WARNING!! -- this is old, and while recently updated with minor edits and the last of the chapters i never put up back in the day, it shall never be updated...enjoy it anyways!
...since a lot of you seem to keep doing so o-o ...
- Created By itsumademo
Chapter Nine
The Catalyst
Chapter Nine
Silence. Nothing but silence; I felt nothing, saw nothing, heard, smelled, tasted, breathed, moved nothing…
The world seemed to have been sucked away from me.
For a few brief moments I felt life tingle into my fingers and in those small instances it was as if a vacuum was pulling on my body in every direction. At least it seemed like my body. I couldn’t really tell.
Sudden pulsing, flaming sensations began feeling their way across every awakening appendage and then abruptly a strong convulsion shot through me. At that moment, I noticed my full self, like I were looking down on my own body and saw every vein, organ, and breath that formed who I was. But afterward it was as though I fell away, back into a blackness where I began to simply fade from existence.
Yet another tremor jumped through me and I saw more, felt more of who I was. Except this time I could see my face; I looked almost sad and a little afraid…and for some reason, wet.
A stronger, exceptionally startling and painful spasm hit me again. My chest and throat began stinging, like sharp knives running along the walls, and in my side an aching, tight knot began to form, growing with each diminishing second that passed.
Once more, I jolted before I noticed a familiar rhythm trying to calm my body, though the sharp knot at my side continued to grow in strength.
The darkness that had pulled at me fell across my eyes again. But instead of feeling its nothingness, I felt contained with several individual beats moving around inside my increasingly warming shell.
Gradually though, everything began to quiet down, eventually all that stayed was a calm thumping and slightly ragged, agonizing breaths. Breaths? Air? …Lungs? I was taking small gasps and the more I dwelled, the sooner I noticed the tingling again, this time all over my body.
Body…I was in my body and breathing.
A warm waft of air abruptly swept across the right side of my face, curling against my ear. It was almost like a trigger went off in my brain and suddenly a swift rush of air passed through my mouth and seemed to run its claws along my raw throat as it continued on to unbearably bundle and whirl in my chest.
The additional fire added to the aches I already endured caused my eyes to rip open and abruptly floods that once clenched my gut now came pouring out. I heaved the water from my lungs, coughing sharply.
A cool breeze made me shiver; I saw sandy, wet dirt through blurry eyes covering the ground I leaned on. I ran the back of my hand across my tear covered face and sat up as best as I could to sit back on the sand.
As I looked directly ahead, I found deep violet eyes staring back at me. For one moment, I felt as though a stranger were before me, the emotion that was held there seemed so foreign. Until a crude smirk replaced it, and I could see Caleb kneeling above me. Almost like a bizarre frontal hovering.
He then pulled back and stood up straight, moving to grab a long thick coat that draped across a rock not far from where I sat. Caleb leaned down and handed me what I presumed was his coat, but he was gentler than I would have expected.
The fabric was heavy and as I took hold of it I found that I could feel the smooth, worn cloth against my shivering skin, all my skin.
My face flamed.
Though my memories were terribly fuzzy, I was realizing that I was entirely naked.
Caleb smirked again at my embarrassed expression but gentlemanly turned his back to me, so I took the hint and swiftly pulled on the thick jacket, wrapping it around my body as tightly as possible.
“What happened?”
I had expected my voice to be loud, but instead that fierce noise was a rasping whisper, which forcefully racked against my body. I grasped at my throat and more aches began creeping their way back to me.
A throbbing pain was now eating away at my side. I tried to stand, but quickly fell back to the sandy ground and landed on my opposite side, while losing grip on the coat that surrounded me.
I reflexively tried to hold my upper torso, but I found that only hurt even more. Trying as best as I could to keep decent, I moved the fabric back to view where my soreness was coming from.
A large black, purple, and even red colored bruise spread over my entire ribcage and sternum. I looked like a truck ran me down or a tree fell on me.
“You moron…” I heaved a little, “…you broke my ribs, didn’t you?”
I awkwardly turned my face up to Caleb while exceptionally gently probing my injured chest.
