Dust (Of Dust and Darkness) - By Devon Ashley Page 0,8

within the trees.

I decide the reason isn’t worth getting caught in the storm for. I redirect my gaze to the sky and bend my knees, preparing to bail on the canopy myself. I feel a sharp prick against the back of my neck and instinctively smack it, thinking it’s a mosquito. They’re the only bug in the forest I have no scruples over killing. All they do is take and never give back (unless you count disease). But what I feel against my hand isn’t the squashed, broken body of a mosquito. It’s a splinter, or a stinger, and it’s embedded deep inside my skin. So far in I dare not pull it out without help.

A move I instantly regret.

My eyes begin to blur and my body collapses as it’s flooded with extreme exhaustion. All my facial muscles slacken, and now I can’t speak. All my mouth can do is separate my lips slightly and release a moan. I lose complete control as the numbness spreads over my limbs and now lay lifeless, leaving me completely at the mercy of the storm. I’m powerless when a large raindrop splashes on my face, invading my throat and choking my lungs. I lay there, spasms thrusting my chest in a desperate effort to expel the water. Fighting the drowsiness with all my might, I force my aching eyelids open. Everything blurs, but I see a dark shadow nearing, my terrified heart beating in painful bursts against its cage, more so as my vision slowly fades to black.

I wake up on my stomach gasping. I can’t breathe, my inhalation so rough and deep and painful. It takes me a split second to realize the pain I’m feeling isn’t because of the water that was in my lungs. It’s my wings! It feels as if they’ve been cruelly ripped from my body. And there’s something heavy digging into my back. I reach around and feel something cold: steel. I feel to assess its size and a sharp pain shoots through my spine. I scream with all my might but only a mere whisper makes it past the constricting muscles in my throat. It’s not until I finally manage to gasp a deep breath does sound come out and echo through the cold, eerie darkness.

“Oh-my-Mother! Oh-my-Mother! OH-MY-MOTHER-NATURE!” I scream. And gasp. And scream. And gasp. “Please Mother! My wings!” My breaths quicken as I panic, and my heart pounds against my chest, desperate to break free from its prison of ribs.

It’s pitch black and I can’t see a thing, and there’s something heavy weighing down on my wings, which almost feel broken. It’s cold. And dark. “Somebody? Anybody?” I call out. My echo repeats the words back at me, almost mocking me as they fade away and escape this place without me.

I reach for my pixie dust but feel nothing. I frantically pat myself down, inflicting more unnecessary pain, but my satchel of pixie dust is nowhere to be found. I panic and crawl across the cold floor, searching for my lost satchel. Stone? It feels natural, like a cave. I think I’m deep within a cave. The jagged rock cuts into my flesh with each step I make on my hands and knees. My wings burn, my chest burns, and a spot on the outside of my left wrist burns, but I feel nothing except grit and grime upon my skin. My heart speeds up with each second that passes, because with each of those seconds, I grow more aware that something very bad has happened. Very, very bad.

I scream again – part for pain, part for terror. The next crawling step runs me into a wall, which unfortunately my forehead finds first. Something warm drips down my nose and then falls lost to the floor. It’s at this moment I realize my face is dewy, saturated with tears that probably ran while I was still unconscious. My knees and legs shake as I use the wall to pull myself into a standing position. I reach as high as my arms will allow but feel nothing overhead, and the stretch activates the unbearable pain in my spine once more. I hunch over and follow the wall in the darkness, crying all the way, trying to stifle the screams within. I’m so cautious with my steps, edging my feet around the protrusions, that it takes me forever. It feels like the wall curves slightly to the left…and keeps on curving. My will to continue begins