Echo and Narcissus

Echo

The only sound that could be heard was the pounding of my heart.

Like a newborn horse, it raced inside my chest, seeming as if it was going to burst out of me on a moments notice. The sound beat feverishly in my head and traveled down my skin, pulsing with adrenaline. Fire was coursing through my veins. I could almost taste it.

And then he saw me.

My eyes were glued to his movements as slowly, his body was turning around to face mine, my heart beating along with my rapid breaths. The honey-coloured waves blazed boldly in the sun's warm rays, a beam of sunlight atop his head, his skin as smooth as the pebbles that lay in the riverbed. The way his muscles moved fluidly and with such grace as he turned was truly mesmerizing.

A foreign feeling blossomed from the pit of my stomach, electrifying my senses and invading my mind. Strange, and yet I felt as if it belonged there. Somehow, it felt right. Like my whole life, I've always simply been waiting for something, a part of me that has been gone for a long while. A part of me that is overwhelming to almost impossible to bear, and yet would be impossible to live without. Love.

And as his caramel eyes, dripping with a child-like curiosity, locked with mine, I knew this feeling could be known as none other than love, for what else could it be? There was no denying that every fibre in my body was forever linked with this caramel-eyed man, with hair as golden as the very sun that lit up his features. My heart beat for him.

I held my breath as the caramel eyes flicked over my appearance, taking in the long, curly golden-brown hair cascading down my back, the white lace sundress covering my body and the two emerald eyes staring back at him. Though it seems pointless, I couldn't help but wonder what he sees when he looks at me. Can he look in my eyes and see how much of my soul was already his?

His eyes fixed back on mine, and there was silence. The birds has ceased their song, the crickets had stopped their noise, the bushes had yet to utter a sound. Even the wind rustling the leaves in the forest canopy above failed to be heard. The forest had gone deathly silent.

And then the most earth-shattering emotion flashed in those caramel depths, a look that would change my world forever: disgust.

Without a single word, he pivoted on one foot and strutted back into the bushes, every step a dagger piercing my heart. The foliage swallowed up the heavenly golden hair until nothing remained. The forest had taken Narcissus away and with him; my heart.

My mind dimly recognized that he had gone, for it was transfixed on the only point in time that I had felt true, agonizing pain. My heart, which had been thundering so strongly only moments ago, had faded to a dull, feeble thump, the beat of a lonely drum. A storm cloud invaded my senses and enclosed my brain, unable to function any longer.

But through the pain, there was one word that rang through the rest, just faintly heard through the thick haze that covered my mind; run.

Willing my muscles to work, I heaved forward, catching myself before I could fall from the pressure. With jerking, wavering steps, my legs propelled me through the dense undergrowth. Branches and thistles scratched across my exposed skin, but it felt too far away for me to care. The storm clouds had darkened to black as they invaded my mind like a thick fog, I was numb. I felt a force pulling at my subconscious, I turned away.

The world went black, and I realized that I was in a cave. Shadows loomed overhead, stealing my sight faster then I could blink. Slowly, one by one, I felt my senses begin to shut down, losing the will to go on. It started with my nerves. The electric bolts failing to move as they dimmed and went out. And then my smell. The usual dank, dusty, almost rotting smells that caves tended to excrete had vanished, replaced with . . . nothing.

And my hearing, my brain activity and then, finally, my energy.

Muscles screaming desperately for relief, my body collapsed to the smooth rock of the cave floor. The force had returned to its duty of pulling at me, tugging my subconscious farther and farther away, the pain and hurt of my being getting smaller in the background. I feebly tried to fight back at it, straining to reach my body again, but it was to no avail. My body had shut down, there was not going back.

And even if there was, what did I have to go back to? The joyful wood nymphs who would never understand me? The spiteful Hera who had without a thought taken away my speech? The oblivious Zeus who had no idea what his actions had come to? I had nothing, and no one, that could ever pick up the shattered pieces of my heart and attempt to put them back together.

All that was left was an hollow, empty shell. And so, as the force's tugging became increasing demanding, I decided that there was no use in going on. The beauty I had once associated with life had lost its glory.

As I felt my heart beat for the final time, I uttered the name of the one person who could halt this torture before any other unfortunate soul had to endure it, "Artemis . . ."

I let go.