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augustines2014-04-16 02:58 pm
smithereens) wrote in augustines2014-04-16 02:58 pm
Entry tags:
tell me you love me, come back and haunt me.
.
.
.
Cleo didn’t know where she found the strength to drag him even the few steps she managed, his blood trailing out behind him in a wide smear. Something wild and desperate overtook her, her pulse racing, and she had to force herself to think, to think, because hysterics weren’t going to save him.
“Damiyr, please--don’t die--you can’t die,” she babbled incoherently, her strength finally running out. Every instinct in her body resisted leaving him behind, but she knew she had to get help before it was too late, before--
She probably looked like a madwoman, running into the middle of the village smattered in fresh blood and shouting in the common tongue; it took her a few seconds to remember the word for help in Nerahati, but by that time people were already peeking out of their homes, eyes wide. One woman came rushing towards Cleo, speaking so hurriedly in Nerahati that Cleo had no chance of deciphering anything she said, but her eyebrows were knit as she reached for Cleo’s bloody qamis.
“No, no, not me,” Cleo said in the common language, shaking her head emphatically. She pointed, leading the woman back through the alleys, other people cautiously stepping out of their homes as they passed.
The instant they reached Damiyr, the woman yelled out in Nerahati, barking what Cleo could only assume were instructions to the small handful of bystanders that had followed them. A couple people, a woman and a man, peeled off from the group in a run and two more men came forward to carry Damiyr in the direction they’d all come from.
Cleo had never felt so helpless in her life. Damiyr’s breathing was terrifyingly labored, coming out of him in weak, shuddering wheezes, and she had to resist the urge to reach out and take his hand, knowing it would unbalance the two men carrying him. There was nothing else for her to do but follow as the Nerahati villagers hauled him to a small, nondescript hut, where an older woman, different from the one who had first approached Cleo, ushered them inside in rapid Nerahati.
Everybody was speaking and moving and lowering him onto a bed in a room off of the main one; Cleo’s head was spinning with all the frenzied activity, until the older woman finally had him settled and started waving everyone out.
Including Cleo.
“No, please, I have to--I want to stay--” she pleaded, but the woman’s expression was firm and her tone sharp enough that her words required no translation. Get out.
A young man, likely around Cleo’s age--she couldn’t remember if he was one of the men who’d carried Damiyr here--took her arm, not ungently, and steered her back out into the main room. In any other situation, she would’ve felt affronted at being manhandled like a hysterical woman, but there was no room left in her for anger around all of her fear and panic. The young man said something to her in Nerahati, something in soothing tones, but the words garbled together into unintelligibility in her head, before he returned to the room and lowered the thick tapestry door behind him.
She couldn’t hear much behind it besides muffled voices, and there was no one left in the main room besides her; the relative quiet felt sudden and crushing after the flurry of activity, after there was nothing else in her company except her own overwhelming worry.
She couldn’t stop herself; she wept senselessly, in great, heaving sobs that rattled her entire body. Everything left her but the memory of the sword slicing through Damiyr’s stomach, the heavy way he staggered to the ground, the pain in his voice, the blood staining his lips red. Damiyr lying prone, breathing shallowly, dying.
She wept until she had no tears left and her chest ached with every pitched breath. It could’ve been minutes or hours since she’d been left out in the main room; she’d lost all sense of time and place, and there was no timepiece or sun’s passage to mark how long it had been.
A hollow, anxious feeling filled in the empty spaces left by her tears; she felt brittle and small and utterly useless. That was why the woman had forced her out of the room; there was nothing for her to do but get in the way.
There was even less for her to do out here. She sat down on a cushion before her legs could give out underneath her, a sudden exhaustion settling in as deep as her bones. It wasn’t the kind of exhaustion that would let her sleep anytime soon, though.
Unthinkingly, she ran her trembling fingers through her hair, unaccountably surprised when they came back slick with half-dried blood. Was it Damiyr’s, her own, or one of the masked people who’d attacked them? She couldn’t begin to guess.
The blood was all over her, splattered and smeared. There was one large stain as long as her forearm plastered down her front.
She exhaled shakily, wiping her hands on a clean spot of her qamis, and waited.
.
.
.
“Kummiz-samar.”
Cleo jerked awake, struggling to remember when she’d even closed her eyes. If she’d dozed, it had to have been shallow and fitful; she didn’t feel any more rested than she did when she’d first sat down. The night stretched behind her indefinitely, a yawning agony of a wait.
