Bitter Hibernation

Twilight was silent. Seeming fit to burst with some token, some mote of wisdom to provide what little comfort was available. It, however, was crushed beneath the cacophonous silence.

Wearily she lay, staring through the verdant forest. The ferns, trees, the soil, the marching insects. The mind is alive with a thousand thoughts - but not now. Not this time. There is only the nothingness. The hollow ache. As if the body was a vein stripped of all it's glittering pieces. There was the endless expanse of time stretched out before her. How long had she been here. How long had twilight been hovering. Were there others? The hard packed earth was rich and soft beneath her, long since ingraining itself into her hair, bits of it clung furtively. Dust to dust, and it was intent upon pulling her back in. Her muscles had long since given up the fight to pull her out of the huddled mass she lay in. Had the fingers against her lips or the ones crushed beneath her belly gone numb first?

Piercing her to the forest floor, the agonizing lance burned its way into her spine. She was sure the scream ricocheting through her cranium had been physically uttered, yet the forest wielded no echo. The blinding white light split her skull apart, subsiding to the muscles being rent apart in her calf.

And suddenly the pain was pinging from one cell to the next. It was then the acid carved it's way down her face. Of it's own free will, she stared from her back into the canopy. Shuddering from the effort and wracking sobs. It was the rain, violently cold and furiously falling. Heaven crying to pushstart the body without the will to do so.

Every muscle was alive and hungry now. Awakened from it's bitter hibernation most hastily. Clutching and clinging to itself it cried. And in her mind there was only the acrid wasteland. Only wind and cracked, dead land for miles. Yet she wasn't alone. There was that one. Hovering over her. Unrelenting, however, undemanding. Seeming content to just be there. Voicing no queries, no motive, no comfort. Nothing.

The forest moved. And suddenly she was staring out again. It was then she noticed the curled claw of a hand clutching the wet earth. Sliding over it as the legs behind her pushed. Content to watch the dragging, she huddled into herself observing until she was lost to unconsciousness.