Darkness. Stillness. Silence. For two weeks now, Tegryn had felt nothing but those three things. He hadn't felt so peaceful in a very long time. 'Am I... dead?' he wondered.
BA...DUMM.
A strange but familiar sound from his own chest gradually raised him from his long slumber. What was that? He tried hard to remember.
BA...DUMM.
That's it. It was his heart beating. So he wasn't dead after all, just aching... a lot. 'Ooh, what happened? Where am I? I... I remember a forest...' he thought to himself.
As he slowly returned, he could feel he was laying on something. Something soft and flat. Was he still by the lake? No, this wasn't grass. It was some sort of fabric... cotton perhaps? He was... he was on a bed.
Then amongst his pain, he became aware of something else. Something pleasant. Something was touching his right hand. Something warm... smooth... soft. Someone else was there. He could feel a faint warm breath passing over his knuckles.
He struggled to open his eyes. The darkness was overtaken by a blinding white blur. He closed his eyes, then opened them again, trying to get himself used to this new light. He was in some sort of room. Sunlight poured in through a window. He looked down towards his right hand... sure enough, a girl was asleep at the side of his bed, facing away from him, her head resting on his forearm as she held his hand. He could see that whoever it was had pigtails... could this be the girl he saw earlier?
Instinctively, he gently squeezed her hand which was still holding his. She gently moaned, then realising what she had just felt, lifted her head up and turned around sleepily. There was Tegryn, smiling wearily at her. Her face lit up like a beacon.
"You're awake!" she beamed.
At last, his eyes allowed her face to come into focus. He could see her so clearly now... her large dark cheeky-looking eyes, her pretty smile... she was beautiful.
He gasped at this memorising vision before him... then winced in pain. He had realised the hard way that when half your ribs are broken, gasping like that was not a good idea. He also became aware of his left arm, tied up in a sling - his shoulder was broken from where he hit that tree.
His body was a mess, but right at this moment he didn't really care.