Kruk
I wake up to a wall of green around me.
I'd spent so long in the wastelands that I'd nearly forgotten what green looked like. Even my skin has taken an ashy hue.
The trees sway above me, their leaves singing a song along with the birds. The grass is soft under my back, the sounds of water flowing bring joy to my soul.
Hunger gnaws my belly but I have nothing to feed it. My body hasn't been able to hunt for years. My back is a twisted mess, my legs bent at an odd angle and even my hands have lost most of their strength.
I should have been dead long ago.
My hand goes to the collar that has been my constant companion for the past four years. My neck is swollen around it, some parts of my skin nearly growing over the hard metal. I know it is infected, but I could not risk finding a healer. And even if I did find one willing to overlook the prison collar, I could not speak to tell them of my ailments.
And I know there were many.
My entire body was crushed in the fall from the cliff and I'm still not sure how I survived the rocks and the river. After washing ashore in a place with endless sands, I'd willed my body to move, but it would not.
Panic had flared in my chest, and as the days passed with me baking under the sun, I'd cursed the gods for letting me live and I'd begged for death. But none had come.
And one day a shadow had fallen over me, a nomad on his way home hauled me into his cart and took me to his home, nursed me as well as he could and asked for nothing in return.
He never spoke a word to me in the months I was there. He never asked about my collar, where I was from or where I was going. And the day I left, he gave me a bag of food, pointed me in a direction and disappeared along with his house.
I don't know if he was a mage, a demon or a god and I do not care to know.
Whatever he was, he saved my life, or what was left of it.
My hand moves from my collar and to the crutch that lies beside me. It takes several painful minutes to finally stand up, and several more minutes to catch my breath enough to start walking.
The ground was uneven, my pace slow, but I was so close to my destination now that I'd be there within the hour even with my ailments.
I'd entered the woods just yesterday. The woods where I'd first brought my mate. The woods that ended just beside Calla and Brunks house.
That's where I was going. That's where I'd find my mate. I don't know how I know, but I felt it. He would be there. And that thought pushes me forward.
One step at a time until I'm out of the trees and in a clearing with two houses.
I pause to catch my breath, my entire body trembling and nearly numb from pain. But then the pain was gone the moment I saw my mate on the porch of one of the houses.
I push away from the tree, nearly falling in my haste to get to him. My legs go as fast as I can, my crutch digging into my hand as I breathe raggedly, willing myself to keep moving. To make it to the house, to my mate. To see him up close one last time.
I felt it in my soul that it would be the last time.
I knew I was dying. I had been for a long time. Hell, maybe I was already dead, my body and soul cursed with dark magic to shamble around for eternity until it's rotted so badly it can't move.
I could almost believe that if it wasn't for my heart beating in my chest, so loud and hard that I was sure everything in the valley could hear it.
I pace each step to it. Each step taking me closer and closer to my mate. Each beat of my heart just for him until I finally, finally, make it up the stairs and onto the porch, leaning heavily on my crutch. My improperly healed ribs dig into my lungs, making each breath as shallow as possible.
I knock on the door and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Just when I think he won't answer, when I think I'm about to pass out on his porch, the door opens.
And there stands my mate.
My mate.. with a kit in his arms.
Before my mind can process it, my body shuts down and I'm falling to the ground, my lips desperately trying to say my mates name one last time before my world goes dark.