“I did.”
I glared at him, though it surely appeared more as a pathetic, crippled idiot lying naked in the sand with a poor excuse for any form of expression dancing across my face. Slowly, I released a tiredly indignant and wounded sigh.
Caleb looked down at me like I were stupid. Which, in this instance, I wasn’t entirely sure I could deny.
“Jade.” His voice was low and soft.
He very gently came over and moved me to sit up against another large boulder; he even tightened the jacket I quite loosely wore.
I bit my lip hard as I continued to shiver, partially from the cold and still being somewhat wet but also from the throbbing pain wracking my body. I had just about gotten situated in my sand cushioned seat, when Caleb unexpectedly sat beside me. He slid his arms beneath my legs and across my back and then swiftly pulled me into the cradle of his lap.
My eyes were open wide; I parted my lips to speak and then stopped. When my brain finally caught up to my mouth, I tried to speak again but Caleb slipped a warm finger onto my lips.
“It’s just to keep you warm; your body temperature is severely low.”
I blinked noticeably several times while staring at my arms which rested on his even warmer chest.
“What happened, Caleb?”
A sour, black nothingness started to curl up in my stomach and the longer Caleb stayed silent with his small, deep breaths rising and falling against me, the more I became aware of it.
“You died, Jade.”
My still sore breaths caught in my throat and the dark feeling that swelled inside me spread into everything. Terrifying and yet solemn memories came rushing back to me.
Water coming in from everywhere, I couldn’t see; my body hurt and ripped at me. I wanted to scream and to cry but nothing managed to escape. Tears slipped down my cheeks. And then old memories I had nearly forgotten came back to me as well. A black room, quiet whispers of my cousin speaking to someone I couldn’t see, and then everything was covered in red. No screaming, no crying, black and red splattered everywhere.
It had caused the same terrified pit that flooded me now.
I dug my fingers into Caleb. “…How long?”
“Nearly two hours.”
I bit my lip harder than before and abruptly metallic slivers dripped into my mouth and onto my chin and neck.
My hands wiped across my jaw and eyes almost of their own accord. For some reason Daela’s visage was covering every inch of my thoughts. Her smiling face before that night, that night I didn’t remember and further tainting that memory was another smile I could but couldn’t really see.
I inhaled sharply a few times and leaned my head onto Caleb’s chest; he let me rest even though my blood and tears stained his thin green shirt. As my breaths started to finally calm I looked out over the water I had been in not that long ago and familiar boiling bubbles spun around on the surface.
Curiously, I watched them grow in intensity, and, out of a tangled mix of interest and fear, I clutched Caleb closer and even burrowed my face into his sweet scented shirt with one eye still watching. The water practically exploded and a shrill female voice echoed across the forest. The small, angry yellow eyes and flowing blue-green hair appeared as the water fell back into its pool. She hissed at Caleb and I.
Oddly, I felt him sigh in annoyance. “You did that on purpose.”
I tilted my face up at him with a confused look, but found him to be looking away from me.
Suddenly he started to move, but instead of setting me aside so that he could get up, he simply stood, shifting me from his lap’s cradle to his arm’s. I felt like an awkward bride…naked, in someone else’s dark old coat, still damp, and very much in pain. I nearly managed a giggle at my own tangent thoughts until my ribs decided to tell me otherwise.
The woman I now very clearly remembered stepped immediately closer and hissed yet again, only with stronger hatred in her tone. Her eyes were like daggers, piercing my already injured body, right down to my soul.
“El, stop that!”
I quirked my brow with a sort of puzzled surprise painting my face as he spoke to her, apparently knowing her.
She whimpered, similar to a dog, and then slipped on a more seductive air. “Caleb, why are you with this rubbish? Aren’t they all dead? Why aren’t they dead and gone from us?”
She came even closer as she cooed softly at him with hints of malice slipping out. However, when I watched her face, she appeared genuinely confused and upset.
I looked up at Caleb, whose face was almost unreadable.
“El, she is obviously not dead and I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t try to make that a reality.”
