BANG

A fall. An impact. The world’s catastrophic descent into total blackness. The transition from the before to the after. An impregnable barrier in time.

Slowly, painfully, sense returns. Her ears ring. Her head is all pain. Her limbs feel heavy. Her body frozen with cold. Gradually, the small child tries to move. Leaves crack under her head as she pulls open heavy eyes.

At first, the light stings, the dim twilight proving too much for her concussed brain. Eventually, however, the child begins to paint a picture of her surroundings. The light that once pierced her brain now seems scarily dark, a small scattering of dim rays piercing dark, looming objects.

Trees. Many, many trees.

As her senses return, the small child begins to shiver. The cold is abrasive, yes, but the fear is overwhelming. The child looks around, searching for safety, yet finding nothing. Instinctively, she begins to wail. To cry out, to signal for help, to call for… for…

…for no-one. There is no-one. Nothing. Her brain is blank. Unyielding. A great expanse of nothing throbbing hard inside her skull. Scared, Terrified, she curls up, shivering in the leaves, clueless of what to do. Night descends.

The cold deepens.

The child tries desperately to cling onto the warmth she has left, slowly feeling it fade away.

She spies a faint light in the distance. Shimmering, welcoming.

Gathering the final dregs of energy in her muscles, she begins to move towards the source.

Fireflies dance wildly around a small, babbling stream. The child drinks, noting the unusual warmth of the water. In the fly-light, she beholds a modest cliff-face, rocks painting wild patterns of shadow in the night. At the joint of the cliff and the stream, the child finds a fracture in the rock. Warmth radiates out of the blackness, graciously bestowed by natural forces deep underground.

Instinctively, the child enters. On the warm stone of the cave floor, they sleep.

Rays of sunlight beckon the child out again. The cliff-face, illuminated by the morning sun, surrounds a beautiful clearing, naturally carved out from the dense trees. The child takes the forest air into their lungs. It sooths and welcomes, quite unlike the feelings of the night before. Sitting on the mossy ground, they begin to feel a strange feeling of peace. Somehow, instinctively this place feels like home.

They are going to be okay.

The wind glides through their long, red hair, carrying on it the only truth the creature would ever know.

‘Genima’

Written by Phoenix