Broken Glass - Taekook

16

When I next come to, my heartbeat is slow, a dull drum that echoes from within my own skull, and my left arm throbs with a new pain. Everything feels muffled, distant, as if experienced through someone else, and my consciousness feels odd, as if it's watching events unfold from another body. I can't see anything, can barely feel the sleeping mat under my back. 

Someone shouts something, and the words rush together, spinning into each other and creating something entirely new, something I can't even begin to understand. And then, all of a sudden, my entire awareness becomes crystal clear, as a cool hand is placed on my forehead. The sensation is somehow refreshing, and my entire body suddenly feels like my own again. 

Confused muttering solidifies into actual speech, but the dialogue is still impossible to translate, as it's being spoken in a flowing language that I'm beginning to recognise as Eithyrian. Taehyung's voice, and a few different voices of varying pitches, communicate with each other calmly, their tones deferential, as if exchanging formalities. 

"Jungkook?"
"Are we back to this again?" I manage to croak out from a dry throat, and he chuckles, the cool hand moving slightly with the sound, the only indication I have that it's his. 
"Still got your memory?" he checks.
"Something about golden rivers, Saviours and a storm, right?" I guess, and that low laugh echoes again. 
"That's the gist of it, yeah. You really worried us there, Kook." 

I don't even think about the nickname, too busy wondering what knocked me out. "So...what happened? Are we all dead?" 
"You have such little faith in our abilities?" Yoongi pipes in, somewhat dryly, and I find myself smiling. 
"Dude, I feel like death," I return, "it's an automatic thought."

As I speak, Taehyung's hand disappears, and someone props me up gently, keeping there with some sort of cushion or soft surface, so that I'm sitting up properly. "Other than like death, how do you feel?" the witch asks quietly. "Any nausea, or anything like that?" 
"I don't think so.." I trail off, trying to figure out if I do feel anything. But all I'm aware of is tiredness, my headache, and the hot pain of my arm. 

"Okay, you should be able to open your eyes," the witch returns, sounding confident. "But if you feel uncomfortable, or that things are too bright, or anything like that, close your eyes. I'm worried you could be dealing with a concussion: you hit your head pretty hard on the way through the forest. You'll be fine, we just have to be careful about these things." 

To my relief, there's no problems, and once I've blinked away the blur in my vision, I'm able to take in the world around me, understand what's going on. As much as I can, anyway. 

I'm lying in a small, dim space, lit up by a small , well contained fire in one corner. Our food and water pot is hung over the top, presumably for the sake of cooking something. Taehyung is sat beside me, cross-legged, his medicine bag opened to reveal many different coloured cloth packages, which I know contain a variety of dried herbs. He's removed his cloak, and his sleeves have been rolled back to the elbows. The blue marks on his hands light up infrequently, and then fade back to their normal state again each time. Aphelia floats a few centimetres above the floor beside him, glowing a faint green. 

Yoongi is leaning against the walls of the room we're in, next to the fire, his eyes closed. His left eye is covered slightly by a small purple bruise, and he's holding a small cup in his hand, loosely. Namjoon and Seokjin are sat beside him, both of them hunched over their bent legs, also holding small cups. Jimin and Hoseok are sat on the other side of the space, talking quietly amongst themselves, Hoseok winding and unwinding a long leather strip around his left wrist in increasingly complex patterns. There's a worried expression on his face, but not so much that I'm scared myself.

I look down, and see that we're on bare, slightly damp earth, which is mossy in places. And when I turn to inspect the walls, I realise that they're made of branches that have been entwined together in an impossibly complex manner, completely blocking whatever's on the other side. "Where are we?" I murmur to myself, not really expecting an answer, but Yoongi speaks up from across the room, his tone tired and flat.