The woman--the same older woman who’d shooed her out of Damiyr’s room, and the woman Cleo could only assume was the head healer in this household--placed a slim hand on Cleo’s shoulder, squeezing gently.
Cleo turned towards her, her heart in her throat, but the woman was smiling very, very softly, and hope surged through Cleo so strongly that she swayed with it.
The woman spoke in Nerahati, but Cleo could only catch the words for live and sleep.
“He’s alive? He’s alright?” Cleo asked, and the unbridled hope and relief in her voice must’ve transcended any language, because the woman nodded quickly, taking Cleo’s hands. If the dried blood on them bothered her, the woman didn’t show it.
“Oh, spirits--thank you. Thank you,” she said to the woman, squeezing her hands, and repeated it over and over again, finally remembering the Nerahati word for thanks on her fourth or fifth repetition. The woman helped her to her feet, saying more things in Nerahati, and guided her to the room where Damiyr was.
Cleo burst inside, so relieved to see that Damiyr was still whole that she was lightheaded with it. His dark skin was unnaturally drawn and pale, his hair swept back and matted to his head, but he was alive.
The healer, who Cleo could see now was in her middle years, her deep brown skin crinkled with the first touches of age, beckoned Cleo forward, towards him. She touched her hand to his heart, briefly, then looked towards Cleo and inclined her head towards him.
Cleo took the hint, resting her hand over his heart, feeling the steady pulse of it under her fingertips. She would’ve cried again if she hadn’t wrung herself of tears last night, and suddenly everything in the universe, as vast as the desert sun and as small as the strong beat of Damiyr’s heart, felt beautiful and precious and true.
“Thank you,” she said again, repeating it in Nerahati and the common tongue once more; she would’ve said it over and over in every language under the sun if she could.
The healer smiled, taking Cleo’s shoulder and murmuring more things in Nerahati. Cleo listened with only half an ear, savoring the reassuring warmth of Damiyr’s skin under her hand and brushing her fingers over the dusting of light hair on his bare chest.
Then the healer picked at Cleo’s dirty qamis, and she realized that the woman was trying to get her to change.
Reluctantly, Cleo let the woman lead her away from Damiyr’s side.
.
.
.
After washing her face and hair and changing into a clean set of borrowed clothes, the qamis much shorter than the one Damiyr had scrounged up for her, the healer--whose name, Cleo found out via her mangled Nerahati, was Sairi--tried to dump her into bed in another room of the house. Cleo had balked, shaking her head, insisting through more mangled Nerahati and vigorous hand gestures that she wanted to go back to Damiyr.
With a sigh, Sairi pulled up a cushion for her at Damiyr’s side, then, with one final squeeze of her shoulder, left Cleo alone to keep vigil.
The pre-dawn light was still weak when Cleo glanced out the window, and she realized that hardly more than a few hours had passed since the attack. It’d felt like a small eternity.
She turned back to Damiyr, watching his face, taking in the bruises under his eyes and the splay of his light eyelashes over them. His chest was rising and falling steadily, if subtly, bandages peeking out from underneath the edge of the blanket.
Quietly, even though Sairi had assured her that he wouldn’t be waking up for a long time, Cleo took his hand, tucking it into both of hers, her fingers curling around his palm. His hand was strong, calloused, and Cleo was a little surprised at herself for realizing that it was calloused in all the places where a sword would be held. She wouldn’t have known that before coming to the desert.
“Damiyr, you bakah,” she said heavily, a warm little smile pulling at her lips. It felt good to turn his favorite word for her against him, now that he was still here to hear it. The possibility of losing him, forever, was fresh and raw and painful, unexpected in its intensity. It hurt to think about where she would’ve been without him.
When had she started to hurt so much for him? When had his life become so significant to her? The ties that bound them, so unnoticable before, felt bright and immense as she clutched his hand in hers. Her chest was tight and breathless, like she was standing at the edge of a cliff with no visible bottom.
It wasn’t love, but maybe it was. She’d never been in love before, but she recognized enough to know this was more than a silly crush, more than an attraction for him, more than just a friendship, more than anything she’d felt for anyone before. It was something close enough to love that it scared her.
“Spirits,” she whispered, lifting their intertwined hands and pressing her forehead against the back of his just for the solidity of human touch.
How was she going to leave now? This adventure would have to end, and she would have to return to Elyium. There was no home for her in Nerahati; she didn’t belong here. In the end, they were always going to part, no matter how she felt about him.
