Becoming alive is a strange thing.
A moment, a day, maybe a year, unfortunately a decade. A period of time of coming into the awareness of oneself.
As perceptive as she was, Korin should have noticed, but few ever do. That's the thing about being aware; you simply aren't until you are. Only much later do some recall where their worlds began to change.
For her it was in the darkness long past, wrapped in the cool comfort of a moonless spring night. She awoke from the dreamless void she always went when she slumbered. Left the realm of no sights or sounds as the wind let out soft howls. The smallest of breezes carving way through mountain crevices and the forest sighed, filling the valley with the whispered rustle of leaves. She was drenched in sweat. She had never woken up so soiled. As if she had left her bed in her sleep and ran miles around the mountain, her night clothes were soaked through.
As she lay there, marveling and disgusted by her stickiness, a branch scratched its way across the window. The sound of blades being run against each other cut through the song of the mountain and in a swift wind the most peculiar of feelings swelled in her chest. Twisted and heavy, it withered and fluttered, beating against the ribs. The breeze died but the hollow echo of its travel remained and the world began to tick.
A tick, strange and peculiar in the way every sight and sound came into focus. Like the world had been asleep all along and had finally awoken with her, escaping the void and fighting to move. The unsettling sound of twigs scrapping glass echoed the snapping of cosmic chains, crumbling as time began. Becoming alive.
Oh, and how alivenings failed to be anything but tumultuous.
Maybe it's slow progression was why she had failed to notice the slow metronome tick that blended into the lull hum of everyday life. Her sudden and new immersion in existence slipped by unchecked even when the hum turned into a melody and that melody rolled into a bowing of strings and the plucking of keys. Gaining momentum as her world began to brim with life.
And now Korin was at a crescendo, plummeting through the air; clothes wildly flapping, hair viciously whipping about leaving small scratches on her face. It was as if the giant hand of a powerful being had smacked her toward the planet while trumpets and cannons blared around her.
SHAAH. PAAH. PAH!!!
Thick layers of clouds burst apart as her body violently rag dolled through them. The air assaulted her skin and she dared not even open her eyes.
Her chest swelled and her ears rang in bellowing horns, syncing to the rhythm of her pounding heart. Pure electricity laced her blood, frantically being pumped through her veins by her frenzied organ.
She should be afraid. Afraid of hitting the ground, afraid of dying. Her body felt it. Her singing blood and her pounding heart. Terror that only failed to grip her mind but seized the rest of her in its electric glove. Her face remained smooth in its curse of apathy. Only the ripping winds lifted her features. Her mind was sealed away. Sealed in a tank of observation. That place she always watched the world from, soaking in the sights. She had long forgotten how to yield experience to emotion.
So meticulously separate from her body, the world looked heavenly. The rays of sun, thick and syrupy, bounced off clouds lighting them in shades of gold, violet, and orange. Cottony blessings and glowing satin gods of parched earth that lived in the skies above. Succulent cumulonimbus that would gather and unleash sheets of water on soil below.
Korin imagined she looked like something tragic falling through them. A contrasting stain of darkened hair and bruised limbs tumbling down like some dishonored angel cast away from their heaven above.
It was a brief moment of belonging and she soaked it in.
.
SPLASH!
It was not the ground that met her but a body of water. Hitting sun drizzled liquid with such speed and ferocity tore at her skin and crushed into her bones. The symphony of the world cut short in muted fuzz as her eardrums ruptured, air pushed from her lungs and her eyes rolling back, briefly losing consciousness on impact.
A painfully long moment later her eyes snapped open. Fighting the pull of the void as pain shot up her body like a glowing blade rammed through her spine. Ack! She gasped and water rushed into her lungs. Salty liquid painfully smoldering out the burning steel. She gripped her throat, muscles and nerves screaming as she scratched at herself for air that did not come.
Trailing down into a watery abyss, anxiety filled her as her eyes bulged.
Her arms fell limp.
For a moment the world was grimy and all wrong, how she saw it from the walls of her cranial observatory quickly filling with salt, neurons imploding and corroding away. The water that filled her lungs and coated her throat was salty and too thick, lukewarm and briny. The last few bubbles of air escaping her held an unnatural edge- sharp spheres of spent oxygen cutting into the water.
Her lungs were alight in soggy fire as her vision dimmed. And just when her mind began to slip away, the world flipped on its head. The pickling solution that surrounded her disappeared and her stomach lurched as her perspective spun.
The illusion fell away and she heaved water from her lungs that never existed. Only blood and bile, white froth mixed with oil and grit in a deep red, splattered the white tile beneath her.
