onto she turned her attention to the chest again. Grimacing as her body protested, she opened the chest. There was a small wooden star inside. There was a red plus sign on it. "So that's where the stars went." Zara muttered. She started to laugh at her own joke and then stopped as the movement caused her more pain. The jolt of pain forced her to lay down again as she attempted to catch her breath. She might have survived the car crash but not without any damage.

She reached into the chest to touch the star figure but as her finger made contact it shot into the sky. She tried to follow it but moving her neck hurt too much. She just looked up as it flew into the sky. With the amount of pain that she was in she was amazed that she had been able to sit up in the first place. She lost sight of the star and started to seriously consider that it was a star missing from the sky. The star came back into sight and it was flying right at her. It was moving quickly. If the car crash had failed to kill her than this star might just finish the job. She closed her eyes, not willing to look her impending death in the face. She felt an impact in her stomach but it didn't hurt. She started to feel better immediately. As she sat there, waiting for the high-speed star to hit her, her aches and pains started to fade. She chanced opening her eyes and saw that the star had disappeared. It must have been what she had felt hit her stomach. She looked around for it on the ground but found no trace of it.

With her injuries fading, she could stand and more earnestly search. Why were her wounds healing so fast? She glanced at her arms, which had been covered in bruises, and saw that they were healing. She could literally see the bruises fading. She searched for another five fruitless minutes and was completely healed. She couldn't even find the cut on her hand from when she had been cutting carrots the other night. Something had led to her being completely healed. The only thing she could think to explain it was the star. It had hit her in her stomach and then she had started to heal. Zara decided to test whether it had been a permanent effect or if it had healed her completely and then left. She hit her arm with a rock from the ground and watched as a bruise started to form. She had always bruised quickly and easily. Before the bruise had fully formed it had faded again into the normal skin of her arm. "I have a fucking super power." She said.

"Okay Zara, you have super powers. Good for you. Now you need to find out where the hell you are and how to get home." She ordered herself. This was obviously just some random field that she has somehow found herself in. She needed to find a road and then people that could help her find her way home. She turned in a circle trying to pick a direction to go and saw lights in the distance. It looked more like fire than head lights but fire would still mean people. Zara instinctively went to grab her bag but it was not with her. All her things were gone. She looked in her pockets and found they were empty. While she investigated her pockets, she realized how ripped up her cloths were. They were partially shredded. The only thing that wasn't ruined was her leather jacket. The rest was ripped up. She kind of liked the way it looked though. It screamed "I don't care", a message Zara often tried to present to the world.