Yay! It didn't take me a year to update! I am so awesome! Okay, enough about me. Yay for my great fans! You may be few, but you are definitely appreciated. Thanks so much to Backroads, FaylinnNorse, and teardrop456. I hope this one had enough action, teardrop, cause it was…interesting…to write. It's amazing how a story can grab you.
Chapter 13
I tossed in my sleep; my body twisted anxiously, but somehow I couldn't wake up. Someone was dying, someone was hurting so very badly, and there wasn't a single thing I could do to help. All this training, all this learning, and I still had nothing to give. I'd dreamed for a moment that I could stop it, could stop the death, but I couldn't. No one could. The screaming was filling me up, till there was no place left for my thoughts, my mind, for me. There was only that drenching sense of failure, or irreparable loss. Please, just stop. Stop hurting. But they wouldn't.
And it was all too familiar.
Sitting up with a gasp, I choked back the whimpers that wanted to rise. My skull pounded with the force of the pain. I cradled my head in my hands, waiting for the dream to abate, to drain away and leave me some momentary quiet. But it didn't. My mind might split apart from the tension, but the stress wouldn't drain away.
"Annalynne? Annalynne? What is the matter now?" Avima spoke as gently as she could, which almost sounded false when she was so often curt. I could sense the impatience seeping through. Time was going on, and running short. Maybe she had sat there beside me while I slept, just waiting for me to drag myself out and go again.
"Annalynne?" she murmured again. "Come, you must overcome this. Yes, your realization struck deep, perhaps painfully so, but it was also unavoidable. You must accept the fact that despite all the powers you've attained, you will never be a god, or you will never progress to the point you must reach. Annalynne? Are you listening to me?"
"Yes." I snapped it, still trying to keep my skull together. Could she not hear them, shrieking in the silence? What was happening? "My head...hurts."
"You have been under a great deal of stress lately; a headache is quite understandable. However, it will fade, and we need to begin for the day. Time--"
"Yes, I know! Time is running short! Destiny descends upon us like a howling mob! I must learn to use the force, oh wise Jedi Master!" My sarcasm was completely lost on her, of course.
Just let me breathe for a moment. Let me...come to grips with this. Maybe if I rested a little longer my head would stop pounding so hard, maybe the dream would fade away...but the intensity of the attack on my brain only increased. I gritted my teeth so hard that I could feel them creaking, but that didn't stop the tears leaking from my eyes. Somewhere, behind all of the pain, a part of me was mortified at having cried in front of Avima, who was always so strong. So strong that she couldn't possibly understand how much it hurt, knowing that despite all the superhero-like powers I gained, I could not stop death. Everything else but this seem muddled, buried in mist. The knowledge seemed to burn into me, making me cringe in the face of my inadequacy.
Through the haze, I vaguely noticed Avima's head dart up, her eyes scanning the surrounding trees. Her eyes lost any sympathy they had, turning hard as a fossilized oak.
"Annalynne?" she asked once again, but this time her voice hummed with energy, a powerful energy. A frightened energy.
"Do...do you feel that?"
She could feel it, too? Despite what I'd desperately told myself, the pain was not going away, the terrible fear and panic would not calm. A small voice in my head whispered, saying that this was not a new situation, that I'd dealt with something like this before, but it took me a while to place it. I just couldn't focus through the combination of pain and guilty sadness. I had hurt Avima, I had broken something that I couldn't fix even with everything I'd learned, and I ached with the knowing. Finally, however, a memory did come clear.
Sheer panic, blind and inescapable. I could feel cool stone behind my arched back, but also the warm prickle of thorny vines, the piercing pain as I struggled to escape. Looking down, seeing the trap I was in, seeing the rose tendrils snared around my paws...
The forest. The fear. The rabbit.
The fierce desperation I'd felt from it then was terribly similar to what was happening now, except that now it was so much stronger. I didn't think I could stand without just falling down again. Not on these legs.
I looked down at my legs, and was horrified to see the skin bubbling, bright red and shiny. At the same time, my bark burned and charred into ash, drifting from my body in the wind from the blaze that I knew was eating me. I could feel my hair singe and my eyes dry out as a tremendous wave of heat engulfed me, so heavily that I couldn't breathe. Twisting up from the ground, I looked for the nearest body of water, desperate to cool the burning that overwhelmed me. As I stumbled off, Avima grabbed my arm and spun me around.