Her head pounded and her eyes watered as the searing white colored stone assaulted her. A blank prison with towering walls and not a single entrance or exit to be seen. The only color that decorated its surfaces was that of her own blood. Pooled and thick in puddles that a generous observer could call ponds. It was incredible how her own body could hold so much redness.
And just as usual, once the illusion faded the pools of her life's essence began to bubble and gurgle. Sticky, slick hands emerging from its surface. Some burst through spraying droplets about while others crept up ominously. Each hand seemed to possess a personality of its own, some coalescing, some stroking one another, one slapped another, all dragging themselves towards her.
The horrific sight was no longer frightening. It had quit scaring her some handful of illusions prior. Not because it wasn't terrifying but because her body was so beaten and broken that her brain simply refused to expend the extra effort. Her collarbone was indeed shattered. Both of her shoulders had been dislocated, her arms wrenched back, her wrists shackled in an unnatural and cruel manner. Her legs had held up no better. Dried blood caked her head, matting her hair to her scalp. Three new arrows penetrated her body, two in her side and another in her thigh. She could only assume that these were the weapons that induced the magical illusions. Laced with poison and magic.
The mimic said she would wish for death in the prison. And she had. A tiny sliver of cruel want that settled into the back of her mind, but she didn't die. Beaten, stabbed, cut up, drained of blood, she still remained alive. It was keeping her alive. And in such cruel fashion.
"You were out for quite awhile this time." An all too familiar voice commented. It was the master of the arrows, the one who imbued the illusions. Korin had yet to see the man who hid away at the top of the prison cell, but she knew his voice well.
Huuuu. She pushed out a flat noise, somewhere between a sigh and wheeze. "Had to take a dive. Freshen up a bit after our long day."
The man chortled, a sound that filled the cell with crowish rings. "Has anyone ever told you you're quite funny?"
She watched, stone faced and uncaring, as the hands crept near and near. The closest, only a meter away now. She looked up then, towards the direction of the voice. "No." No one had ever found Korin humorous before. That she was quite sure of. "Perhaps it is only you that brings out my humor."
"Isn't that beautiful?" A smile could be heard in his voice.
When Korin didn't reply, the man continued, "You and I are discovering so much about ourselves. Humor, joy, pain, limits." His words curled in the air, a bitter sting in the undercurrent of his tone and his last sentence came out with a sinister ring, "We are bringing out the best in each other, in the worst kinds of ways."
She remained silent. Neither glaring nor pleading, she gazed into the void above her. Dead eyes set in a face that could define monotony, the unyielding, the apathetic.
The man sighed deeply, disappointed in her lack of repertoire. "Well then," he said. "Shall we continue? I feel there is still much to be learned from one another."
Korin swallowed, still looking up into the darkness. "I don't think I have much of a choice here." Her words were dull, a flat progression of syllables that only had meaning because the listener spoke the language.
"There you go again with that humor of yours." She felt his unseen smiles, licks of insidious intent on the surface of broken skin. The promise of mirages and pain laced on the heads of arrows eager to fly.
A brief rustle was heard, then the creak of a bow string being drawn. She let her gaze fall, the world coming to a crawl.
Korin missed her father.
She missed the village where no one liked her, where she could never return. She missed the breeze that flowed through the mountains. She missed the morning fog and being able to see the moon. She missed Etan, their predictable routine at the bakery, and even his childish little performances.
And… she even missed Mikhail. He'd spent the last couple moons suspiciously in her business- like no one had ever been before. Suspicious as it was, she still missed his bothersome antics and the cunning he hid behind his charms. She didn't like it, but she even missed how he was always too close. Always pressing himself into her personal space. She was not so detached that his subtle interest in her went unnoticed. Or perhaps that was just the illusions influencing her.
Mikhail had been one of the first illusions she was poisoned with and the after effects of the mirage had remained with her in the hellish prison. A fake companion she clung to. There to help her carry the weight of her torment.
She wondered now what the foreigner was doing? She hadn't been home in weeks. Did he help look for her? Did anyone look for her? Probably her father and Etan- maybe Mikhail- but she could not picture anyone else in the village caring enough to even wonder. It's not like she could even return anyways. She'd left the mountain. The condition for her very existence. To return home would mean being a wanted criminal.
A new desire filled her chest, heavy and hot, climbing its way into her throat and burning her eyes. The wish for comfort. A yearning to be held and told everything would be okay.
The thwop of an arrow being released blew through the cell.
Korin closed her eyes and waited for impact as the gruesome sticky hands finally caressed her mangled body.