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Isella

She opened her eyes. The world spun once or twice and finally came to a standstill.

Her lungs and ribs ached from the pressure of the dragon’s tail and lack of air, but when she tried to inhale she found she could breathe. But with breathing came the horrible smell of the dragon. She glanced carefully around.

The dragon’s tail was gone, and she realized that she was leaning against something. Something hard. Her hair was in her face again. she lifted her hands carefully, but no chain rattled on her wrist. She risked another look around, but could see almost nothing in the darkness around her.

She tried to turn her head, but fragments of light and shade stabbed at her eyes, and her stomach rolled. She groaned.

Fainting twice in a day isn’t recommended.

There was one good thing about it, though. While she was unconscious she couldn’t feel the pulsing. It was going on now, incessantly, as it always had and always would. Underneath the lighter, shorter pricks as babies were born.

She smiled. If only it were just people being born that she could feel!

But sharper and more forceful, overriding the light tingling sensation, was the ever-present hammering in her veins: one prick each for someone leaving time, though out every age of of the world that had been or would be.

as her eyes grew used to the darkness of the cave she saw at the other end a heap of…people. One of them stirred, but underneath was one that was motionless.

Her stomach churned again, and this time it wasn’t an effect of fainting.

That person there, lying on the ground–that body. She had felt them die. She closed her eyes. there had been a sharper prick–almost a stab–before the fight with the dragon began, just as she was regaining consciousness the first time.

“It was them.”

“What?”

Isella jumped at the brusque feminine voice so close to her. She risked the nausea to look around. A well-set woman, hardly more than a girl, stood a little to her right, between her and the place she had been chained. Beyond her the body of the dragon lay on the ground, quivering, it’s green blood staining the floor and causing the whole cave to reek.

The girl had wispy blonde hair, so light that it seemed to glow faintly in the darkness of the cave. She was pretty–would have been almost beautiful if she didn’t have a look of fear and regret or bitterness that seeped through her sea-green grey eyes. They were only a little more green then Isella’s.

Isella tried to smile at her, but the effect must have been ghastly, because the girl stepped back.

“Who are you?” Isella’s voice rasped with pain and thirst. she was still sweating from the heat of the dragon, and wondered vaguely if her bodice was singed where the brute’s tail had clasped.

The girl seemed less at ease now than before Isella had spoken. She longed to say something to comfort her, but she was too tired. She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. her lips mouthed the word, “Water.”

She opened her eyes and asked properly, “Do you have water? please.” Then her eyes rolled back.

No, don’t faint again. It will just make you feel worse.

Her eyes lolled back, threatening to drag her into unconsciousness or delirium.

She tried to think of something, anything. Then it flashed across her mind: That man. Where is he?

She forced her eyes open, but she couldn’t see him. Had the reeking blue flames killed him instead of her?

she let her eyes drift across the room. He’s very handsome. she thought with a coolness that most girls would have either envied or despised. All her eyes landed on was the girl, and it occurred to her that she had helped Isella escape.

She formed the words “thank you”, but they stuck in her dry throat.

Unconsciousness pulled so strongly that she was running out of energy to resist. It would be so much simpler. Her eyes drifted closed and she forced them open again.

“Where’s Cirian?”

nevermind your horse! You’re about to permanently faint!

But had the dragon got him?