The Pain

Pain. All she could feel was pain--immeasurable, all-consuming pain that radiated all through her body, from the tips of her fingers and toes to the top of her head. As much as she wanted to go on, to continue, there was nothing more she could do. Having already fallen to the ground, in utter exhaustion, she found her will was not enough to lift her agonizing body up off of the leaf covered forest floor. Her eyes wouldn’t even open, so how in the world could she possibly manage to get her disagreeable limbs to push up from her prone position and continue on her way. No, she wasn’t going anywhere.

As she lay there, darkness overcoming her, the wind stirring what was left of her cropped, dark hair, the idea that she couldn’t quite recall what she was running from came to mind. All she could remember was that she was afraid, deathly afraid, and having seen an opportunity to run, she’d done exactly that. Now, having fallen more times than she could count, striking her head on a tree trunk and then on the cold, hard ground, the memories of what she was fleeing had somehow shaken loose so that she couldn’t remember much of anything at all. Fuzzy thoughts filled her mind, as she faded away, not even her own name coming to mind.

The crunching of leaves in the distance brought her around, along with a strong odor, one that was vaguely familiar, but not quite the same as the one that was secreted away in the back of her mind. That overwhelming sense that she needed to run filled her mind again, but her body refused to cooperate. She was not going anywhere. If those approaching were truly the ones that she was running from, she was doomed to be taken back to wherever it was she’d worked so hard to escape from.

“What is that?” A whispery voice filled her mind, and she realized she wasn’t hearing this voice with her ears. Rather, it was coming to her through her mind, something she’d only heard about before but was fairly sure she’d never experienced, not that her memories had come back to her. They hadn’t. Still, this seemed unfamiliar.

“It’s a girl,” another voice said. “Or… a woman.”

“Where the hell did she come from?” a third voice asked, this one male and louder than the other two.

“Who the hell knows,” the first voice said. This one was a male also, but not as strong as the other--more hesitant. “She looks like she’s in pretty bad shape.”

“We need a healer.” That was the second voice again, a female.

“A healer? For all we know, she’s a human.” The loud male seemed very close to her now. She tried to open her eyes, to look at him, but no matter how hard she tried to move her eyelids, nothing happened.

“We can’t just leave her here. Besides, she doesn’t smell like a human, not exactly,” the gentler of the males said.

Their voices started to blend together as her mind went fuzzy again, and the next thing she knew, she felt something warm and soft against her body, and then even though she truly would’ve rather lied there in the woods and died, she was being lifted and could tell they were moving her though she was unable to open her eyes or say anything at all to let them know how much everything hurt and how grateful she would be if death just claimed her now.

As her mind began to fade again, it occurred to her that though she had initially feared these creatures, because of their similarities to whomever she’d been running from, these were not the ones who’d harmed her and caused her to run away. No, as she was carried away, potentially toward healing and safety, her last, jumbled thoughts were that perhaps these creatures were not so bad after all.