Wavering [Story]

[TK Hikaru]

There's only one word to describe her. 

 

Wavering.

 

Time has no meaning in the room they've confined her to. Her entire world consists of the room, the bed, and kind voice with gentle hands that cleans her wounds and changes her bandages every so often. Moments, minutes, bells and full suns could pass and she'd be none the wiser, drifting in and out of consciousness as if she's passing through umbral and astral eras.

 

She knows what happened -the voice told her-, knows she woke up that sun to deliver supplies, remembers the old woman with wrinkled hands and a fiery spirit to match her own. Remembers the breath she took before entrusting herself to the aether, guided by Camp Drybone's aetheryte.

 

She can't remember the trek to the Black Shroud, or the ambush that occurred past Highbridge. The healer in Drybone told her how the first bullet passed through her arm, and how the second grazed the back of her head.

 

She doesn't remember how her flesh gave way to super heated metal, nor does she remember her red hair running black with blood before the sticky mess is sheered away to keep the head wound clean.

 

Between Little Ala Mhigo and Drybone, there is a gap. A tangible memory fading into mirage. Injured as she is, there's nothing she can do. The memory falls through her hand as easily like sand.

 

In sleep, images bleed and blend like watercolors. Spoken surround her broken and weak frame. She knows she's supposed to remember them, but blurred faces have no name, warped voices have no ties to her.

 

When awake, she wonders why it frustrates her that there's gaps of blankness between arriving in Ul'dah at seventeen and coming to Limsa Lominsa with an ax at her back at twenty two.