2003-12-16 - 10:06 p.m.
"The moon is trying to change you."
"Is that what I've been feeling?"
"It was created to control the will of the planet."
"Created? But who would do such a thing? Who could do such a thing?"
"You know who, the real question is why... no, more importantly, what are you going to do about it?"
"I'm going to...! Nothing. I'll do nothing. It seems I've already done too much."
"You must do something."
"I refuse to. I'll lay here and die if I have to."
"And what if there is something left worth fighting for?"
"There isn't... and even if there were, I can't do any more fighting. I've failed for the last time."
"And what about her, is she worth fighting for?"
"The girl..."
"Tell me, if you can't fight, who will?"
"I--I don't know."
"Nobody, there is only you. Will you let her die?"
"No, of course not, but-"
"But nothing. You know we must act."
"..."
"..."
"...yes."
"So what are you doing lying here? She's waiting for us to get up, to tell her what were going to do."
"If she survived... we need to search for the others!"
"Good. Now... wake up!"
Lance started from his long sleep and sat upright. The suddenness of his movements caused the girl kneeling at his side to fall back in surprise. He quickly found himself doubling over from a pain in his left side. He cradled the wound and felt that it had been covered with tattered bandages. He gazed about wildly, breathing heavily all the while. As his vision cleared and he became accustomed to the dim light, his focus was drawn to the frozen figure lying nearby on the cavern floor. His head was pounding, but he tried to speak.
“Where am I? What happened to the others?!”
Even as he had said the words the memories returned. Scarlet’s death, the revelation of the sages, and the restoration of the ruins. Most of all, he remembered the shouts of his friends as he had fallen to the crashing waves during the cataclysm. And just as he felt despair taking hold of him once again, he remembered wolves and the girl, and he looked towards her, his tone was now soft. “Sorry.” She didn’t speak, but slowly regained her knees and sat there looking at him. “You must be terrified.”
Suddenly concerned for her, he checked to see if she was hurt, and for the first time, he really looked at her. She was young, perhaps not a child, but certainly not of age to marry. She must have been strong to have survived; yet as he looked at her he couldn’t help but think of how fragile she seemed. Her face was small and round. Her expression seemed nervous and she was so still, holding her thin arms around her knees, as if she weren’t even breathing. And though he could just barely see them through the long tangles of blond hair covering her face, something about her eyes held his gaze there, transfixed. The sound of the wind howling outside of the cave caught him back to attention.
“Well, it doesn’t look like you’ve been hurt any. That’s a blessing.” He paused. “My name is—“,
Before he could finish the words, the girl had flung her arms around him and begun to cry. “Lance,” he finished. Weakly he raised an arm to pat her on the back. It felt odd holding a stranger; odd, yet somehow comforting. He wondered at what she must have gone through. Had she been hurt? Who had she lost? How long had she been alone? “It’s okay now,” he said softly, stroking her hair, “everything’s going to be alright.” In his mind he was less confident, but he felt the need to console the girl. She buried her head in his tunic, and he allowed her to stay like that until she no longer had tears.
