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Post by lilywilde on Nov 2, 2016 0:23:28 GMT -6
----- Never stop Running ----- tag: --- // words: --- // notes: --- ----- Lily could feel the warmth draining from Solomon. When he finally responded to her drawn out story, his voice was so weak that she almost silenced him so that he may conserve the energy. She was selfish, and wanted so badly to hear his reply, to hear what he had to say in response to her confession of guilt. His words indicated a deep wellspring of pain that she had long suspected lay within him. Nobody who lacked some great tragedy could possibly deliver such advice. The way he jabbed his finger into her stomach would have normally made her recoil, but given the circumstances, and the meaning she read in the small action, she actually found herself forming goosebumps at the action. It was as powerful a motion as the words themselves had been.
She placed a hand on his cheek gently, cradling his face in her neck. His whole body was ice cold at this point, but she clung to him despite that. He had grown still, but she could still hear his laboring heart beading in his chest. The soft intake and exhalation of breath was steady enough, considering his wounds.
She tended those wounds shortly after he'd fallen into unconsciousness. She felt impotent, with her lack of medical knowledge and general ignorance concerning first aid. It would be yet another subject she'd have to incorporate into her already overstuffed schedule. She carefully used what little skill she did have to stop the bleeding and wrap the wounds in clean bandages. She put her back against the cave wall, before propping him against her chest. She disliked the idea of letting his already ice cold form bleed what little warmth he had left into the dense stone cave floor. She held on to him for a long time after that. Occasionally the beating of wings would echo off of the cave walls and she'd clutch him desperately.
"I'm sure the pain gets easier to bear, and you stop noticing," she finally responded to his unconscious form, "But I'm certain you'd notice if somehow, some way, a little part of it went away."
She didn't have a metaphor as apt as scar tissue to poke, instead, she punctuated her message with a gentle kiss planted on the young huntsman's cheek, beore resting her cheek against his. In this pose, she felt her eyes slowly drawing closed.
She would have sworn they were only closed for a moment, however when they opened back up, there was an unfamiliar huntsman pulling Solomon off of her. She began to protest, to stand and demand that Sol be treated gently, but she found a second huntress was already trying to pull her onto a stretcher as well.
"It's okay, we'll get you back to Vytal and get you all patched up properly." The older woman said with a soft, gentle note to her voice.
Lily didn't trust them, but she didn't trust anyone too easily. She had to admit though that this was better than leaving Sol to perish from exposure in the cave. She stood on shaky legs and said "Don't worry about me. I can still move. Just focus on him okay?"
The woman tried to convince Lily for a few moments to let them put her on the stretcher and carry her to the plane with Solomon, but Lily insisted on continuing on her own strength. Finally, the huntress acquiesced and pressed a small button on one of the handles and the stretcher collapsed neatly into a small square, which she then affixed to her belt. The other huntsman, who had struggled to get Sol's frame onto the stretcher pressed a small button, and the stretcher began to hover over the ground with a loud, annoying hum. Lily's ears flattened to ward away the noise. Neither of the human hunters looked too particularly concerned by it though.
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One extremely loud take off sequence and short flight later
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Back at Vytal, the pair of huntsmen had left Sol and Lily in the care of the medical staff at the school. Lily had begrudgingly let them examine the bite marks on her arms. They applied stitches, and antiseptic spray which stung the girl quite a bit, but her treatments were far less work than Sol's.
She wasn't allowed in the room while they worked on him, but after what felt like an eternity they did finally open those doors. She was through them, and next to Solomon's side in an instant, nothing but a white streak to mark her path through the Lobby remained from where she'd sat before. A few papers in the room exploded into a frenzy of wind as she passed by them, but she didn't care. Her eyes were busy. They needed to be completely sure, to see for themselves that Solomon was going to be okay.
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Post by Solomon Moon on Nov 4, 2016 2:47:07 GMT -6
 is a mechanism of the senses and the manner in which the brain catalogues information in a linear fashion. This is why, at the point of unconsciousness, time does not simply seem to stop, rather it blinks entirely from existence, leaving behind an after image like the white stripe that bisects an old vacuum tube television when the power is cut. It is in this shadow, this infinitely narrow division of light that slowly fades to a burning point, that the dreams of the unconscious mind lurk like bloated corpses in the muck of a quagmire.
The human brain was not designed to deactivate in this sudden and harmful fashion, and it might surprise any who have not experienced it first hand that being knocked out is nothing at all like falling asleep.
