RHEA
There is nothing like falling.
It feels just like flying, except for the ground. The only thing wrong with my fall was exactly that, the ground. To be more precise, it's lack of existence. Don't get me wrong, I still looked like everyone else does, with my arms and legs crazily flailing around, screaming like a baby [as if the devil were coming after me], my abnormally long hair flowing, no more like, attacking, my mouth. I could barely open it, and when I did all i could feel was my red hair  sliding down  my throat. At least this is what I believe I looked like. The only thing missing from the picture was the ground. I really don't remember, all I remember was waking up.
I don't even know where I was. All I remember is opening my eyes to an extremely blinding light. It hurt  my eyes to the point where I had to close them again. I closed them for a few seconds, but when I opened them once again, it was still there. I squinted to try to block some of the light from burning out my eyeballs, but found it extremely difficult. I layer (layed) on the floor. No, it definitely wasn't a floor, it was grass, and mud, and everything else disgusting about the outdoors. [If you couldn't tell by my previous statement, I am not an outdoorsy person. I sort of hate nature. I don't understand what is so great about it, I much rather curl up inside with a huge, snuggly blanket and a nice warm cup of hot chocolate, reading a good fantasy book for hours, all day if I'm lucky.] My head felt like someone had put a million pieces of glass inside it, and started shaking it at about a million miles per hour. Basically, it hurt, like hell.
I finally decided to open my eyes, for real this time. Slowly, but surely, my lids began coming apart, once again allowing the light to burn my eyes. I blinked, a lot, trying to diminish the effects of the sudden clarity, and suddenly, the light moved. Confused, and disoriented, i tried getting up starting with my neck. It took me two painful tries to just be able to prop myself on elbows,  and even then I had a hard time keeping myself up. I looked down at my full metal alchemist t-shirt,  and noticed that it looked like it should belong in the trash.  It had a giant rip at the left side of my stomach,  just under my ribs, that went all the way down to just above the seam. There were also smaller holes trailing along the end of the shirt, along with a cut right at the seam of my right shoulder. My jeans didn't look any better.  On  left side, there was almost no fabric left to cover my leg. It looked like I had bought them pre-ripped, but someone in the factories in China had made a mistake and had cut too big of a hole. Unfortunately, there was an even bigger hole on a more embarrassing part of my jeans. My but was shockingly exposed through a huge gap on my left pocket, and most of my *cheek* was covered in surface scratches and dry blood. I lost one of my red all-star sneakers, and my sock was left to nothing.  The shoe that survived the fall wasn't in much better shape. The front of the sole was completely destroyed, with only a small white spot hanging down from the boot, and the whole left side of the shoe was barely recognizable as a shoe.  [My toes freezed over, and were as stiff as a stone]. Slowly I began to lift my torso, and prompted myself up [sat up]. A lifted my hands from the muddy ground, and saw cuts all over my palms. There was dry blood over them, and frankly, everywhere. However long I'd been out cold, it had been long enough for the fresh wounds to become. . . not so fresh. How much time had passed? Minutes? Hours? Days? I had no way of finding out. I try once again to get up, and this time I was finally successful. I got up on my feet, and sluggishly began to drag myself forward. What I didn't know was where forward was. I had no idea where I was.
All around me was a thick forest, full of trees, bushes, and nothing. If I had been an environmentalist, i would go as far as calling the scenario beautiful, but since I wasn't, I found it extremely horrifying. I could barely see ten feet in from of me, and didn’t dare step any closer to the bushes surrounding me. I slowly walked around in the open circle of trees around me, looking for a way out. But out of where? Where the hell am I? I pushed my courage to the limit and decisively moved my foot [took a step] closet to the trees. They looked like darkness, and mystery surrounded every aspect of them. I was definitely going to die, if not out of fear, then of violent and murderous creatures around the woods. The clearing I was in was perfectly lighted by the scintillate light of the moon above. It was only enough to allow me to see the ten feet in front of my nose, but it was enough, I guess. I still awaited my eminent death any minute, and finally decided to keep moving. After all, the worst possible thing I could do right now to get out of this was to do nothing. The thing is, I had no idea of what to do or of where to go, so I just let my legs guide me.
