Warmth.
There is such a peculiar feeling when blood runs through your fingers. How strange it is when a thin, curving line of warmth runs down your arm. Such a contrast to a screaming gash on the shoulder. "It hurts!" I cried as my left arm received the same anointing as my right.
"I know, I know," Papa cooed, "but it's necessary." He whispered this, and he asked me to be quiet as well. I fought back the urge to cry out, for it wouldn't take much for our location to be announced. Papa had taught me that raiders where always on the horizon. I winced as the hook pierced my flesh near the wound, aching almost as much as the gash as it reemerged beneath the cut and dragged a thread through. "Hush hush. It's just a cut."
"But why, Papa?" Hurt was no stranger to me. I couldn't remember when I met hurt; I figured I had known him since birth. Perhaps hurt was my friend, but I reluctantly accepted the notion because he was not a kind one. Nevertheless, every time we found an abandoned structure to spend the night in, father attempted to make hurt and me closer friends. "Why do we have to do this all of the time?" Papa tied the last suture and snipped the excess, set down his reddened tools, and looked into my eyes.
"I've known pain for a long time," he sighed as he brought up a hand to stroke the side of my face. "I was very different when I was your age. Always food on my plate, never a need to look over my shoulder, not a care in the world. I had luxuries then. Luxuries I don't have now. And those luxuries hurt me very much when they where taken away." He pulled his hand from my face to his sleeve to tear off a piece of fabric. "That's why you have to hurt now. When you're young. If you learn pain now, get into it's head, and defeat it, you'll never hurt again." He gently pressed the cloth to my shoulder and began to stroke, gently wiping the blood away. The rag moved up and down my arm with a care that only a loving parent could provide."You'll be strong."
His gentle caresses not only cleaned but soothed my arm. Soothed my soul. Somehow, each light stroke took a little pain with it. Each stroke up and down was a trading of feeling. Such a peculiar feeling.
________
Cold.
It's unnaturally cold. The world I was born into was a world of fire; it was never not blazing hot. The air around me feels like I'm in a bucket of ice water. My eyes shoot open, and I begin to scan the room around me, only for my view to be obstructed by cloth.
Wait, a cloth? This is too clean to be cloth, too soft and to pure. All cloth is soiled and bloodstained; I've never come across anything so clean. I follow the cloth from in front of my face to beneath my head. By some means, my head is being supported. I lift myself with some struggle to examine this foreign device. And foreign it very much is. Beneath me lies some sort of mass of cloth, square-shaped and puffing. Cautiously I prod it with a finger. The mass pushes back with my touch, giving little resistance of its own. It is a sensation I can only relate to skin or an uncovered abdomen. Is this a body? Who would wrap a body in cloth, and how could they keep the cloth so clean.
I then realize that I am suspended above the ground on a much larger mass similar to this one, yet much more firm. Draped over me is another cloth, yet this one bewilders me. Never have I seen a cloth so large, yet somehow it is of a solid color. It is as if this treasure has been untouched; such a useful device would be ripped apart by competitive wanderers.
Removing the cloth, I find that I have been stripped of my clothing. Horror strikes through me. Not again. Not this again. Being a woman meant your were something to be hunted in the wasteland, and I had not been uncaught. Memories dart through my head as I come to realize where I am.
Naked. Ropes. Many men. Many men over me. Pounding. Escape. Escape. Escape. Attack. Kill. Blood. Lots of blood. Red room of blood.
I scream at my racing heart to shut up. Panic attacks such as this are familiar to me, for they are just a part of life. Nevertheless, I still lack control over them. As a slowly bring my pulse down to an acceptable level, I begin to plan my course of action. Running my fingers through my short hair, I ignore the fact that it's normal matted texture has been replaced with a smooth, silky one. Soon, I find what I am looking for, and pull a bobby pin from my head. I straighten it out and snap it in half. I always keep a bobby pin in my hair; there's never a situation when you don't need to pick a lock. Papa taught me that.