There is a logic and a progression to falling asleep, a slow winding down, a careful and measured deactivation of peripheral systems until only the life support and essential de-fragmentary functions remain, and finally a gentle retreat to the realm of fancy and rest that is dream.
Meanwhile, being knocked out is hardly anything that could be called restful. To call it an experience in and of itself would be somewhat erroneous, as, by it's very nature, unconsciousness precludes being experienced in a conventional manner. Given that by definition, the subject is rendered unaware for a period of time, and that awareness itself is the result of several singularly complex processes working in careful cooperation to record an experience, actually experiencing unconsciousness is in fact quite impossible. Naturally this makes it a difficult thing to describe, never the less, perhaps it might be amusing to attempt to do so.
In popular culture, it is fashionable to describe unconsciousness as a dreamlike state, divorced from reason and a sense of presence, usually as a plot device or a source of some personal revelation. While the results of this event can certainly be interpreted as such, to do so actually does a disservice to the actual magnitude of the disruption that has taken place. Visions, dreams, and hallucinations are not fictional, as they are certainly well documented enough by varied enough sources to validate their credibility. However, these visions typically manifest shortly before, or some time after the actual onset of oblivion, and are not the event itself, rather they are aftershocks or pre-shocks to the actual earthquake. It is worth mentioning that even a direct comparison between such an event and the shaking of the literal earth upon which we stand is not capable of adequately conveying the scope by which one's mind is scrambled, however briefly, by being abruptly shut off.
Being struck unconscious is the equivalent of having one's train of thought derailed from whatever track it was upon at the time, by the simultaneous convergence of an earthquake, tsunami, and hurricane, amidst a meteor shower. As the train comes free of it's slide, it's mass slams into the fertile soil of the mind, plowing up whatever memories or impressions have been neatly piled there and seeing as the mind tends to enjoy a certain kind of organization, these memories are typically of the same nature as the track the train was upon at the time of the unfortunate detour. Considering the sorts of situations wherein one might be the victim of an injury significant enough to render oneself unconscious, these dredged up figments are often of a very alarming, stress inducing nature.
This is typically perceived at the time as something not unlike the explosive crashing of a large transport vehicle, and the resultant shower of debris. Memories explode like fireworks, sensations, impressions and thoughts sprayed in every direction like shrapnel, and amidst the chaos it might be possible to recognize a single element here and there, but the sense, reason, and even the basic connections of these things are lost in the noise. It lasts only a moment, about as long as it would take actual debris to make landfall once more, (for it to last any longer would mean a much greater impact, and typically those that experience such a shock will never be in a condition to relay the experience to anyone ever again,). Naturally, as one might expect, it takes some time to get the train righted and rolling once more, and it is this period, between trauma and full function that is popularly mislabeled as unconsciousness. To call a person in this state more accurately, would be to call them "unresponsive".
---
Sol was unresponsive for a while. The particular patch of his mental landscape where his cognitive locomotive had happened to run aground was a wasteland of marsh and swamp, unsuitable for any sort of cultivation, and only useful as a dumping ground for the worst of the sins he'd ever committed. His guilt had turned the water black, and his shame had stricken the air with vile vapors. Visions of battles, of wounds, of crimes, violence, wrath, lust, flashed before him, out of order, overlapping, slicing through each other with weird and insidious corners, severing themselves and folding on strange edges.
His hearing was the first sense to return to him, but it's absence had not meant silence in the interim. In the void of awareness, even the most ephemeral figment was as tangible as granite. The bellowing of vulcan cannons stretched and distorted into the screams of dying men, while the falling whistle of mortars exploded into the barked orders of his squad-mates. At first it was impossible to distinguish the voices, talking, laid across the field of sound like a thin film, thin but distinct at every angle, but over time, they resolved, tempered and hardened into reality, while the rest retreated back to the pit of the bogs. It made no sense at first, because reason, sight, and sensation, had yet to return to his reeling mind, but as his bloody fingers clutched a sword hilt and then a stump, and then the slack form of an older man, without anything to tie the visions together, Sol was terrified by those phantom voices as they spoke nonsense in his ears.
Sensation came next, a maelstrom of warring impressions, memories of straining muscles, of real flesh and blood fingers holding cool steel, of warm blood slicking his face, of a searing pain that divided his arm, all seemed to part like a cloud, and through it, Sol became aware of a full body as it suffered. His extremities, each already fighting their own individual infections, felt as if they were resting in molten oil. The only thing that didn't hurt was his right arm, but something felt wrong about it. He squirmed, groaning, trying to pull his arms and legs away from the flames that scorched them, but the pain followed and grew worse, and he was too tired to lift even a finger from the stretcher. He tried to lift his other arm, the one that didn't hurt.