"This is not the time to run away, Annalynne! What do you feel?"
"It burns," I cried, past being ashamed. "It's all over me, my skin, I have to put it out, it hurts too much!" I tried to yank away from her, but she held tight.
"NO! You are not burning. Look at yourself! Nothing is happening to you!"
I looked at the arm she held, and for a moment it looked healthy and fine, but then all I could see was blackened skin, with more starting to smoke and redden. Why couldn't she see this?! Why...But then I remembered again. The rabbit. The panic. My leg, caught and trapped, jabbed by fierce thorns. No, not mine. Not my leg. Someone else's legs, someone else's skin, blistered and burning. More easily than I'd imagined possible, the horror drained into a section of my brain, just like last time. Only one, vital message was left clear. West.
Wind roared past my ears, and branches whipped past me before I even realized what I'd done. I streaked above the treetops, desperately staring for the chaos, but it wasn't hard to find. Black smoke roiled up into the sky, tainting the sky an unhealthy gray. Not daring to wait for Avima and her time-wasting questions, I darted away across the sky.
As I grew nearer to the devastation, the pain and panic in a corner of my mind increased as well, pushing me faster forward and making me gasp, as the burning sensation washed over me again.
I dove in without hesitation, forgetting fear in my desperation to stop the screaming, and the pain.
All I could see was smoke, dark as pitch, but all I could feel was fire.
The sense of death roiled into me, leaving me standing paralyzed for endless seconds. I stood in a clearing of blackened destruction, all the life as dark as that in the piece of Avima that I'd snapped off. Streams of fire fanned through the trees on the outer rim, and it was the trees I could feel dying in my head, the beautiful life draining out of them as quickly as it had out of the others. The trees were screaming, and something else. Someone else.
I didn't know what to do. The sheer power of the fire was overwhelming, ferocious and hungry, and I could hardly even handle my horror at the lives that had already been lost. My outer layer of leaves began to brown and shrivel in the suffocating heat, but that could only be a taste of what my trees...my trees...were feeling. The panic that I hadn't allowed for the last few minutes begin to rise again, threatenting to choke me, but every second lost was crucial and irretrievable. I couldn't waste anymore time being so weak. Desperately, I did the only thing that I could think of. I grabbed hold of the life essence within me, and hurled it at the little section of flames in my view. I don't know what I expected to do, but I would die rather than do nothing.
There was just so much I didn't know.
At first, nothing changed. As my essence flew through the burning branches, the flames barely paused in their chaotic massacre, and all I could feel was more death. I wanted to cry, but the billowing heat dried the tears before they could even leave my eyes. I couldn't stand it again, I could not stand it, if I had to stand still again while the life flowed away. But I had no idea of what else I could do.
Suddenly, a film of green flooded into view. For a moment, my heart leaped as I imagined I'd given the trees some ability to fight back, before I realized that the green wasn't leaves, but vines. Vines, from back behind the burn line, flooding from the forest floor and snaking up the burning trees, suffocating lines of fire, encasing sweltering orange and red in vibrant green. I could feel the new pain from the vines as they were scorched, but it wasn't as strong as the death. They were so many, and so strong, that it couldn't kill them. They would heal. I would heal.
The flames glowed through the spaces between vines, but I pushed more essence at the vines, and the holes disappeared until there was no fire left. Relief rose in me, but was just as quickly swallowed by hopelessness. Yes, I had put out the fire. On one, single tree. One, solitary tree, and I could already feel a little of the drain on my power. How would I ever save them all?
But I couldn't afford to pause and doubt. Fiercely, I gathered more and more of the life essence and sent it to the next tree, and the next. Saving one tree at a time was the only thing I could do.
Suddenly, behind me I felt life flare up, where before I'd only felt the wall of encroaching death. I spared a glance over my shoulder, and my heart lept at the sight. More vines were twining around the trees there, vines that I hadn't infused with power. I didn't know how I'd managed to do that, but I wasn't going to stand around and question it. With a little more hope in my heart, I turned to my next tree, but as I worked to save it something appeared in the corner of my eye. Something living, glowing with power. I stiffened in shock, before recognizing the determined presence. Avima. And then, all around me, I felt powerful bursts of life, shooting into the trees and helping me. It was more power than I'd ever felt concentrated in one place, and for the first moment since I'd entered this desolate clearing, I felt something stronger than despair. The fire could be stopped. The life could be saved. Avima and I were not alone.
