A continual soft light bombarded the girl’s face as it forced her awake, her body groaning in protest as her eyes opened, taking a few moments to adjust to the light. With her eyes now slightly less blurry, she quickly eyed the room, looking around for the man once again. Instead of him, however, she found her surroundings had changed. Instead of the enclosed room from before, the ceiling now held several holes with the cracks in the walls that had expanded, letting in beams of light to illuminate the room. As the light burned away at her eyes, she almost unconsciously raised her hand to cover her eyes from the light, in no way expecting it to work. To her surprise, however, it did with her arm moving as she wanted, if a little slowly.

After this discovery she started testing every other part of her body starting first with her other arm, then moving to her legs before she sat herself up on the table she had been laying on taking this opportunity she looked down at herself, she was wearing what looked like a fairly simple one piece dress that fell down to her knees; it was worn with several holes. Then, bringing her hands in front of her face, she wiggled her fingers with delight as her joint creaked due to what she could only assume was being stuck in place for so long. Now that she could move, a million questions ran through her brain.

‘Who was she? Where was she? Who was the man?’

Racking her brain, she tried to search her memories for anything that could help her. Trying to search her memories was like trudging through tar with her, unable to find anything but emptiness with the only memories she could recall being the unending darkness and her time on this table. As she looked through her brief memories, one called out to her, pulling her into it.

It was of the robed man speaking, one word catching her attention almost immediately, Kara.

When she heard the man, speak it in her memories, her body moved on its own, her mouth slowly opening as the word left her lips. Her voice was, of course, the word cracking as she spoke it.

“Kara. My…Name.”

“My name is Kara.”

Kara brought up one of her hands, rubbing her throat as she spoke, a sense of relief filling her body. That was one of her questions answered. At least, she was Kara. Now she needed to find out where she was and to get away as far away from here as possible. She didn’t know if the robed man would come back, but she didn’t want to be here if he did.

Looking around the room, the place looked as if it was ransacked; the bookshelf was in pieces on the floor, and the table had been flipped on with one of its legs broken off. In the far corner, she saw the only door in the room. With that being the only exit, Kara stepped down from the table, wanting to go check if it was locked. But just as quickly as she stepped off the table, she found her face heading straight for the floor as she stumbled over her own feet.

Using her arms to soften the impact, Kara had prevented herself from cracking her skull open, but she still got a face full of stone. After she made impact with the ground, she used her arms to flip herself onto her back once groaning in pain while staring up at the ceiling once again, as she grumbled to herself, her voice still hoarse from lack of use but becoming clear every time she used it.

“So I remember how to talk, but not how to use my legs? That’s just perfect.”

Looking around the room for something to help her get up, Kara’s eyes fell upon the leg of the table that had been broken off, an idea popping into her head. Turning back onto her stomach, Kara crawled her way over to the piece of wood, picking it up. Planting it into the ground, she used it to help herself back to her feet; the wood acting as extra support as she shakily stood on two feet. Letting out a sigh of relief, Kara chuckled to herself.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Okay, yeah, I can work with this. Now I just need to make it to the door without falling. How hard could that possibly be?”

As it would turn out, extremely hard. Kara fell over no less than four times as she tried to carefully maneuver herself over to the door, her steps dragging across the floor as she tried to stay upright. By the time she reached the door, her lungs were burning as she let out ragged breaths of exhaustion. Leaving one hand on her makeshift cane, she used the other to open the door, approaching the handle with trepidation.

“Please be open, please be open.”

As Kara pushed on the door in her attempt to open it, instead of opening the door collapsed off its hinges the large wooden door falling forward with a loud crash, revealing the thick green forest outside along with the flock of startled birds flying off into the distance.

Reeling back in surprise, Kara could barely prevent herself from falling over once again. Taking a second to calm down, singing in relief.

“You know what? I’ll take it.”

Steeling herself, Kara slowly limped her way through the now open doorway, stepping out into the light. Her mouth opened wide in awe and she stared out into the deep forest. The tall trees with leaves of green, and flowers growing tall in the ground, their bright colors popping out against the dark tree bark. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It also happened to be the only thing she could remember seeing beside the stone room she woke up in, but that’s beside the point.

Stepping out further into the woods, Kara turned to look at the building she had just escaped. The outside of the building looked just as simple as the interior. It was a solid square of stone with no windows; the stone was worn with moss and other plants growing up the sides of the building. The place looked as if it had been abandoned for years. Slowly moving around the building to investigate further, she found nothing. If there had ever been something on the outside of the building, it was long gone now.

Walking back around to the front of the building, Kara sat herself up against the wall to catch her breath and to rest. Trying to walk around with a makeshift cane and dragging her feet had taken more energy out of her than she thought it would.

In the meantime, Kara went about assessing her situation. Talking to the air as she did so.

“Ok Kara, you escaped the creepy house in the woods, good job, now next order of business to find out where you are.” Kara quickly looked out into the woods exaggerating her head movements as she did so.

“The middle of who knows where, got it”

As she sat there, Kara began hitting the side of her head angrily, talking to herself

“Come on, memories, can’t you give me something useful? I’ll take anything.”

After a few more hits and still no new memories coming to mind, Kara let out a defeated sigh as she forced herself to get back up, pouting to herself.

“Fine, I don’t need your help, anyway. Everything I need to know is right in front of me. I know where I am, who cares what the stupid woods are called, and I know my name is Kara. What more could I possibly need?”

With that, Kara stormed off into the forest in a random direction. Her progress was slow with her still using her makeshift cane to support herself as she walked. Moving through the forest in silence, Kara examined every plant and flower she came across as she moved along.

Kara had been walking for hours, the sun setting in the distance, when she saw a small stream flowing in the woods. Walking up to the edge of the stream, Kara got on her knees, scooping up the water into hands, using it to wash away the dirt that covered her body after hours of traveling the woods barefoot.

Once the dirt was washed away, kara took a moment to stare into the water, looking at her face. This was the first time she was actually getting a good look at herself since waking up.

Her hair was an unkempt mess of silver that fell just above her shoulders. Her eyes were a pale blue. She did not have long to look at herself, however; it was quickly getting dark and Kara wanted to find a place to rest for the night before the.

Taking a quick assessment of her surroundings, she saw a hill not too far into the distance. Setting off towards it, Kara was going as fast as she could manage and even then by the time she made it to the hill, the sun had fully set, leaving her with only the moon above to light her surroundings. As she reached the hill, she also realized that it had not been a hill at all, but instead she learned she was on a cliff, and she had just found the edge. Looking off its edge she stared off into the valley, putting her back against one of the many rocks that littered the clearing she was in. Letting herself relax, she peacefully watched the valley below.

“Maybe this isn’t so bad after all.”

As if on cue, as soon as Kara said that, she heard a loud growl just behind her, carefully peeking her head out from behind the rock. She could feel the panic rising inside as she saw a cat-like creature slowly approaching where she was hiding. Kara almost would have called it cute if it wasn’t for the fact that as it got closer, she realized that instead of fur, the creature had black skin that seemed to boil.

Pulling her head back behind the rock, she picked up her cane in both hands, softly chiding herself and she readied herself.

“I just had to go and open my big mouth.”