"GET HIS ARM!" Said a voice.
A great weight slammed down on him, hard enough to make him cry out. A sound like a power tool, and then more weight, more shouting. Sol struggled, yelling through parched lips, babbling incoherently as he thrashed in an attempt to throw off his attackers. Impact, something firm buckled around his fist. Sol swung blindly, mindlessly, without even understanding that he was trying to defend himself, or why. There was heat, a high pitched screeching, or was it screaming? Both?
Sparks flew before his blind eye, something hard struck him on the jaw. He slept.
---
Sol was laid out in the bed as Lily arrived. Machines surrounded his motionless form, like a retinue of mechanical mourners attending a funeral service. Beeps, and blips, and countless electronic displays recorded and reported arcane and obscure details of the boy's condition.
His lower body was covered by a modest white sheet and woven blanket, hiding his nudity, as well as the padded shackles that secured his ankles to the lower corners of his hospital bed. His upper body was elevated in a half harness, to keep him from resting upon the worst of the incisions that marked his back. A tube with a valve on it drained into a pale beside the bed, the other end disappearing into his chest where a third incision had been made to relieve pressure in his thoracic cavity. A single layer of bandages covered the length of his left arm, parting only for an intro-venous needle at the interior of his elbow, and for his wrist to be chained to the side of the bed. His right arm was entirely absent from just below the shoulder, and numerous hoses, and disconnected electrical lines breached the flesh and dangled uselessly from the stump. His hair was collected behind his head in a tight tail, and the socket of his right eye was all but exposed, saved for a small cross of medical tape. The puckered flesh, withered and blistered from an ancient infection, or perhaps some sort of burn, covered almost half of his face without his eye-patch to hide it.
His broad and powerful chest, well toned and wide shoulders, gave the entire display a profound sense of tragedy, a dichotomy of might and helplessness. Laid bare as he was, it was clear, that despite cutting an imposing figure in a uniform, armed with a sword, Sol was actually just a one eyed cripple, only a year or two past his legal adulthood, who would not have looked out of place resting in the field hospital of one of any thousand battlefields. He did not stop being a casualty when he picked up a sword and put on his uniform, and replaced his missing arm, it was just less obvious. No amount of bandage and medicine could hide the profound tragedy of his broken form, especially not unresponsive as he was, and trussed up like something in a meat locker.
He'd been sedated. To keep him from harming himself, though one of the orderlies could look forward to a few weeks of discomfort for the cracked ribs Sol had given him. It was not an easy sleep.
---
He dreamed. In his nightmare he was laid up, not upon a soft hospital bed, but out upon a field of sucking mud. He was in a valley at the center of two massive hills, which crested for as far as the eye could see, facing each other like a pair of giants glaring at each other for eternity. He didn't know how or when he had come to be there, but he did know that the mud had once been hard packed earth, fertile and green. In a distant time, beyond memory, two forces had arranged themselves on the crest of either hill, their line of cavalry, artillery, and infantry stretching from one horizon to the next. In a time not quite so distant, but still well out of mind, a call had gone up, and soon after the charge. Boots, hooves, and shells fell as the armies surged towards the valley. Men yelled, horses screamed, shells exploded as they met. Death walked as if a farm hand through a field of ripe wheat.
The battle raged, and neither side seemed to be able to exhaust bodies to throw into the tide of violence and humanity. The only thing to keep the corpses from piling up was the falling of boots and hooves and mortars, driving the dead into the earth, grinding their useless broken forms into paste.
The soil had been black, fertile, solid once. Now it was red and so gorged on the blood that men were forced to wade through it up to their waists, but they continued to fight, as if on solid ground.
There was Sol at the center of it, surrounded by the dying cries of doomed men, the terrified shrieking of poor beasts, and the deafening roar of cannon fire above it all. The air stank of blood and gunpowder, of feces and fear. The earth cloyed at him, sucking him into it. The sky was black with thrown up dirt, filled with flying shells that fell like rain. He didn't know what got him, a sword, or a hoof, or shrapnel, but he was done for.
He was slashed by a hundred blades that sought still standing foes, his skin stripped away one sword width at a time, flayed alive. He was trampled, his agonized form stomped into the earth, his bones crushed, his skull pulverized beneath a thousand pummeling blows. Finally he was shelled, his pieces scattered across the world to all corners of the horizons. But his suffering did not end.