“Spirits,” she repeated, feeling sad and foolish and helpless--again.
.
.
Cleo didn’t know where she found the strength to drag him even the few steps she managed, his blood trailing out behind him in a wide smear. Something wild and desperate overtook her, her pulse racing, and she had to force herself to think, to think, because hysterics weren’t going to save him.
“Damiyr, please--don’t die--you can’t die,” she babbled incoherently, her strength finally running out. Every instinct in her body resisted leaving him behind, but she knew she had to get help before it was too late, before--
She probably looked like a madwoman, running into the middle of the village smattered in fresh blood and shouting in the common tongue; it took her a few seconds to remember the word for help in Nerahati, but by that time people were already peeking out of their homes, eyes wide. One woman came rushing towards Cleo, speaking so hurriedly in Nerahati that Cleo had no chance of deciphering anything she said, but her eyebrows were knit as she reached for Cleo’s bloody qamis.
“No, no, not me,” Cleo said in the common language, shaking her head emphatically. She pointed, leading the woman back through the alleys, other people cautiously stepping out of their homes as they passed.
The instant they reached Damiyr, the woman yelled out in Nerahati, barking what Cleo could only assume were instructions to the small handful of bystanders that had followed them. A couple people, a woman and a man, peeled off from the group in a run and two more men came forward to carry Damiyr in the direction they’d all come from.
Cleo had never felt so helpless in her life. Damiyr’s breathing was terrifyingly labored, coming out of him in weak, shuddering wheezes, and she had to resist the urge to reach out and take his hand, knowing it would unbalance the two men carrying him. There was nothing else for her to do but follow as the Nerahati villagers hauled him to a small, nondescript hut, where an older woman, different from the one who had first approached Cleo, ushered them inside in rapid Nerahati.
Everybody was speaking and moving and lowering him onto a bed in a room off of the main one; Cleo’s head was spinning with all the frenzied activity, until the older woman finally had him settled and started waving everyone out.
Including Cleo.
“No, please, I have to--I want to stay--” she pleaded, but the woman’s expression was firm and her tone sharp enough that her words required no translation. Get out.
A young man, likely around Cleo’s age--she couldn’t remember if he was one of the men who’d carried Damiyr here--took her arm, not ungently, and steered her back out into the main room. In any other situation, she would’ve felt affronted at being manhandled like a hysterical woman, but there was no room left in her for anger around all of her fear and panic. The young man said something to her in Nerahati, something in soothing tones, but the words garbled together into unintelligibility in her head, before he returned to the room and lowered the thick tapestry door behind him.
She couldn’t hear much behind it besides muffled voices, and there was no one left in the main room besides her; the relative quiet felt sudden and crushing after the flurry of activity, after there was nothing else in her company except her own overwhelming worry.
She couldn’t stop herself; she wept senselessly, in great, heaving sobs that rattled her entire body. Everything left her but the memory of the sword slicing through Damiyr’s stomach, the heavy way he staggered to the ground, the pain in his voice, the blood staining his lips red. Damiyr lying prone, breathing shallowly, dying.
She wept until she had no tears left and her chest ached with every pitched breath. It could’ve been minutes or hours since she’d been left out in the main room; she’d lost all sense of time and place, and there was no timepiece or sun’s passage to mark how long it had been.
A hollow, anxious feeling filled in the empty spaces left by her tears; she felt brittle and small and utterly useless. That was why the woman had forced her out of the room; there was nothing for her to do but get in the way.
There was even less for her to do out here. She sat down on a cushion before her legs could give out underneath her, a sudden exhaustion settling in as deep as her bones. It wasn’t the kind of exhaustion that would let her sleep anytime soon, though.
Unthinkingly, she ran her trembling fingers through her hair, unaccountably surprised when they came back slick with half-dried blood. Was it Damiyr’s, her own, or one of the masked people who’d attacked them? She couldn’t begin to guess.
The blood was all over her, splattered and smeared. There was one large stain as long as her forearm plastered down her front.
She exhaled shakily, wiping her hands on a clean spot of her qamis, and waited.
.
.
.
“Kummiz-samar.”
Cleo jerked awake, struggling to remember when she’d even closed her eyes. If she’d dozed, it had to have been shallow and fitful; she didn’t feel any more rested than she did when she’d first sat down. The night stretched behind her indefinitely, a yawning agony of a wait.
