A Tall and Small Collection | Soren

Awakened

Nightmarish and torrent, Soren tossed and turned, his sleep unrestful. He was hot and wanted nothing more than to tear off his clothes and dive into the snow outside. The other part of him craved the warmth. His body twitched and convulsed every time a rush of cold surrounded him. He felt as though his skin was crawling, being brushed by thousands of irritating feathers constantly.

His breath was rough, and he woke himself coughing only to be dragged back into darkness. His throat felt glossy and coated, as though no amount of water could wash away the grime caking his insides.

Moments in time seemed to flash before his eyes, making him flinch away. There were moments of sharp, agonizing pain. There were shadows and sensations of falling or rising up, being completely weightless. There were moments of complete darkness, but they didn't last as long as Soren wanted.

At least in the darkness he didn't have to see their faces – the faces of his brothers. The same scene played in the pauses of darkness. He could see his brothers. His voice wouldn't scream. His legs could not move. All he could do was stay frozen in time before the shadow overtook him.

He would try shouting again, this time calling to his brothers, for anybody, to help him. No one would come. Soren was left alone every time to be consumed by the darkness. Heart pounding, breath hot and ragged, body shaking and aching to its core, he would slip back into darkness only to repeat the cycle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Soren couldn't bring himself to open his eyes. It wasn't because of the last thing he saw. It wasn't because of what he thought he would see. It was because his eyes, like the rest of his body, hurt. It was a deep, aching hurt as though he had stared at the sun and climbed an entire oak tree in a day.

Coming to consciousness was the least of his worries. A wave of confusion scrambled his mind. Where was he? What happened? He thought he remembered what happened. Or was everything a dream? Why was his skin crawling? Why couldn't he move his leg? Everything hurt, especially his leg. He squinted, eyelashes obscuring some of his vision.

He noticed, first, that the ceiling and the walls towered above him. He blinked several more times. Something was restraining his leg from bending, but the way it was throbbing subtly made moving it seem like a bad idea. The rest of his body was lightly restrained, but his grasping fingers slightly identified the restraint as a soft blanket. The surface he was on was soft and perfectly outlined his body.

It hit him all at once. His mind, still slightly foggy, cleared. His eyes shot open. He was not home. He was out – in the human world.

His head throbbed lightly as he glanced around in his periphery. From what he could tell, he was in some kind of cardboard box that used to belong to tissue paper. There was no lid, thank goodness, but there were low walls on each side of him. His heart began to pound in his chest, quivering as though it were pumping air.

The ground was made of some kind of soft, squishy material which was much nicer than anything he had borrowed for bedding in a long time. There was a strange taste in his mouth, but he couldn't place it. It was slightly salty, but it didn't taste like blood.

Soren reached up past the blanket and touched his chest and felt along his arms. These limbs seemed to be intact. His mind, firing wildly, became blank as the mortifying thought came to him – the pain in his leg. Was the pain there because his leg was throbbing? Or was there pain because it was gone?

Carefully, he reached out with his foot and pressed. Sure enough, his toes found something stiff and, to his relief, still attached. He nudged carefully with his unincumbered foot, feeling a quick jolt of pain ripple through his body. [Still attached. Still there.]