I feel myself lying in the soft green grass of the meadow. Around me birds sing. Puffy white clouds sit in the blue sky. My parents are lying beside me. Holding me tightly. There’s no way this is real. Unless. Unless I’m dead. Am I?
As if and answer, the meadow scene vanishes along with the sight of my parents and I open my eyes. I’m lying in the cave with my head resting on my backpack. Dillon sits beside me and soon the others crowd around me too.
“How long was I out?” I ask.
“Almost two days,” Dillon answers.
“What?” I ask in astonishment, sitting up. Almost immediately I’m overcome with dizziness and collapse back down. “How?”
“One man hit you with a blow dart with some sort of drug that put you under,” Olivia explains
“What happened after that?” I ask. They don’t skimp on the details when they tell me.
Once I was knocked out, Dillon came to. He started struggling until Olivia cut the ropes. The sight of me motionless on the ground must’ve worried him. One man was about to finish me off with a knife, but Dillon guarded me. The man had cut him in the back, where there was now a long, but not very deep, cut. With her good arm, Olivia used her new spear skills to send the man down. The last man was said to put up a good fight. He threw knives them, shot arrows, flung spears, lashed whips. Olivia had gotten whipped, Marcus was cut, and Dillon had gotten too close to him and was punched in the face. That was when Rose came out of her apparently beneficial hiding spot. She grabbed a knife that had been wedged in a tree and threw it at the man when his back was turned toward her. He falls down, dead. Dillon scooped me up in his arms and carried me back to the cave. Marcus was limping behind him with Olivia helping him and Rose hobbling along behind them.
“Are you guys all okay?” I ask. Everyone gives different responses.
“More or less,” Marcus says. He had a cut on his arm and took a bullet in his ankle, which affected his walking.
“Well we did get the group’s first aid kit,” Olivia says, trying to brighten the situation. “It was loaded with bandages and some antiseptic.” She had her share of wounds as well. A bullet grazed her shoulder and she had a handful of lashes on her left arm.
“My wrist kinda hurts,” Rose sighs. Her wrist was in a thick white bandage. It was broken.
“I was just so afraid you were dead,” Dillon remarks. His eyes show pain. “I’m okay now though.” As well as a cut down his back, he had a bruise on one cheek, and a welt on the other.
“What about you Skye?” Rose asks. I try to sit up again, but need Dillon’s support. My arm still aches and my head throbs. As I reach up to my forehead, where the pain is, I feel a bandage. I then recall being cut by one of the men before I was knocked out.
“Just a little dizzy, that’s all.” The expression on Dillon’s face shows that he knows it’s more than that, but he doesn’t say anything. I hate making people worry, it always gives me a sense of weakness for both me and the other person, so I try to hide any reason for people to. But Dillon knows me too well.
The drug knocked me out again and by the time I wake up, it’s dark. A worn leather jacket rests on top of me.
“Good morning,” a voice behind me comments. It’s Marcus.
“Is this yours?” I ask holding up the jacket.
“Yeah it was my dad’s,” he says fingering the mangy leather. “Are you alright? You were shivering.”
“I guess it gets cold at night. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
“You sure?”
“I’ve slept for like two days and I’m feeling better.” Not a total lie. The dizziness had subsided.
“Okay, goodnight.” He lies down next to Olivia and falls asleep.
I sit near the entrance of the cave, letting the moonlight illuminate my face. I get a grasp on how afraid I really am. And now the scenes from a few days ago are etched in my mind. Rose’s swelling wrist. Olivia and Marcus getting shot. Dillon tied to a tree unconscious. I’m afraid that I’ll lose them like I lost my family. No. I can’t let that happen. Why did Dillon take the blow for me? Easy. He wanted to protect me. I lean over his sleeping body and kiss him on the bruise on his cheek.
“Why?” I whisper, despite the fact I had already found my answer. But what was the question I really wanted an answer for. Even I couldn’t seem to figure that out. His eyelids flicker open. He smiles up at me.
“It’s about time,” he whispers. Does he mean it’s about time I woke up, or that it’s about time I kissed him myself?
“What do you—” I start to ask. His smile fades.
“What’s wrong?” he asks gently. How can he read me so well? Then I realize the tears rolling down my cheeks.
“I’m scared,” I say feebly “of losing you guys.”
“Everything will be alright.” He sits up and hugs me. “I promise.”
I remember my father saying exactly that when I was six. Something had caused the game to flee, leaving the village on the brink of starvation. My dad sat me in his lap one night in front of the fire. I asked him if everything would turn out okay. He promised it would. But in truth, nothing turned out okay.
For a while, we just sit there—me still wrapped up in his arms. As much as I want his company, I finally say,
“Go back to sleep.” He doesn’t argue and the dark circles under his eyes tell me he never sleeps much. I actually feel guilty for sleeping so long even it was because of a drug. “But promise me something else first.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t risk your life for me again.” He shakes his head.
“That’s one thing I can’t promise you Skye.”
No one wakes up after that and I don’t bother to wake anyone. I don’t think I’ll find sleep anyway. And if I do it’ll bring nightmares. The kind that I feel I will never truly wake up from.
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