I have been around for a while now. I stopped counting the days after the first two years, but I assume that it has been at least forty or so since I woke up covered in six feet of moist earth.
Claustrophobia was never something that had bothered me before, but there was just something about the world pressing in on all sides, the lack of air and total constriction that still makes me shiver to this day.
It took me the better part of two days to get to the surface, two days of feeling suffocated and crushed. Breathing turned out to be a habit, not a need.
I pondered, after the panic attack had subsided and I got out of the earth, if I had become undead. A creature dead, but somehow alive, craving the flesh of the living. Perhaps a vampire?
The thoughts quickly subsided as I neither felt any hunger for living flesh, and I noticed a distinct lack of burning to ashes under the sweltering sun.
I had woken beneath a great plain of rolling grass that stretched as far as the eye could see. The only landmark was a dark line on the horizon.
For days I walked towards what turned out to be a great forest. My skin neither cracked nor burned under the sun, and even though I found the shade of the massive trees refreshing, my skin was a pristine white still. Almost bleached I remember thinking.
Maybe I was a daywalker? I chuckled at the idea as I leant against the gnarled trunk of what could only be an ancient redwood.
The forest was lush and alive with birds and the chattering of squirrels, and the mossy undergrowth was pleasant beneath my bare feet.
I think I walked for about a week before I stumbled upon the first ruins. My toe had struck something hard beneath the moss, and I crashed head first into what could have been a living room once upon a time.
The ruins were nothing more than crumbled walls and the outline of what could once have been a massive city, now governed only by the trees that were its only citizens.
I explored the ruins of the overgrown city for days, hoping to find anything that would point me towards people. Not once did I feel the need for food or water.
As I rested in what I assumed had once been the capitol building, I heard rustling outside. The sound of footsteps on the ancient cobblestones that still poked through the roots and moss that grew everywhere.
Carefully I wormed my way to the doorway, or the opening in the crumbling walls that I assumed had once been a doorway.
Outside were nothing but a herd of grazing deer, and I let out a sigh of relief, and disappointment. I had hoped it might be people, adventurers maybe. Even bandits would have made for decent conversation.
I rose from my prone position and tried to get a better look without spooking the deer. But once I put my hand on the wall to support me, it collapsed with a massive cacophony of falling stones and breaking wood. The wall dragged an old oak with it as it fell, and once the dust had cleared, the deer were gone.
---
A wet cough roused me from my slumber, and I looked over from my uncomfortable position against the rocky wall of my ‘abode’ to find the creature I had saved from certain death looking at me warily with its eyes narrowed in suspicion.
I suppose that the fact that I still held its severed leg in my lap didn’t help matters. It coughed again, this time its entire body was wracked with contractions, and I feared that it might cough up a lung.
Carefully I put the leg on the floor and rose to a crouched position beside the cot. Once the horrible cough subsided, the creatures eyes were closed, and I could see tears staining its eyes as well as a thin line of green blood seeping from its mouth.
I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy course through me, and I placed a hand gently on the creature’s neck, gently petting it in hopes of calming it down.
The creature shied away from my touch, almost as if it burned her. And I could hear a low growl emanating from its throat.
“Shh shh. It’s going to be alright.” My throat was sore, and my voice cracked as I used it for the first time in what must have been years. It certainly didn’t sound as comforting as I wanted it to be.
“You’ve suffered great wounds. Relax. I’m trying to help you.” I croaked out, my voice was gravelly and speaking felt like trying to press water through a broken hose filled with rocks.
“N-no.” It tried to shuffle away from my hand, but its wounds restricted it from moving much before it let out a muffled shriek when one of its legs bent in an unnatural direction, letting out a terrible cracking sound.
I quickly grasped the leg, and without mercy I pulled and put it back in its original setting. The creature screamed and tried to squirm away when the bone cracked back in place.
“Be still!” I growled, and the creature tensed, but stopped its squirming. “I’m not going to be able to help you if you’re moving so much.” My throat was slowly clearing, almost as if the cobwebs were releasing their hold as moisture once again flowed over it.
“W-why...” It started. The voice was feminine, it had a mature tone to it, and even in its wounded state it sounded almost sensual.
I shivered. I hadn’t heard the voice of a human being, or any being for that sake, for a very long time. And the feminine quality to it didn’t help.
“You were hurt.” I mumbled. “I couldn’t just let you lie there and become an easy meal for some vulture...”
“W-why...” She, I decided then to call the creature a she. At least she sounded female, but I couldn’t be sure, it just felt rude to think of her as an it.
“I told you. I couldn’t just let you lie there.” I averted my eyes, my gaze falling on the severed leg. “You would have died.”