I scan the room for an exit, finding a large wooden door a few meters from where I'm laying. I leap from the soft structure and attack the lock, ignoring the ungodly cold from the unbelievably large, flat stone the floor is made out of. As I pick the lock, I continue my scan of the room; multitasking makes for survival. My eyes land on a window to the right of the bed, somehow sharing the attributes of the rest of the features of the room by consisting of full, unbroken glass.
That's when I stop. The pin halves fall from my grasps as I stare in bewilderment. I rise and approach the window to gaze upon something I had only heard about in stories.
Green. The horizon is green. The land stretching to the horizon is green. Everything is green. The world had become an unearthly, bright, vivid green. My mind is frozen. All my life, I had known desert. The desert was my mother. An unforgiving, cruel mother, but a mother nonetheless. If you knew her, and knew her well, she would feed you. Alongside Papa, I was raised by that mother. And now, that mother is gone. She is replaced by some green thing I now nothing of. I am an orphan. I have no idea how to survive.
My trance is broken by the bolt of the door clicking open. I realize that I am naked and unarmed, and I'm about to face my captor. The door pushes open. I have no time to react.
My fist slams into the window, shattering the glass into its natural broken state. I grab the biggest shard I can and point it to the door, bracing myself for an unfair fight. Yet again, I am left speechless.
Before me is a white horse, yet I refuse to call it one. I've never seen a horse with a forehead-spear and wings. Its frame is tall and slender, its features too perfect to be attributed to such an animal. Its aura of majesty is only increased by a long, multicolored mane that flows in a nonexistent breeze, not appearing to be of hair but of some unknown energy. But what captures me are the eyes. It's eyes rest on a forward-looking face, the irises outnumbered by the whites. Those are not the eyes of an animal. Those are the eyes of a person.
This creature stands before me, it's large, keen eyes fixed on the shard in my hand and the blood flowing through my fingers. It's bewilderment matches mine. "Stay back! Stay the fuck back!" I scream, and it's head cocks to the side at my demands. It can't understand my words, but somehow I know it understands my demeanor. I series of sounds escape its lips, soft and with cadence only language can carry. It cocks it's head again at my lack of reaction, and we both come to understand the communication barrier in place.
I hold my ground. I've killed and eaten everything under the sun whether it could speak or not. The law of the land is to eat or be eaten. And I know that if it breathes, it must eat. If I don't kill it first, it'll kill me. Before I can even begin to lunge at the thing, it's horn lights with a bright gold energy, and I feel myself begin to weaken. I drop the glass and fall to my knees; my muscles are starting to feel hollow. Another golden energy envelopes me, and I am lifted from the floor and back onto the big soft thing. My head is rested on the little soft thing and the enormous cloth is draped back over me. My mind screams at my body to struggle, but my body has gone deaf to my brain's orders.
My mind races at a hundred miles an hour as another panic attack sets over me. I've lost before the fight has even begun, and now this thing is going to kill me. My heart leaps as I feel a mass press down behind me and my hyperventilating grows. This is it. I'm going to die.
A soft, fuzzy hoof gently lands on my back; I wince at the unexpected touch.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die. Die. Die. Die.
I brace myself for the hoof to be pulled back and slammed into by back to sever my spine.
Die. Die. Die.
The hoof glides down my back, then back up. It glides back down, then up again. My breathing stops. Up, then down. The motion's gentleness and care take me off guard. Down, then up.
If this thing is going to kill me, this isn't going to work. Is it going to kill me? Don't be silly, everything wants to kill me, this thing is no exception. But why is it doing this, then? Why is it taking its time? Is it taking its time? What is it doing?
The up and down stroking continues as a soft hiss comes from behind.
Is it sushing me? Why is it working?
The gentle caresses slide up and down my exposed back, the fur stimulating every nerve to bliss. My breathing slows. I had not noticed my breath had returned, neither had I noticed that my arm had magically healed as well.
I know this is wrong. I know that every fiber of my being should be on guard, but for some reason they're not.
The hoof glides down my back again, bringing my eyes slowly with it. Slowly, I am lulled to sleep by an unknown feeling brought about from the stroking. I have known hurt for so long that I had forgotten any other feeling existed. I don't know this feeling. It's such a peculiar feeling.