As the pain of the trees grew less, as the power of the life essence made its mark, I felt something different. Something I'd felt before, but I hadn't had time to figure it out. Now, however, this different cry in my head came clear as the trees quieted. It came from somewhere still ahead, deep in the flames that whipped free. Someone, hurt so badly--
--Annalynne! Focus! This isn't done yet!-- Avima's voice cut across my thoughts. Her words were harsh and fearful, but that wasn't surprising in the situation. Still, I shoved them to one side to get a grasp on what I was feeling. The source burned into me, and I could see my legs in my head again, blistered and raw, could feel the unimaginable pain. Then there was a deep groan in my head, and I could feel the life dimming.
I had more power left, and I could feel that the fire was almost gone, with the help of the other Forest Intimates. They could handle it, but the life that I could sense trickled away faster and faster, spurring me to action without thought.
I darted from the center of the destruction, fast as only the wind could make me, and dove into one of the last havens of the fire, soaring on verdant wings.
--Annalynne! NO!!--Avima roared in my head. The force of it was a gale, making me physically stumble in the face of its power. But I couldn't stop. I wouldn't let something die because I did not do what little I could. Not anymore.
I paved the way before me with the vines, quenching the fire towards my goal. Even as I did so, I began to reach the last reserves of my life essence, but the fire had not had time to spread too far, so it wasn't long before I found what I was looking for.
A...a human body. Scorched so badly that I couldn't even tell what sex it was anymore, much less if it was anyone I had used to know. I swooped down beside, immediately forcing the last dregs of my power out through my hands, placing them as gently as I could on the weakly rising chest. Slowly, painfully slowly, I could feel damage begin to mend with the life. Skin struggled to grow and reknit itself, covering blackened tissue. Blisters swelled, burst, and then healed over into shiny ovals. As the skin became whole, hair follicles were stimulated, and thin fuzz began to appear, light and fine even in the dusky atmosphere. Muscles, decimated by the fire, grew stronger and larger, making up for the lost matter.
The feeling as I healed that body was beyond description. I thought I'd felt joy before, but never this ecstasy. Never this sense of right.
The body was by no means perfect by the time I felt my power give out, but it was not nearly so close to death. Unfortunately, the remainder of my energy had had to focus on the internal parts of the body. It still looked horribly painful, with wide raw patches and blisters weeping. Gathering it up, I turned without thought to stumble towards town. If I could just get it...him...there, I could leave him somewhere where he could be found and taken care of. If I could only make it. To. Town.
How did I know where town was? How was I going to find my—It didn't matter right now. I was so tired I wasn't sure I would make it there anyway.
I couldn't remember ever being this exhausted before. This was deeper than weary muscles, deep to my center where my power was born. I had given as much of it as I could, and it had taken a toll. I focused on putting one foot in front of the other, praying that I wouldn't just fall down and stay there.
I did eventually make it, but even going as quickly as I could it seemed to take an eternity. The boy twitched and moaned everytime I jostled him, and his semi-conscious agony stabbed at me. I almost sobbed when I saw a human house through the trees, and then a street light, and a stop sign.
I stumbled the last few feet into a backyard and carefully laid down the boy on a patch of green grass. Anxious to get him help, I lurched to the backdoor and banged on it with both fists, before rushing quickly back towards safety.
I was forcing my limbs back to the woods, past the body, when something caught my attention, but I forced my weary brain back into focus and stumbled into the trees. Hopefully, another human would answer my knock at any moment, and I didn't think the focus should be on me and my viney appearance, rather than the boy's injuries.
It was only as I stood, hidden in shadow, that I was able to think about what I had seen, what had grabbed at me from that boy. Some strange, sharp color, like the sky had fallen to the ground...A woman emerged from the house, found the boy, and immediately rushed back inside, hopefully to dial nine-one-one. As sirens sounded in the distance, she ran back out and gingerly laid a blanket over the boy's semi-healed flesh. Over his pale, unprotected body. On a body as naked as a new-born, where could I have seen that weird flash of blue?