She sobbed then, and I could feel my heart break at the sound. She sounded so fragile, even though her visage was... hideous in her current state, I couldn’t help but feel pity for this strange creature that had fallen almost on my doorstep.
“W-why c-could you not h-have let me die...” The question tore even harder at my heart, and I looked up and into her tearstained green eyes.
I put a hand back on her neck, and she flinched, but didn’t pull away. “Why?” It was my turn to ask.
Her eyes hardened for a moment before she looked away. “I failed.”
“Failed what?”
“My people. My subjects. I... I failed them all.” Her voice quivered, and another sob wracked her body.
Her subjects? My mind reeled. This creature was royalty? I was dumbfounded, and almost yanked my hand away in surprise, but I caught myself at the last minute and let my hand rest on her withers.
She continued to cry silently as I slowly began petting her neck once again.
“It’s going to be alright.” It was all I could find in myself to say.
Her eyes closed tight and she turned even further from my face. She let her head fall once more to the crude pillow beneath her head, now crusted with a layer of nearly dried green blood.
“T-they are all dead.” I heard her whisper, more to herself than to me, and I winced.
“I’m... sorry.” I murmured back. “I didn’t...”
The creature chuckled morbidly, and the motion made her cough up another glob of green luminescent blood.
“O-of course you didn’t know...” She sighed, her sobs had almost stopped, and I felt her body slump beneath my hand. Her breath didn’t stop going out, and it almost felt as if she deflated beneath my hand.
She didn’t breathe in.
A surge of cold dread coursed through me as the creature stopped breathing, and I felt the slow but steady heartbeat beneath my hand fade.
“No!” I shouted and jumped to my feet. I quickly turned her body over on its side and pressed my ear to the carapace covering her chest. No heartbeat.
Hurriedly I began administering the little I knew of first aid. I cupped my hands over her limp muzzle and,ignoring the foul taste of the green ichor making its way into my mouth, blew air softly into her lungs.
Over the next few minutes I alternated between blowing air into her lungs and compressing her chest. I didn’t even know if her heart was in her chest.
It did nothing. I have never felt as helpless as I did then, teary eyed and snotty. I felt pathetic as I could almost feel the life seep out of her.
After what I guess could have been thirty minutes I gave up and collapsed on her chest, sobbing my eyes out and feeling emotionally exhausted.
I’m not sure what happened, or how, but when I woke up I lay in the bed, cradling the body of the creature I had so miserably failed to save against my chest.
I felt cold. The fire was still crackling merrily, and I could feel the heat of it against my back, but still I shivered. It felt almost as if my body had been drained, and it was getting colder.
The only parts of me that were warm were my hands. It almost felt like they were burning, and when I raised one of them before my face, a thin line of ethereal silver light ran from my palm to the creature’s chest.
But she was breathing. I could feel the steady rise and fall of the creature chest as she lay in my arms.
I slowly worked my way out of the bed, trying not to disturb her as I moved. Somehow she looked healthier. The slightly pale black carapace had grown darker, like skin that has been cut off from the bloodflow only for it to return.
The stump of her leg felt less jagged as I gently ran my hand over it, and I could no longer hear the gurgling in her lungs each time she breathed.
As I moved away, I could see the ethereal line connecting my hands to her chest fade, and I could feel warmth moving up my arms.
I sat there staring at my hands awestruck, and a bit fearful. Just what had happened? Did she do it? Did I?
I heard a groan from the cot, and the creature once more opened her eyes. They were clearer, more luminous in the dim firelight.
“I’m alive?” She asked in wonder, bringing her uninjured hoof up before her eyes. Her gaze fell slightly when she regaled the stump that had once been her left foreleg. “H-how?”
I just stared at her. The crusty rags that bound the worst of her injuries were dry, the blood on them old and darkening.
Her eyes moved to me as I sat there staring at her, and they narrowed in suspicion. “Why did you revive me?” She said, and I could hear the anguished anger in her tone. “Did I not make it clear that I do not wish to live?!”
She tried raising herself from the cot, but stumbled as she tried putting weight on a leg that was no longer there, and she crashed to the floor of the cave face first.
When she didn’t get up, I got worried, but she started shaking, laying there pitifully she began to sob once more.
“Why...” She murmured softly. “Why must I live...”
I sat down on the bed and pulled her up to my chest and stroked her greenish mane. She tried pushing away, but collapsed against me and pressed her face into my chest as she cried.
I felt terrible. Here I was, a stupid little human, trying to save a creature I didn’t even know what was. Trying to comfort someone that had obviously lost everything and everyone she cared about. I felt hot tears roll down my own cheeks and into my scruffy beard as I gently stroked this strange creature, murmuring silent comforting words.