She whined again and whirled over using the water to hold up her body in its turns. “But Caleb, Caleb, Caleb! I have waited for sooooo long! I miss you, come back to me.” She purred again.
I found myself really beginning to hate this woman. I mean she had tried to kill me and, in fact, succeeded, but what tied my stomach in knots the most was her sexy, naked swaying and practically whispering in his ear. It was so…so………UGH!
I began to irately pick at the cuffs of the coat to keep my mind occupied, though her annoyingly beautiful hair kept moving into my view.
“Why don’t you put her down and just come back to me.” I suddenly heard her whisper right beside me and felt her hand beginning to curl around my wrist.
Caleb’s fingers tightened on my arm and thigh. “Eliarya Ktyum, Water Nymph of Talen Forest, I command you to back off now.”
She glared down at me but released her grip with a submissive growl towards Caleb, though in the last moment of her touch I thought I felt a slight scratch across my wrist…but there was no mark.
Caleb felt like a statue. He was a vise holding me even closer as “El” backed away into the water’s deeper edge.
“Caleb…please…” Her siren tone wafted past me, but Caleb didn’t even seem to breathe.
“Leave El.”
I managed to hear her sorrowful moan again until suddenly Caleb dropped to the ground, landing with a hard thud that caused me to scream inside at the jerk of my body’s broken parts. The jolt had greatly aggrieved me and in frustration I smacked my left palm to his forehead.
“Caleb, you absolute and pure idiot!”
For a moment, true sincerity appeared on his face but once I displayed my reaction he suddenly broke into a strong laughter.
I frowned but then furrowed my brows.
“Caleb…what just happened?”
He yet again paused his breathing and almost reflexively tightened his grip around me.
“El is…” he sighed heavily. “El and I are very old friends,” I wrinkled my nose a bit at the way he said friend, almost like a truthful lie, “but she is also close to some rather unsavory people, all of which are not in any way fond of Immortals. However, El always tended to take a particular liking to the men…….”
I cocked my head slightly away to better see his face. “And?”
“She developed an unadulterated, unrelenting hatred of the women; especially that of the first family.”
“First family?”
“You should really get dressed and head back to the Immortal. It’s getting late.”
I confusedly looked at my hands with uncertainty. “First…?” Caleb didn’t seem to hear my mumbling as he very gently set me back on the sand and dropped my clothes down in my lap.
“I’m sure the Immortal has some cloth you can use to bandage your ribs.”
He began to walk away with an exhausted sadness in his eyes that I clearly wasn’t meant to have seen.
“Wait!” I crawled slightly forward, wincing from the pain that shot up through me. “You’re just leaving me here?”
He didn’t turn around but I heard a smile in his voice. “Don’t worry, you should be partially healed by morning and the Immortal can help with the rest. I’m just wiped.” This time he flashed me a silly eyed smirk before jumping away into the trees.
I sat there in a despondent, while also kind of annoyed, way and began to fuss with the coat’s cuff again as I stared out at the swaying trees.
Quickly as I could manage I pulled on my clothes, but after draping the cape and hood across my shoulders I also slipped on the warm coat Caleb had left behind for me. It was comforting to wear, like I was being held in strong, protective arms.
I wrapped my own arms around myself then began to walk back to the camp and my two traveling companions, an emotionally stunted immortal and an ass masquerading as a horse with a personality disorder.
A small giggle escaped my still rasping throat which was followed immediately by sharp pain spreading through my chest. I clutched my side lightly and my small breaths helped to push the ache away. As soon as I looked back up, I heard a snap to my right …most likely a twig and an animal… Following with my stupid inquisitive nature, I stepped toward the noise when sudden, slow opening, lavender eyes caused me to jump back and into tightly grasping hands.
I cried out at the pain that came up through me. The loud noise rattled my head and everything around me, racking its claws against my tender throat.
One of the hands was then unexpectedly on my head, making an affectionate petting motion against my nearly dry black hair. My eyes were wide with surprise and confusion.
“Jade, I’m sorry.”
End