The woman--the same older woman who’d shooed her out of Damiyr’s room, and the woman Cleo could only assume was the head healer in this household--placed a slim hand on Cleo’s shoulder, squeezing gently.
Cleo turned towards her, her heart in her throat, but the woman was smiling very, very softly, and hope surged through Cleo so strongly that she swayed with it.
The woman spoke in Nerahati, but Cleo could only catch the words for live and sleep.
“He’s alive? He’s alright?” Cleo asked, and the unbridled hope and relief in her voice must’ve transcended any language, because the woman nodded quickly, taking Cleo’s hands. If the dried blood on them bothered her, the woman didn’t show it.
“Oh, spirits--thank you. Thank you,” she said to the woman, squeezing her hands, and repeated it over and over again, finally remembering the Nerahati word for thanks on her fourth or fifth repetition. The woman helped her to her feet, saying more things in Nerahati, and guided her to the room where Damiyr was.
Cleo burst inside, so relieved to see that Damiyr was still whole that she was lightheaded with it. His dark skin was unnaturally drawn and pale, his hair swept back and matted to his head, but he was alive.
The healer, who Cleo could see now was in her middle years, her deep brown skin crinkled with the first touches of age, beckoned Cleo forward, towards him. She touched her hand to his heart, briefly, then looked towards Cleo and inclined her head towards him.
Cleo took the hint, resting her hand over his heart, feeling the steady pulse of it under her fingertips. She would’ve cried again if she hadn’t wrung herself of tears last night, and suddenly everything in the universe, as vast as the desert sun and as small as the strong beat of Damiyr’s heart, felt beautiful and precious and true.
“Thank you,” she said again, repeating it in Nerahati and the common tongue once more; she would’ve said it over and over in every language under the sun if she could.
The healer smiled, taking Cleo’s shoulder and murmuring more things in Nerahati. Cleo listened with only half an ear, savoring the reassuring warmth of Damiyr’s skin under her hand and brushing her fingers over the dusting of light hair on his bare chest.
Then the healer picked at Cleo’s dirty qamis, and she realized that the woman was trying to get her to change.
Reluctantly, Cleo let the woman lead her away from Damiyr’s side.
.
.
.
After washing her face and hair and changing into a clean set of borrowed clothes, the qamis much shorter than the one Damiyr had scrounged up for her, the healer--whose name, Cleo found out via her mangled Nerahati, was Sairi--tried to dump her into bed in another room of the house. Cleo had balked, shaking her head, insisting through more mangled Nerahati and vigorous hand gestures that she wanted to go back to Damiyr.
With a sigh, Sairi pulled up a cushion for her at Damiyr’s side, then, with one final squeeze of her shoulder, left Cleo alone to keep vigil.
The pre-dawn light was still weak when Cleo glanced out the window, and she realized that hardly more than a few hours had passed since the attack. It’d felt like a small eternity.
She turned back to Damiyr, watching his face, taking in the bruises under his eyes and the splay of his light eyelashes over them. His chest was rising and falling steadily, if subtly, bandages peeking out from underneath the edge of the blanket.
Quietly, even though Sairi had assured her that he wouldn’t be waking up for a long time, Cleo took his hand, tucking it into both of hers, her fingers curling around his palm. His hand was strong, calloused, and Cleo was a little surprised at herself for realizing that it was calloused in all the places where a sword would be held. She wouldn’t have known that before coming to the desert.
“Damiyr, you bakah,” she said heavily, a warm little smile pulling at her lips. It felt good to turn his favorite word for her against him, now that he was still here to hear it. The possibility of losing him, forever, was fresh and raw and painful, unexpected in its intensity. It hurt to think about where she would’ve been without him.
When had she started to hurt so much for him? When had his life become so significant to her? The ties that bound them, so unnoticable before, felt bright and immense as she clutched his hand in hers. Her chest was tight and breathless, like she was standing at the edge of a cliff with no visible bottom.
It wasn’t love, but maybe it was. She’d never been in love before, but she recognized enough to know this was more than a silly crush, more than an attraction for him, more than just a friendship, more than anything she’d felt for anyone before. It was something close enough to love that it scared her.
“Spirits,” she whispered, lifting their intertwined hands and pressing her forehead against the back of his just for the solidity of human touch.
How was she going to leave now? This adventure would have to end, and she would have to return to Elyium. There was no home for her in Nerahati; she didn’t belong here. In the end, they were always going to part, no matter how she felt about him.
“Spirits,” she repeated, feeling sad and foolish and helpless--again.