Disclaimer: I still don't own it. Nothing new, eh?
Chapter seven.
I fell.
For some moments I lay on the dusty ground, fighting for breath. My ankle blazed with pain. The ground went in and out of focus and I…couldn't…breathe!
I tried to get up and couldn't. Collapsed back down, sobbing. My eyesight was blurry with tears and pain. I couldn't see…couldn't hear…and my foot was falling off, it had to be…
I still don't know how I did it. I just wanted to lie there. But somehow, somewhere, in some tiny, distant part of my brain, I knew I couldn't. Somehow, I knew I had to move. And somehow, gulping for air, I managed to twist myself over and slowly, painfully drag myself up onto my hands and knees.
I moved. I crawled, dragging one leg and then hissing, almost shrieking in pain. I hauled and dragged and pulled myself along and the effort almost killed me, but I did it. I made it to the cave.
My head spun. I hauled myself inside. I wasn't on my knees now, I was lying down and using my hands to get me across the stone floor, dragging myself I didn't know where. My head was spinning and my heart was pounding and my whole body was shaking. I tried to curl up and couldn't. Could barely roll onto my side.
My body flushed hot…cold…hot…
I was burning, I was freezing. I was sick.
Morph! I thought.
I promised, I thought.
Better break a promise than be dead, said my mind.
Morph! But morph what?
Anything. It didn't matter. I could morph anything I liked, because the only purpose was to save my life.
It didn't matter, so I chose squirrel at random.
I closed my eyes and focused.
Nothing happened.
I tried to morph. Tried again and again. But my concentration was shattering and I didn't have the strength. There was no energy left in me to start the morph, to turn me into a squirrel and save my life.
Too late, I realized how foolish I had been. Too late, I knew that I should have morphed when I collapsed, instead of using up my strength in dragging myself to perceived safety, to the shelter that was going to be my grave.
I had made a mistake, and this time it was going to be fatal.
I didn't want to die, but I was dying.
They say your whole life passes before your eyes when you die. It has some truth in it. I lay there, miles from everything I'd ever cherished, and saw…
I saw my mum, I saw my dad, and I wished that I could tell them I loved them. I saw Jake, I saw Rachel. I saw all the people I'd fought beside and valued.
Here, at the end of my life, was the only time I could tell what I was losing.
No one would know where I was. No one would come to find my body. No one would bury me, weep over me, send me to the grave. I would lie here, out in the woods, as my flesh decayed and my skin rotted, and in a year there would only be the bones to say that a girl named Cassie had died in this cave, in this place.
Maybe it was for the best. I would die, and my secrets would die with me. I would become part of the world I had fought for.
The world I could no longer fight for.
I closed my eyes to the rock walls, to the plants outside. I closed my eyes on my life. I closed…
I drifted…
Death came for me, and I saw it as a black figure that stretched out an arm to take me from my body.
Arms wrapped around me and lifted me.
And then I felt nothing anymore.
----
Something happened.
I was dimly aware of movement. I was being touched, turned. I felt it without feeling it, in the darkness of death.
Everything rushed away from me.
I opened eyes that did not belong to me and saw a whitish-green surface that vanished as darkness returned.
And then…at the edge of my mind, I sensed something wonderful.
And I heard, or thought I heard, the Ellimist laugh.
----
My body returned to me.
It was different. No pain.
I opened my eyes –my eyes, eyes that were mine again –and saw the cave where I had gone to die.
It was the same cave. But a few things had changed.
I frowned and sat up, and realized that something was wrapped around me. I tugged at it. It was a sheet of some thin, warm fabric. It had been pulled around me like a blanket. And something soft was lying on the floor of the niche in the wall. I was sitting on it.
I looked at my ankle, dreading what I'd see.
Nothing. The injury, the dreadful infection…gone. Nothing left to show for it but a few small cuts, half-healed, and covered with a kind of gel.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
I looked around at the cave again. My pack and jacket were where I'd left them, but there was a small bundle of cloth next to them, and what looked like a covered bowl beside that.
I should have been dead. And yet, here I was. Whole and well again. Apparently unharmed, and with strange objects in the place I'd fallen asleep.
How had it happened? Who had caused it to happen?
I got up. Moved cautiously, with the demands of habit.
I nudged the cloth bundle tentatively with my foot.
It didn't make sense.
Someone had to have come into the cave, seen me, helped me for unknown reasons, and then gone.
Who?
Whoever they were, they probably didn't mean me harm. If they had, why help me? I'd been dying. It must have been hard to bring me back.
I shook out the bundle.
It was a tunic, fairly shapeless but large enough to cover me from shoulder to knee.
The bowl turned out to contain a kind of thick soup and a sort of spoon.
The visitor had not only cured my ankle, they'd provided me with food, bedding, and clothing.
Why?
I didn't know. But I did feel hungry, so I ate the soup.
I tested my ankle. It was a little sore, but compared to the last couple of days it felt wonderfully, gloriously well.
There was a noise at the mouth of the cave. I looked up.
An alien, one of the ones I'd been watching, was standing there.
It looked straight at me, and I could've sworn it smiled.