I walked for what seemed like ten, fifteen minutes, and discovered that I had gone nowhere. I think I literally walked in a circle around the same area I was in. Suddenly, I hear a small, rustling noise around those devilish bushes. Something was definitely going to come out and eat me. I tried my hardest not to do the horror-movie-thing, where the characters hear a noise, and instead of running the freak out of the house, they decide to investigate, getting themselves, along with any other people inside the house, killed. But my instincts got the best of me. I began the slow and painful walk to the noise, but as a stepped closer, I saw something that made me stop in my tracks.
The figure was lightly outlined with the silver light of the moon, so that all I could see was its form. Because of the lack of proper lighting, the figure seemed more like a shadow, black and dark. I stepped closer with my right foot, but that only seemed to agitate it. I squinted my eyes to try to get a better view of the thing, but, of course, that was of no help whatsoever. I took another step, stupidly believing that getting closer, would apparently result in two things for me: a better view of the creature, and help getting myself out of here, where here was. Of course, my plan epically failed, and it only made the thing more agitated than before. It moved away from the bushes (see, I told you they were the devil in disguise) with a swift movement, and, as if trying to scare me, moved into the moonlight. I saw it, the person, I mean, and it was definitely a boy. It was definitely a person, but then, why didn’t it look much like a human being? Its skin was the palest thing I had ever seen, almost as if they hadn’t been in the sun’s light for years. It looked so white, that albino wasn’t even the right word to describe it. The person had green eyes that stood out from all the whiteness of his features. They were a dark green, the perfect contrast to his sunless skin color. The hair was matted against his head, as if he hadn’t taken a bath ever, and his entire body was covered in more mud than it was in clothes. His ripped up t-shirt was a simple grey [really can pick any color, red, blue, green, like his eyes, yellow. Probably going to pick the people’s clothes according to their powers, or personality, or something like that] and it didn’t look like it was bought at Walmart or any other retail slash food slash electronic slash school supplies slash holiday gifts store. It looked expensive, like Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger or some other big brand name like that. What was that kid doing here? And why was he dressed like that? He wasn’t really wearing pants, unless it is okay to call a pair of supper ripped up jeans that look more like shorts that no guy should be wearing pants. Then again, aren’t I the one that has jeans with a huge hole on the back that allows anyone to look at whatever teenagers nowadays call an ass? So, I guess I really cannot judge him in this situation. It was way too dark for me to be able to identify a hair color, but I suspected it was a dark brown, given that it didn’t stand out in the darkness of the night.
His walk was quick, almost inhumanly so, but he looked more like ha [he] was dragging his weight with him instead of running. He gradually made his way to the other side of the bush, the side that I was on, and I noticed something else very strange about him, a little blob of light right above his left shoulder. It moved a little bit to the sides and back and forth, but mainly only when he moved. He took a step closer to me. Now I could clearly see his eyes. They were so tired, with huge, black under eye circles surrounding them. It was not a pretty sight. They looked straight at me, noticing [unwilling to notice] anything else, as if he hadn’t seen another human for the past seventeen years, which he looked about. I gathered all of my courage and also took a step forward, heading toward him. I extended my hand, lightly waving it across the space between us, almost as if waving a white flag of retreat. As soon as did this, he zoomed past me on my left side, and ran all the way into the woods. I had no clue where he had gone, or how to follow him, or even if I should. He could lead me to somewhere, which was certainly better than staying here, but what if I followed him and ended up walking to my death? I decided that getting out of here was a priority, and started walking the way I thought he had gone.
As I walked through the forest I started thinking of that little blob of light around his shoulder. What was that? Maybe it had been the moon’s light, and I had mistaken it due to dehydration and a very probable concussion. It had to be my vision, my eyes must have been playing tricks on me, and there was no way that that was real. Right? My train of thought was abruptly interrupted by a sudden wind coming from right beside me. It took the shape of a mini tornado, which, by the way, was just as terrifying as a regular size tornado. It came closer every second, and I scrambled to find a place to hide from it, but all the bushes around me seemed to make very bad hiding places for a hurricane attack. I had nowhere to hide, so what did my little, stupid teenage brain decide to do? Run. I ran as fast as I could, but all the cuts in my legs, and my ever wavering migraine did not help. I tripped (again, something so idiotic that only happens in Hollywood movies). The falling itself wasn’t that bad, since the one I had just undertaken was comparatively a Yeti of a fall compared to this one. No, the worst part was not being able to breathe. When the mini tornado surrounded me, it created a sort of air vacuum that sucked all the air out of the enclosed circle I was in, which made it very difficult to breathe through my nose. The wind only picked up from there, leaving me to slowly lose consciousness. My vision started to go black, first in reappearing blotches of blue and purple, and then all at once.
