Lost - Edmund Pevensie

Chapter Sixteen

Madelyn couldn't breathe.

As a child, she'd always loved to swim and seemed to have a penchant for it. The thing is, not only did she enjoy it, she was awfully good at it. There was this one feeling that most people probably knew all too well. The feeling when you were underwater and ran out of air, but you were too far below the surface so you had to wait until could reach the surface to breathe. Your chest feels tight and all your muscles seem to be exhausted all of a sudden.

Madelyn felt that feeling at the moment. Her head felt like it was about to explode and all she wanted to do was breathe but she couldn't. She felt as if her head was underwater. Everything was fuzzy.

In the distance, she thought she heard someone call her name. It sounded just like it would if her head was underwater and someone tried to call her from outside. The voice was muffled making it difficult to pin a face to it.

If she was being honest, she wasn't even entirely sure anybody was calling her. Maybe it was just another weird dream that she was having. She tried to scream, but the thing was, in her consciousness, she didn't exist. In her mind, there was just a black void with her thoughts running through. Nothing else.

The voice called her again and this time, it sounded closer. So close that she thought that she could touch it. Yet at the same time, it was still far.

If she wasn't sure before, she was now. This was absolutely the most frustrating thing she'd ever gone through.

"Madelyn."

Her body jerked up, gasping as her head whipped from side to side with her eyes wide open. All of a sudden, the pitch black was replaced with bright colors. There were colors, but she couldn't make out any actual shapes because of her fuzzy vision.

Madelyn squeezed her eyes shut as tight as she could. Suddenly, every single one of her senses was ten times stronger than they were less than a minute ago. Her eyes were overwhelmed with the sudden flow of light and although there weren't many sounds, to her it felt like every sound was ten times louder than usual. The numbness she'd felt just a few seconds ago was now gone and had been replaced with pain.

She reached up and held her head, hoping that maybe that would make her headache go away. Or at least Madelyn thought she did. In all honesty, she had no idea if her hands were actually doing what she wanted them to.

It was a different pain than she'd felt before she'd fallen unconscious though. It was dimmed down to where it was a constant dull ache that just encompassed her entire body. Her heartbeat was so fast that she was surprised that it wasn't jumping out of her chest.

Suddenly, hands grabbed her shoulders, calling her name over and over. By the second, the voice came closer and closer until she was completely awake. In a split second, all the sounds became real and her vision went from practically blind to perfect.

It was Edmund. His hands were on her shoulders and he was calling her name worriedly. His eyes had bags under them, making it clear he hadn't slept in a while.

The girl's face held a look of confusion that asked the question "what is going on?"

When she finally found her voice, all she did was croak out his name. When Madelyn heard her own voice, it sounded even foreign to her. It was so dry and rough, that she found it hard to believe that it was coming out of her mouth. It made sense. She didn't remember the last time she'd had a good drink of water.

The second Edmund heard the girl's voice, his worry slowly dissolved away, leaving a small, relieved smile. He looked at her for a few seconds, unable to believe that she was awake.