Blood and Water | Neteyam

A Precarious Situation ∼ 34

Tcelia struggled to gain consciousness, her brain feeling muddled and extremely heavy. The two first things she noticed was a loud, annoying ringing in her ears and the fact that she was thirsty, her mouth bone dry.

As her brain slowly started to focus on her surroundings and grounded her in her body, she realized that she was lying on her stomach on a hard surface. Tcelia vaguely realized that it was odd. She couldn't recall having fallen asleep on something hard. Her cheek, pressed into the cool surface, made her body shiver as it felt the contradicting temperature in the warm air and the coolness of the floor.

She cracked her eyes open slowly, blinking several times before her eyes would focus. She was met by darkness, slightly illuminated by electric lights. She sat up instantly, her cheek making a strange suction noise as it unstuck from the floor. She regretted it immediately as waves of nausea rolled over her, and the throbbing in her head intensified. She groaned as she tried to place a hand to her forehead but to her horror, her hands jerked to a stop midair, rope tearing into her skin at the force. Her hands were securely tied together around a thick pipe that ran down the wall. Tcelia quickly ducked her head, bending over and bringing her head to her hands instead, squeezing her eyes shut, trying not to throw up.

Tcelia vaguely noticed that her forehead was sticky as her palm pressed to the skin. She cringed at the smell of blood that clouded around her, and she forced herself to breathe through her mouth so that everything would stop spinning around her.

Taking deep breaths in and out, the nausea and the spinning slowly started to dissipate, the throbbing in her head lessening slightly which allowed her mind to remember. Memories came crashing down around her, how they had swum with the tulkun, how a ship had appeared, how her and Ao'nung had been caught in a net and carried away, how she had forced Neteyam to let go. How Ao'nung had crumbled as he had been knocked out and then how she too had been taken down and forced unconscious.

A picture of Neteyam's desperate eyes through the small holes in the net flashed through her mind and Tcelia sucked in a sharp breath, feeling her concern for him twisting her heart. Actually, concern was too weak a word, she was terrified for him. Had he gotten away? Was he safe? Had he taken his family and left as she had asked him to do? Thinking of him was almost too painful for her to handle, and she shoved every thought of him away, sure that if she allowed herself to think of him another second, she would go crazy without the knowledge of knowing if he was safe.

Another face flashed across her mind and her gut twisted with worry.

At the thought of Ao'nung, she bit back the remaining nausea, clenching her jaw, and slowly straightened to look around – she needed to know if he was okay. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she could make out shapes of crates and containers around her. The air was filled with the sound of creaking metal and the rhythmic thud of the ship's engines.

She looked down at her hands, noticing that drying blood had caked the palm that had rested against her forehead. Glancing down at where her face had been resting on the floor minutes before, she noticed a pool of dryish blood smeared across the floor. Lowering her head, she rubbed at her cheek, thinking back to the sickening suction noise that had sounded as she had sat up, realizing that she had been lying in a pool of her own blood. As she ran her finger along the large gash by her hairline, she could only imagine how grim she must look, blood caking the left side of her face, barely dried in.

She forced herself to straighten up again, refusing to feel bad for herself. She looked around once again, adamant on coming up with a plan to escape. She refused to give up - Neteyam would be so disappointed in her if she did. Painfully shoving Neteyam away from her thoughts again she focused her mind on her surroundings.