My first thought when I woke up was if I had died. After all, I couldn’t feel any pain, yet I knew I was badly hurt. Something was certainly wrong. Once again I went through the ever so painful process of trying to open my eyes. Opening and closing them at certain intervals to avoid getting my eyeballs too burned on one look. Once I finally fully opened them, I realized that the lighting in this place wasn’t as bright as the other one. Was I inside? If so, inside where? And why did the ground still feel so rough? I tried looking around, trying my hardest to not move my neck too much.  My wandering eyes looked about the place and a decided it was a cave. Badly lighted, with pointy rocks on the top and bottom, and nothing else, but brown, and mud, and . . . people? [Okay, I am going crazy; I need to admit myself to an asylum, right now].
There were seven people in the cave with me. I recognized the boy from earlier, but I had no idea who any of the other people could have been. I tried to lay as still as possible. I ran hand through my sides to check for any fractures, not that I would have missed them when I first woke up, but still. I found that my already-ripped shirt was even more ripped now, this time, the right side tool (took) most of the damage. It now consisted more of holes than it did fabric, and my entire left side of my stomach was exposed to the coldness of the ground. My shoe still survived [remained] on my foot, but it was even less noticeable as a shoe now. The entire right side had a huge scrape on it that concealed the Nike logo that I had paid almost one hundred dollars for (well, my dad paid, but you get the message; they were expensive shoes). My jeans didn’t remain intact as I had hoped for, but the rips on the sides had now turned more into gigantically colossal black holes that embarrassingly exposed my right thigh. I looked as if someone had dragged my oxygen deprived and unconscious body through the forest. That only made me more scared for these seven people standing above me, talking in the corner in whispers that, not for the lack of trying, I still could not hear. Why would they drag me in here with them? What did they want with me? If they had wanted me dead couldn’t they have just left out in the cold? What if they believed that would not work, and that is why they decided to bring in, to kill me, and make sure I stayed dead. My mind started veering off into multiple directions. What if they wanted to torture me for any information they thought I might have? What if they had never seen a human that looked like me and wanted to perform experiments on me? What if . . . .
As I tried to move my head to my left to try to hear what they said better, I heard little bits and pieces from their conversation.
“What the hell is she doing here? Why did you bring her with you?” said a voice that sounded like girl in her teens.
“Look, I couldn’t just leave her out in the rain”, a boy, this time, responded. He didn’t sound angry with her, but he had more of a desperate tone to his voice. “We haven’t seen anyone fall for more than eight months now; don’t you think we should ask her some questions? Like” and he hushed his voice even more, and I had no way of hearing what he said next.
Suddenly, I hear one of the others walk toward me, and I close my eyes to pretend that I am sleeping.
“You can stop now. I know you’re awake; you’ve been awake for a couple of minutes now. I can sense it” the boy said.
I did not dare open my eyes. He is bluffing. If I just keep my eyes closed, he will not know that I am actually awake, and leave me alone. But what did he mean when he said that he could sense that I was awake? No human can do that, unless he saw me move, but that would not be him sensing anything, that would be more like having a pair of properly working eyes. I kept them closed for a while longer. After a few more seconds passed, the boy turned to me, sighed and walked once more right next to my body.
“You can stop faking it now, I know you’re not unconscious anymore” he said to me with a surprisingly soft tone.
I stirred and barely opened my eyes, but I did move my arm allowing them to know [assuring them] that I was awake. Next, I moved my legs, and sat up, with difficulty, straight up. I didn’t even bother trying to stand on my feet, because I would end up back on the ground. I fully opened my eyes now and tried looking around. I wondered why the lighting here was so bright; it really hurt my eyes. I realized how badly my head hurt, but I had to keep myself focused. I had more important matters to deal with right now.