An endless war raged across him. Millions of feet marched across his flesh. Hundreds of swords stabbed and killed across his skin, trampling the dead into his body. Shells and mortars blasted his bones.
Man and land, one and the same.
---
Sol stirred in his slumber. The apparatus that supported his mass creaked in protest but held firm. Then he started screaming. A low noise at first, slowly rising until the air and room seemed to shake with the raw matter of terror and pain. He thrashed, jerking on his restraints, causing the bed to rock and tip. The ropes and pulleys that held him up groaned, but had been designed for this sort of abuse and held strong. He continued to scream, his head thrown back as a world at war worth of suffering fought across his husk. Machines shrieked as vital processes leaped right off the charts, attempting suicide or escape, perhaps both.
tag(s): lilywilde ━ words: 000 ━ notes: Color code 7319e6made by ira of stf and ww |
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Post by lilywilde on Nov 4, 2016 14:29:53 GMT -6
----- Never stop Running ----- tag: --- // words: --- // notes: --- This hadn't been Lily's first time in the recovery ward. In fact, she had spent a few more days here than she'd cared to. The first time she'd shown up, she had acquiesced to being treated, for she was there with her friend Aegle. The second time, they tried to hold her longer than she'd wished, and she leapt over the crowds of people attempting to restrain her and escaped. The third time they'd attempted to hold her down with soft cloth restraints, which had been no match for Lily's claws, and she'd escaped out the window.
Following that, when they desperately wanted to keep her, they used metal handcuffs lined with soft padding to prevent the restraints from digging into her wrists. She had been threatened with this if she failed to let them properly treat her wounds. She had no intention of leaving the boy's side, not even for a moment. So, as a compromise, they'd treated her arms again at his bedside. Applying painful ointment to the wounds that, Lily insisted, would have healed just fine. They also wrapped her arms in fresh bandages. The professional wrapping job put her own to shame. There were no gaps in the expertly layed medical fibers. There were no bloody smears where her own bloody fingers had left streaks in the white fabric. In fact, thanks to the absorbent pads they'd put down on the worst of the wounds, there were no spots of red whatsoever.
None of these details mattered to Lily however. In fact, she was hardly even paying attention as they wrapped her arms. Her focus was entirely on the boy who had saved her life. She held his hand in hers, squeezing from time to time. He was so cold. She wanted to curl up with him, to give her warmth to him, but she knew better than to put extra pressure on his wounds, and she doubted that the nurses that would come in to check on him now and again would appreciate that too much. The last thing she wanted was to be removed from the room.
So she sat, offering what little warmth she could. He would occasionally let loose with an anguished cry. Whatever he was seeing in his unconscious state could not have been pleasant. In the quieter moments, she thought back to the time on the island. How the nevermore had left her frozen. She hadn't seen one since the fatal encounter she'd had months ago. Next time she couldn't freeze like that. Next time she had to will herself to move. She had to. Solomon almost died, she couldn't endanger others.
She gave herself a few moments to let those thoughts die, before tending to Solomon once more. They were hard to kill. Each time she buried one guilty thought, another took it's place.
She would attentively wipe the sweat from his brow whenever it formed, and never went more than a few feet from his side. Only moving when the nurses insisted she must.
When he finally began to stir, the violence and suddenness startled her. His grip became a vice, and if not for a quick application of defensive aura, she was sure bone would have been crushed to dust. The machines went wild as they struggled to keep up with the suddenness of his energetic display of agony. Her aura cloaked her, it's white light covering her, and fell on his struggling form. It's calming effect could not have been more than a candle in the darkness, flickering defiantly in the closing darkness. She doubted that it did much to help him, considering the violence that he thrashed with.
Nurses entered the room, and tried to shoo her away, but his grip on her hand was too solid for her to be freed so easily. She was somewhat glad for that fact, she didn't want to be anywhere but by his side. She tried to make herself as small as possible, the frantic movements of the nurses around her were background noise to Lily. All she could hear was the screaming. All she could see was the anguish in his face. Tears rolled down her cheek. She couldn't help but feel like this state he was in was entirely her own fault. She couldn't place blame anywhere else. Though it may have been Solomon's own choice to come back for her, she was little more than dead weight. Her aura flickered, and she cleared her head of those thoughts.
Blaming herself would do nobody any good. She had to be here when he returned to coherence.
"Please Sol, come back to me." She pleaded, her voice barely an echo in the frantic energy of the room.
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