Aseka wakes up, feeling like she's falling into the sky, lost halfway
in a dream where Mother holds her. She feels Beatrix relieved to feel
the touch of her mind again, and sand between her toes, and the
bright warm sun on her face and belly, but she can't figure out when
it happens, if it's her life or her memory. Someone touches her
throat, light as a feather, moving up over her chin and the side of
her face. It makes her smile.
One bit at a time the world falls into place. Her staff is still in
her hand, somehow, at her side. Beatrix hides ten meters away,
squeezed in between the water surface and the sand floor. Aseka lies
less than a hundred meters west of the last place she remembers. Past
the sandy beach there's forest covering the land as far as she's
aware, strong straight tall trees with thick leaves whispering
quietly, wild old land teeming with all sorts of life. She recognizes
several flocks of wolves though she's never seen them, foxes and
bears and flightless birds and wolverines and massive sloths and
more, stranger things. And she finds her eyelid muscles and looks.
A strange face looks down on her, shining red eyes under a deep and
worried brow, large round lips twisting into a gentle smile even as
Aseka feels herself smiling, with wonder. A band of round marks of
some sort fleck the stranger's burnished brown cheeks, freckles or
maybe burns, and she fights down the impulse to touch them. She has
never seen anyone like this girl and never anything so beautiful, and
a breath catches in her throat and the hand still brushing against
her cheek feels so good and it doesn't occur to her to try to speak,
or move.
I would definitely want to read more of this. Wonder where you're going with it.
ReplyDelete- Jihadi Colin from the Curmudgeon.
You're in luck, since I'm now inspired to pick it up again. Thanks!
Delete