The Story Of Sarelle: The Immortal Years »

Chapter 48

In a distant place, on a date unknown.

Trees. They blew and wind howled, a storm, a pathetic fallacy of myself.

Soil.

Raindrops.

Lightning. Or was I the lightning? I felt so charged, as if my very being was at one with the central energy of the earth. I wasn't singular anymore, I felt like I was eveything and nothing at the same time. I was a disintegration of molecules and yet I knew I had to still be me, still whole, somehow. And always I felt him beside me, his hand in mine. Clenched to the point of pain but comforting.

Pain. It was unbearable, ravenous for my screams, yet its hunger was never sated.

Darkness.

Pain. It has no mercy yet with each moment I feel it my body grows to endure it, enjoy it. Pain begins to develop flavours and differences, sharp, aching, rolling through me. Each is different and each exerts a new form of torture.

Concrete.

City lights.

Alley.

Fire.

Darkness. My eternal friend.

This had been the cycle my body had run through.

Time was distorted to a point that seconds felt like hours and hours felt like split moments. Everything was fracturing, causing me to jump repetitively, or at least that's all my mind could comprehend beyond the agony.

My body was in a constant flux of numb peace and electric sparks. In the times when I was paralysed in a new scene, I would feel nothing. Not even a breeze on my face but then the electricity would pulse again, and I would fall off the stable dimension of time and space into a place too obscure to belong in the physical world. There we burned but he never made a sound. He took it all and still he held my hand, offering whatever reprieve he could.

Every limb raged with fire that threatened to leave me as nothing but ashes, blackened, and scarred

With every jump I had one short moment of recognition before the energy started to build and everything I knew became muddled.

My breathing was panting now as we lay in dim sunlight, trees surrounding us while my body rested in the forest debris. All I could do was lie in my broken state, the acidic tears building but never pouring down my face as I watched the clouds race through the sky. I could feel nothing as if my whole body was in that state of numbness before pins and needles. Nothing but the pressure of his presence beside me. I couldn't see him and sometimes I wondered if he was really there, but in moments like these his presence was so strong I knew he was real.

My ears were filled with a faint buzzing like static ran through the air around me, though I could hear sounds that distorted and changed from nearly silent to crystal clear. It was as if my head was being repeatedly taking in and out of water.

Be strong, Kvetina. Endure this. The voice in my head was soft but pained, strong but comforting.

A spike shot through me and my paralysis lifted enough for my screams to burst free. I knew they did because my throat ripped at their force, but somehow my ears registered nothing but silence. Was I deaf to my own pain, or was my body so broken that my voice no longer made sound?

A crack sounded somewhere close by but I could do nothing but lie helplessly in the dirt while its creator neared me. My body thrashed against my will, although I could feel nothing that caused it. The paralysis was back. I was nothing physical, just my mind although I knew my body existed as a solid object in this place.