FC (Original)

Chapter 14: The Rage of the Fire

Stanley woke up, gasping, his mind a jumbled house of memories. He shot straight up, surprising a girl who was in the midst of dabbing his forehead with a wet cloth. As his head cleared, he recognized her as Sandi, the farmer from Colen.

Her messy black hair was draping freely over her shoulders, instead of tied up in her usual ponytail- which shocked Stanley, as this was the first time he'd seen her hair done this way. He'd never really talked to her much throughout their time in The Outside, and would've thought he would've woken up to someone else. Sandi was bathed in a flickering orange light which emanated from a small candle lamp placed on top of a little table Angus had put together when they had first arrived, casting eerie shadows on the inside of the tent.

She visibly relaxed as soon as she realized that everything was fine, her shoulders slumping in obvious relief. Her dark eyes shone in the fiery light. "God, you scared me- are you okay?"

The healer swallowed, recalling the recent events. No, I'm not.

He smiled- not a real one, but close enough. "Yeah. How long have I been out?"

Sandi averted her gaze, moving to stand by the small table. The wet rag was still in her hands, but she quickly set it beside the lamp. Sighing, she turned back towards him, but refused to meet his eyes. "A few hours."

The raven haired boy ran a hand through his hair- she obviously wasn't telling him something, but he decided not to push her. "Where's everyone else?"

"Nia, Todd, Angus and Molly are at the campfire," she said slowly, her gaze finally settling on his. Stanley could see worry in her eyes, and the sinking sense that something was wrong gradually filled his brain- his hand instantly going to the gem hanging around his neck.

Stanley swung his legs off the side of the bed, images of Kaiden trapped somewhere- alone and abandoned- flashing before his eyes. "How about everybody else?" When Sandi didn't reply instantly, he decided to prompt her with names. "Cher? Katie? Abbey?"

With a defeated sigh, Sandi sat down next to him on the edge of the bed and put her head in her hands. When she looked up again, Stanley was surprised to see tears in her eyes. "They're gone," she whispered, looking at him with such a haunted look in her eyes that it made him want to pinch himself to make sure that this was real. "Katie got captured just before you went cr-" she stopped abruptly, before correcting herself. "Before you passed out. Cher ran into the woods after the huge argument about whether we should rescue Katie or not, with Abbey following her."

"What happened to me?" He asked slowly, his eyes trained on the shadows dancing in the glimmering light. "I noticed the way you've been acting around me ever since I woke up. The catch in your voice."

Sandi hesitated before saying anything, as if she was about to tell him a huge secret, but was having second thoughts. Finally, she spoke. "When Cher and Abbey brought you back to camp, you were acting all weird- rambling about some guy called Will or something. You were immediately brought here of course, where you drifted in and out of consciousness. I was in here, along with Nia and Abbey." She paused, shaking her head before continuing. "Nia said you were going into shock. Then, out of nowhere, you start jerking and screaming- your eyes wide open. It-it was like you were having a bad dream- but worse..." Sandi trailed off, at a loss for words.

The healer stared down at his hands, which now rested in his lap. His eyes traced over the faint scars from all the martial art classes he'd taken as a child, remembering how he got each one. Although, out of all the marks he had, his gaze landed on one particular one- a long white scar stretching from his wrist to his elbow . He'd gotten it, not during a class, but during his training as a healer.