What Lies Within

Everything Changes

Chapter 1:  Waking

The leaves were the first thing her eyes were able to distinguish from the grey and green blur. Mara lay on the ground in a dense forest, trying to make sense of how she had come to be here. All she could hear was a piercing whine in her ears, which hurt so badly she was not sure she would ever hear again. Come to think of it, most of her hurt. She lifted a hand to her head and pulled it away bloody. This wasn't good. She blinked and, for the fraction of a second that her eyes were closed, she saw the blinding light from the explosion on the plane wing.

She opened her eyes with a jolt, trying to sit up off the ground, but something was holding her down. She limply lifted her hands to her legs and felt the seat belt. Her fingers numbly pawed at the buckle for a moment, unable to operate the simple lever. It was too slick with something. She forced her head up off the leafy ground to look down at her lap and inspect the source of this slick substance. Panic seized her as she found she was missing a pinky finger on her left hand. Her ring finger was still there, but was hanging loosely from the skin just above her second knuckle and both were bleeding freely. She cried out, barely able to hear her own voice over the ringing.

She hoped only that whoever else had survived would hear her and come help soon. She opened her eyes once more and looked around. Where was everyone? Where was the plane? She could not say how long she laid there calling out for help, but as her head began to swim she knew she could wait no longer.  She reached down with her right hand and unbuckled herself, then slowly rolled her way off the seat. Both her legs seemed intact, which was a massive relief, but it took everything she had in her to force herself to her feet. She leaned forward on the three row seat, fighting between regret and relief that she had not had anyone sitting right next to her on the plane, as she didn't know what state that person would now be in. The window seat had apparently taken a major impact and had folded in on itself pretty severely. Judging by the blood splattered across the twisted metal, she could guess that was where her missing finger might be found. She turned, fell to her knees, and emptied the contents of her stomach onto the dead leaves of the forest floor.

She stood to her feet once more. "Hello?" she called out into the surrounding forest, yet even with the ringing beginning to subside, she heard no reply. "Hello!?" she screamed, louder this time.  Silence answered.

Mara pushed herself over to her seat row once more. If she could find her bag somewhere near by, she could grab her jacket out of there and at least wrap it around her fingers and slow the bleeding. Clearly she had landed far enough away from the plane that none of the other survivors could hear her. For now, she was going to have to take care of this herself.

After a brief search of the area, she decided she just wasn't going to find her bag, so she instead bundled the front of her shirt around her fingers and began doing her best to staunch the flow of blood. She needed to find the plane as quickly as possible. She looked around her little clearing for perhaps the fiftieth time, unsure what she expected to see. There was no sign of smoke in the light grey sky and she had no clue what else to even begin looking for.

"Help!" she tried again. Perhaps if she kept yelling, somebody would hear. She had been asleep when the plane had begun crashing, so she had no idea what country she was in, let alone how close to civilization.  She leaned against the overturned row of seats and began checking herself for damage. Her fingers were obviously badly hurt, but her hearing had nearly completely recovered and her some semblance of energy was beginning to return to her body. The nausea was still swimming around the pit of her stomach - especially when she thought of her fingers - but she could manage that.

The front of her shirt, it turned out, was doing little to stop her bleeding, so she took the shirt off and - taking special care with her dangling ring finger - tied it tightly around her hand, then ripped a large hole in the cloth and wrapped it around her body as a sling. It wasn't until this moment, now that feeling was returning to her, that she registered how cold it was. If she didn't find this plane before nightfall, she was in deep trouble. With her hand settled, she stopped a moment longer to consider the best way to go about looking for the craft and finally settled on what she considered to be the most logical approach. Logic, after all, was her specialty.