BREATH . OF . LIFE . ~ { ReGenisis Chronicles Book I }

Chapter Two [Part 2/5]: Waking Up

                     -Kate Firethorn-

For a long while I felt nothing. Saw nothing. I could taste and hear nothing.

But slowly that began to change.

There was a sudden pang, it stretched through my body, a poison making my veins burn. Then I felt myself take a breath, the oxygen igniting in my lungs. The tissue buzzed as if it were recieving a million little electric shocks. 

The progression to feeling was different after that first breath.

My whole body tingled numbly. Pins and needles pricking me all over. The static was enough to make my heart, which had been slow and patient, thrum. It ached, the muscle learning to work again, differently now. Faster. 

As the tingling slowly died down I felt as if I were floating in some in between. Like being held up in the embrace of gentle water. Static in my ears as outside noises started to drift through my mind, garbled and heavy. 

                  *  *  * 

After some time, that I could describe as a matter of moments as well as, on stretching, endless years, I imagined being joined in this odd serenity. 

Warm arms had constricted around me. They cradled me firmly like a child.

I could hear pressed up against my ear the comforting echo of a heartbeat. That same beat shuddered through me, waking something up that had been dormant until now. My own heart seemed to respond to it by speeding and lulling in turn. As if this heart and mine were speaking to each other.

Those arms constricted around me a little tighter for a moment, before slowly they let me down on to soft, cold leaves. I could smell the decay up my nose, the earth beneath it and the warmth of  damp bark coming off the trees I imagined around me.

It was odd to notice so much without ever opening my eyes. If this were my in between, it made my mouth water for more. Made me thirst to wake up and explore my new heightened senses. 

My head was rested back last of all, a hand slipping out from the skin at the nape of my neck smoothly. My skin rippled under the cool fingertips as they parted from me.

Gentle lips touched my forehead for a second, this time a buzz of electricity coursed through my body warmingly. I felt my eyelids and my stiff fingers twitch. 

Soft words were whispered, warm breath tickling my skin as if charged with static. My lips tingled from the closeness. 

"It's time to wake..."  

I inhaled the taste of the words, oddly sweet in my mouth. 

Then that sweet breath disappeared along with the sound of the heartbeat and a rich, lulling scent that hung around the air this entity had inhabited. 

My eyes slowly opened to a dark night, lit only by a solitary street lamp a few yards away. They widened staring above at the blue velvet, mixed with faint traces of violet and splats of sparkling white diamonds in the sky. The stars were not usually so visible from here. Neither had I ever seen them looking so heavenly and ethereal.

By the trees out of the corner of my vision I could somehow tell I'd been laid a good mile up the trail from where I'd been surrounded by those men. 

I took down a huge gasp of air after feeling as if I had held off inhalation for an age. That burning sensation returned and subsided within my lungs, hungry for air to feed off of. 

Blinking a few times, I sat up swiftly. My actions fluid, instead of achy and stiff as I'd expected them to be.

My heart juddered so hard in my chest like a birds wings battering against a cage it's trying to escape.