Fiction Reveals Truth That Reality Obscures - Ralph Waldo Emerson [Part 1.2]
Every bone in her body hurt with such intensity that it should have been a miracle she was able to breathe at all. She did though, in careful, small puffs that appeared white in the cold of the outdoors. The once perfect snow that lay beneath her and for miles and miles around was stained gray from a thousand footprints and red from her nosebleed. There was something so crisp, so acutely real about the situation that she did not have the grief within her to cry. Anything that firmly jammed in reality could not be changed through saltwater and body racking sobs. Action, Saede thought, is what my position requires. Unfortunately, most action would have involved her standing, and her ankle was surely broken. Her blood encrusted nose was a liability.
She had been left there for two long, anxious, burning hours. It was undeniable proof something wrong had gone on with her supposed rescuer. Not that her cousin was any knight in shining armor- he was not even nice to small children and animals- but he had promised to patch her up should such a chance arise. He was fast, too; a certifiably reliable fiend. The short drive from his apartment complex to the park Saede was left in would have taken him barely twenty minutes. Her ankle was swelling badly, and the cold of the outdoors was infiltrating her senses. Something must have gone very wrong.
She saw the initial glint of green when she finally tilted her head back. To avoid swallowing her own internal fluids, Saede had tilted her head downwards in accordance to the immense flow of blood coming from her nose. Eventually, the flood subsided to a small trickle, and it was then the girl leaned back against the tree directly behind her. The hint of emerald that caught her eye became a more than merely welcome distraction. Lips, tinted blue from chill, curved into an awkward smile.
"It's a little early for that," she teased softly, gaze fixated on her discovery. There was no color in the world at all compared to that vivid shade of green. An invisible force was squeezing her heart and stopping her breath as she stared up into the otherwise bare branches of the elm. "You should come down."
A wind blew and it penetrated the girl's innermost being with a surgeon's precision. Her teeth chattered as she spoke again, "P-please?"
Oxygen was no longer reaching her lungs. A voice that called her name could not reach her.
The leaf was knocked from its perch, decisively. It wanted to greet her.
Saede did not jolt when she woke from the dream, nor was she sweating or cursing. One moment her eyes were closed and she was buried in her subconscious, and the next her eyes were open and readily adjusting to the dark of her bedroom. It was with care and consideration that she sat up, hands bunching in her comforter as her brain was kick-started into action. The dream was a dramatization of a memory, a very old memory, but not one her mind had ever chosen to dredge up at night before. There was no reason for that occurrence- none at all. Things had changed.
"I thought I was done with that emo crap."
The answer came as a breeze coursed in through the window she had left open, allowing the stench and presence of winter to permeate the room to its liking. That, above all else, would have guaranteed melancholic and not-a-little irritating dreams.
The leaf part was new, she thought and did not fully realize it until she repeated the phrase aloud. "The leaf part was new."
Another stiff gust of cold air entered the room, rattling the girl's bookshelf and the old stuffed animals that it housed. Grumbling, Saede pushed off her bed covers and shifted to place her feet onto the shaggy carpet of her floor. The moon and what little stars one could see from the busy sector of Durem lighted her way to her desk and the window that was placed above it. There was a crank and she eagerly employed it to shut the glass and block out the chilling wind.
When she finished, she saw the physical incarnation of the leaf from her dream gamely seated atop her pillow. Diligently and without allowing herself to think too hard on whether it had been brought there by the wind or not, she moved it onto her nightstand and went back to sleep.
