Aurora Interval

Encounter

When I awoke the next morning, I tried to believe that yesterday had been a dream, but the evidence was crumbling that delusion.

I was sore and tender from my scuffle with the creature, and the mystery scars on my shoulder throbbed painfully when I moved my arms.

If the wound healed quick enough to scar over, then why did it still hurt?

A mild headache was threatening my temples. Just trying to wake up was an effort.

I eyed the alarm clock that was about to hit 7:00am, but I silenced it before I could hear its electric siren. I hated the noise it issued so much that my body always made sure to wake up before it went off, just so I wouldn’t have to hear it.

I groaned as I removed myself from my sweat-soaked bed. A small stream of panic slithered through me.

Was I sick?

My hand slapped my forehead in its haste to check my temperature.

I was a bit warm, but I wasn’t feverish; I felt cold in fact.  Realization hit and I gave myself a rather unimpressed scowl as I trudged over to the bathroom. A person with a fever wouldn’t be an accurate gauge in temperature, and thankfully, my mother was already at work, so she wouldn’t have to worry over me as I asked her to check.

Nirrek rolled her eyes as she threw open the mirrored medicine cabinet, and rummaged through until her fingers landed on the thermometer. With a harsh sigh, she pulled off the cap and jammed it into her mouth.

Figures she’d get sick on the day she got to educate the public. What a perfect time for a cold. She really needed this trip after the day before. Something engaging enough to keep her mind off the creature in the woods was now slipping out of her grasps.

Terror clenched her sides.

If I was sick, then I’d have to stay home… with myself.

She’d have to fall prey to her mind’s incessant questioning of what yesterday was. She might have to accept it. Affirm that a creature, which was crafted in the darkness of fiction, had attacked her; or that she was losing her mind. Nirrek didn’t know which was more horrifying.

As I waited for the electronic peep of the thermometer to sound, I closed the cabinet and took a look at myself in the mirror; just to make sure that tentacles weren’t sprouting from my ears.

My slightly bronzed skin and pronounced cheeks didn’t look flushed, and my small rounded nose wasn’t puffy and sniffily.

A sigh of relief.

I didn’t look deformed, or even sick, just the normal amount of tiredness when I stayed up too late going over my lesson for the next day; or in this case, I was stressed out. It was perfectly reasonable to look a little tired after yesterday. It didn’t mean she was sick; it just meant that she was recovering. Nothing out of the ordinary. The cold sweat could have been a bad dream, and with the day before that could have been a very possible explanation for damp sheets. Either that or she was regressing to a toddler who wet herself.

I sighed at my stunning show of self-deprecation.

Easy there Nirr, you’re starting to sound like a Negative Nancy.

I wasn’t sick. At least I didn’t feel sick. Just tired.  I was going to go to that school with Ikarus and she was going to behave without eating the children, after which I’d go to the Reserve to handle the influx of people getting their papers secured for the start of bear hunting season, and to finish it off, I’d grab some dinner at the diner.

Simple.

Nothing crazy like beasts trying to tear out my throat.

My hands traced the raised marks on my shoulder.