Magic.The word rises within me, familiar and foreign all at once.
Their fear crackles through the air and a part of me answers, trembling with warning.
The real danger is coming this way.
I hear the vibrations of fleeing steps and the uneven, ragged breath from one of them that lingers.
“No, please…” I manage to whisper through the pain that flares with each inhale.
I try to open my eyes to see where I am and who I’m asking for help, but the light sears. Instinctively, I slam my eyelids closed again.
I feel helpless to a world I don’t know and beings that I can’t see.
“I can’t,” the trembling voice answers, and I heartheir steps shift. “I’m sorry, but they’ll catch up to me if I have to carry you.”
My brain is jumbled as I try to process this strange place and who he’s talking about. Who am I up against? Better yet,what.
“I don’t want to die,” he says, and I hear the guilt in his breath before his footsteps fade away.
Then, I’m alone.
Whatever caused them to flee grows closer to me. I feel it with the shift of pressure in the air and the way my body begins to tremble. I stay curled tightly against the ground, my limbs drawn inward like I can make myself disappear, like if I fold myself small enough, the looming threat won’t notice I’m here.
I try to remember–anything, even a name–but the void inside my mind remains quiet. There is no before…just this moment.
“Please,” I whisper into the crook of my arm, the word scraping out dry and cracked. I don’t know who I’m speaking to, but I press my palm firmly against the ground that seemed to whisper to me.
“Please…tell me where I am. Tell me how to survive it.”
There’s no answer.
Somewhere beneath the fear, beneath the ache of helplessness, a feeling flares. It’s a small but firm spark rising up, and I cling to it.
I wantto live.
The thought is steady and low, curling through the hollow spaces inside me like roots pushing upwards toward light.I breathe through the pain, and slowly, my mind steadies–just enough to find that flicker of strength waiting beneath the fear.
I will survive this.
My lashes part slowly as I attempt one more time to take in the world around me. They feel heavy as I force them open and squint. Light pierces through in slivers, sharp and blinding. Slowly I adjust and force them to remain open. The world swims in a haze of broken colors. Whites, reds, and black in the distance.
The ground shifts as my vision tries to settle, and for a moment, I wonder if the earth is still trembling or if it’s just me.
My hands dig into the dirt beneath me as I force myself to sit up. A hiss slips from between my teeth as pain lances through my ribs with the shift. My gaze drops to the red, angry mark blooming along my side. It throbs in time with each breath, but I grit my teeth and push the pain down, lifting my head to take in the world around me.
Ash drifts in soft spirals, coating everything in sight like gray snow. Trees lie scattered in pieces. Some uprooted and others sliced clean through, as if the air itself turned to blades. Flames curl at the edges of charred stumps.
The words come to me too easily.Ash. Stump. Flame.
I know them, but I don’t know how. They feel borrowed, like fragments of someone else’s thoughts echoing in my skull. I turn them over in my mind as I stare across the wreckage, the silence filling me with unease.
Have I been here before?
In the distance untouched hills rise, soft and sweeping toward the clouds themselves. The foothills of the Appalachians, though I don’t know how I know that. The name just roots itself in my mind like everything else surfacing as I take it in.
It’s like my mind knows this place and the intricacies of it, but I don’t have the memory of experiencing any of it.
Bodies litter the ground, some twisted in ways that make my stomach churn. I don’t know what kind of battle happened here, or who fought in it, but my chest tightens at the sight of it.
