"It hurts… It hurts… Hurts so much…"
Aranya was shaking, though she felt no cold. Her head swam, she felt dizzy, disoriented. Her mind felt clouded like it was full of smoke.
"Everything hurts!"
She ached all over, like every single piece of her had impacted with something as she had fallen out of the sky. Her breath was too shallow, it was a struggle to breathe. She felt heavy… So, so, so heavy…
Aranya knew she was lying down, but she couldn't say on what, it didn't feel like anything. The embers of her green eyes winked in and out of focus, the fringes of her lashes opening and closing like the wings of black butterflies, out of sync with each other. Her fingers curled into her coal-black hair, clutching her head. Tears streaked her face. So much pain. She could barely move.
One hand came away to brush something warm and bright beside her… Picking it up, she realized it was one of hers.
She reached to her shoulders, her wings. Her feathers, brilliant as the sun's fire, soft as the kiss of the lightest Netherwinds.
They were all slick with blood.
Aranya tried flexing them, and pain throbbed through her. She couldn't lift them, they felt too heavy. They stung as she brushed her fingertips over the bloodied feathers. She cried all the harder.
Her beautiful wings… Oh, how they hurt!
Things whispered to her, watched her. Aranya could sense them. Some were words of comfort, most she couldn't quite make out.
"No… no, go away…"
Something touched her, softly, gently. Like an animal trying to lick at her wounds.
"No!" Aranya's wings flared open, suddenly angry. Fire erupted and spread in a wave over the sun-bright plumes. "I don't need you!" She yelled to the space around her. How dare they look on her like this. How dare they see her…
Vulnerable.
Fury stoked the flames across the span of her wings, burning away the blood and cauterizing the wounds. Fury filled her head, and she felt clarity again. "I don't need any of you!" Aranya yelled, and with a powerful whoosh, her aching, heavy wings bore her aloft into the sky again.
The arcanist woke, sullen, from a dream. She rubbed her aching forehead, wanting a cup of tea in the worst way.
Had she been talking in her sleep? Merenylo had told her in the past that she sometimes did.
A shaky inhale, and she hauled herself up from bed.
Author's Note
I sometimes write stories for my phoenix-mage with metaphors, allegories. Things to cope with emotional or physical pain. I find writing easier sometimes than talking. Yesterday, I was handling some serious hurts from hypotension. Hypotension is defined in medicine as
hypotension hy·po·ten·sion (hī'pə-těn'shən) n.
Abnormally low arterial blood pressure. Also called hypopiesis .
Reduced pressure or tension of any kind, as of the intraocular or cerebrospinal fluids.
For me, it's a result of both anemia, and stress-fatigue from handling eight years of crap. Despite coping with stress in my head just fine, the body still experiences the stress reaction, which is why (much to my wounded pride last year, as some of you remember) stress-induced malady and conditions is not a Big Medica myth.
Low arterial pressure does affect blood flow to your brain, and thusly does fuck with your head sometimes. I fucking hate it. Oh yeah, and it makes everything ache like hell in the mornings.