The Lost

34- The Tent

Azure

When I heard the shriek of the zip, I was sure that my ears were clogged with water. The zip? As in, the door to one of the human tents? I must have been confusing the sound with the snapping of branches overheard, maybe a strike of thunder. Because I was almost certain that the universe couldn't be so cruel. The entire situation with the humans was awful enough, but to bring me back to this place was like spitting in the wound. I refused to believe that things could work out in such a way. Yet the sound I had heard was no lie, and neither was the light that suddenly flashed in my eyes. The human was opening his hands.

I was very much aware that sky was black, so the glow now on my face was certainly not the sun.

Before I had adjusted to the change of light, the ground tipped forwards, upheaving our group from were we had huddled beside each other. Utterly blind, I threw out my sopping-wet wings in some useless attempt stop my fall. They didn't work, as I had already known they wouldn't. By the time I had managed to drag them mere inches off of my back, my knees cracked against something. And it hurt.

I heard before I saw. There were cries from my friends as we slapped down onto the solid surface, but we were all equally blind in the light. Ow. My eyelids fluttered open and shut, snatching urgent glimpses of our surroundings before I was forced to blink again. Did I even want to look at where we were? Whatever surface I could feel below my palms was cold, smooth. Something within me cried out at the familiarity of it, remembering my old prison. A silent plea was breaking in my mind by the time I finally forced my eyes open, a reasonless hope that I wouldn't find walls of glass around us. Not again. Not again. Please not another prison; a repeat of the days spent trapped in a tent with the humans. I forced my eyes open despite the glaring light.

Mike was knelt at the door.
The sight of him made everything else seem suddenly rather irrelevant. Panting, he looked over his shoulder, one hand still pressed against the zipper that had been ripped closed, the other moping back the saturated strands of blonde hair that hung over his eyes. I could see his chest rising and falling rapidly, as if he was out of breath. Moving only a little slower than mine. As I sat, staring frozen at the person, the gulf between our sizes seemed to only become more apparent. Me, shivering like something half-dead on the table, water pooling around me— and him, on his knees and yet still towering over the reach of the table.
I knew this white plastic under me. The faded green sheets of fabric that arched overhead. They were being pummelled by the thick lashes of the storm that raged onwards. Outside... the rain was outside, because now, my friends and I were within the walls of a tent.
I dared to shoot a look behind me, eyes wide with unspoken fear. No glass walls, I had noted that almost instantly, with only a little relief to go with the realisation. We weren't locked up in a jar or cage just yet. Thankfully, I counted three winged figures behind me when I looked past my wings. A wide-eyed Wren was staring around us with some awful look that I couldn't understand plastered on their face. Something that contained every unpleasant emotion that I could think of. The tribe leader was disoriented by the suddenly gargantuan scale of everything around us, obviously freezing and most likely hurting after the pummelling from the floodwaters, probably not far off from being scared senseless.
I glanced behind Wren for just a second more and found Aspen arched over Rosin's motionless body. A protective embrace. She was safe in his arms, I was sure of it.

I whirled back round to the blonde human. With every breath, every blinking of my eyes, still the rain lashed on against the tent's sheet-walls. My arms felt weak when I looked at him again. We were protected from the tempest maybe, but now with a far more frightening enemy before us.

I could scarcely breathe when eyes fell on my tiny body, all of my limbs going numb with absolute terror. I didn't dare move. Probably couldn't even if I tried. And before I could even begin to fathom the horror of the situation, Mike was leaving his place beside the zip-door and coming towards the surface we were now on. Each and every step of the enormous person wracked the ground with shudders, shudders than ran straight up into me, and I was scrambling backwards before he had even come close. Not this again. The white surface below was exactly the same as it had been before. The artificial light, the walls, the zip that locked away the outside... the human. All of it— from the person now dropping back to his knees to come to our height, to the fear pulsating through me as he did— all of it was far too reminiscent of the nightmare from before.