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As he woke in total black, the fog of deep sleep still coating his mind, he groggily reached up a hand for the light switch.
Somehow, he had moved to a sitting position while he had slept, while he had dreamt that terrible dream, and was now leaning against the wall of his room, rather than sleeping in bed.
He groped blindly, still thinking back to the disturbing vision of the fairy and the forest. That wound in his shoulder was so vivid and terrifying that it seemed he could almost still feel it stinging and pounding…
He couldn’t find the light switch.
His hand reached for purchase on the wall, finding it rough, with many cracks running through it.
He looked upwards, blinking frantically, to the starry sky far above him, obscured by swaying treetops, seeing how thin streams of faded moonlight just barely reached the darkened forest floor.
As the realization struck, it seemed as if all the air in his body wheezed out of him at once, in a great gasp that forced him to choke, coughing and hacking as he heaved for breath.
Now that he understood where he was, now that his blood was pumping, he got to his feet, blindly leaning against the tree he had slept against for the past few hours, the pain in his shoulder blade renewed completely. He could not see it in the darkness, he couldn’t tell if it was worse or better, but he could feel that it was just as painful as before- maybe even more so.
His breathing was erratic, slowly getting out of control, as he stood in the total darkness of the forest, his mind blank besides panic.
He had been mistaken, in the day, with the tiny monster, and even after, when he had closed his eyes to escape. He had thought it was a dream- a vivid dream, to be sure, but still just a dream, maybe a nightmare. A normal place for him to experience, no matter how magical it may have seemed to his mind. He was wrong.
This place was a hundred times worse than a nightmare, a hundred times more terrifying. It was real.
Tears spilled out of his eyes, and he shivered in the darkness, his blurry vision darting between the small pools of moonlight that descended from far above. There were strange things out there, in the darkness and those small places of light, he could see them moving, and watching him. They were waiting for him to fall back asleep, waiting for him to give up to the pain and fall into true darkness one more time, now that they were here, ready to kill him.
He looked towards where the tiny fairy’s body had fallen, dead and broken, and although the light of the moon touched the bare dirt of the forest, and although he could still see a pool of that dark blood gleaming in the dim light, he did not see the body.
Kelby’s body was no longer there.
One trembling hand reached up to his shoulder, brushing against the gash in his skin, sending waves of fresh pain through his system, waking him from the terror and the exhaustion. Although he hissed at the stinging, he was grateful for the clarity.
He started to move, fueled by some terrible reasoning- he would rather be caught by those monsters in the dark than stay and sit there in mind-numbing fear. He would rather be on the move, running, than staying and hiding. He had done far more than enough hiding in his life; hiding from his demons in the real world, hiding away in the corner and staying quiet, rather than running from those demons, rather than dealing with his problem.
This time, he would use his legs for real.
He gasped as he began to move, stepping through the dim light of the starry sky just barely visible through the shadowy trees surrounding him, each step sending fresh waves of feeling from his wound, but he would not compromise.
He moved through the night, eyes darting to every small thing he could move, just in the corners of his vision, just when the darkness met the light, where he could both see and could not. He needed to move far, far away from where that fairy had slumbered, had found him and had died. He had no idea whether or not there were more of those things, let alone whatever else lived in this cursed place, this place that was masquerading as a simple nightmare.
He moved slowly, since he could not see far ahead of himself in that darkness, but he moved with purpose. His gaze was planted firmly on the ground ahead, although he twitched from the fright of seeing those moving forms in the corners of his sight, he did not stumble and he did not slow.
There was a mission in his mind. Time was not spent thinking of the past or the future- energy was not wasted on regrets; it was all needed for his legs to keep moving, so his mind remained blank.
And though the darkness followed him closely, each breath he took a labor that stripped his endurance slightly more, and even though his wound still bled, even after hours, and even though his exhaustion only grew even with the pain that pounded through his bones, he still moved. Or he tried to move, and that was enough.
While the stars watched from so far above, he moved through the trees with purpose. He focused on his breathing, on his steps below, slipping over the moss and the old fallen leaves. The pain in his shoulder was blinding, that was true, but he could block it out as long as he still moved.
His mind was clearer than he could ever remember it being.
He could even hear the insects chirping in the night, in the trees around him. He could hear the faint rustling of the leaves above his head, the small breeze of the forest propelling him forward. His steps were silent, they were light. Through the chills that grew over his bones, he felt like he could step off the ground and soar into the stars above.
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And in the end, through the darkness and the fear, the sky began to lighten.
The treetops regained their color, emerging from the darkness just as brilliant as the day before, their emerald shine not diminished even in the light of the pre-morning. They had woken up, as the shadows of the night disappeared.
The insects of the day, the bees and the dragonflies, rose from where they hid in the darkness.
He let the sense of relief flow through him without hesitation, for a moment, as he fell to his knees.
He breathed deeply, taking in that beautifully fresh air, watching as the shadows began to recede from around himself.
Trevor wondered, absently, how long he had been in that forest, how long had it been since he had been transported there.
He had no idea of how long he had wandered during the day, no idea of how long he had slumbered through shock and pain, or when he woke during the night, and through the mindless action of running from fear, the concept of time had slipped free from his already numbed mind.
It didn’t matter much. After all, he had gotten through it.
His eyes slipped to his shoulder, now coated with dried blood that soaked into his white T-shirt, muddied and covering in dust from the previous day. It was filthy, and he could only imagine what he looked like after the night. Shadowed eyes, pale skin, pounding headache; it was all true.
Pain slowly grew in his muscles, and he collapsed fully onto the ground, laying there with his chest pressed into the dirt. A helpless child, in the magical forest.
Fear grew in him one last time, an apprehensive thought, what if something else, some monster that roamed in the day rather than the night, found him lying there.
And as that thought came to him, in the twilight before losing consciousness, he could just barely hear the crunching of heavy footfalls on the forest floor.
Falling in and out of sleep, he realized what exactly that meant.
Footsteps, coming closer.
His eyes snapped open, fear already flooded his mind as he immediately made out the hulking form of a strange creature, tall and wide, emerging from the trees above him.
Trevor yelled without words, exhilaration and terror coming to life as he kicked out at the new creature, rolling away onto the forest floor in a gasp before coming to his feet-
“Oi, kid! I’m trying to help you, darky! You’re hurt!”
It was a man.
A man dressed in strange animal furs, wearing a large pack on his shoulders, like some kind of woodsman out of the 1800’s, but a man nonetheless. Not a monster, not a terrifying, beautiful fairy that ate human flesh, only a man.
He wet his lips, staring into the stranger’s dark eyes, hard and firm. It wasn’t something he was used to doing, but he wasn’t going to let anything catch him unawares.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Onda. Now sit, kid, I’ve got some Laeia on me, so calm down and just let me fix up your shoulder, a little bit.”
“...What is lai-a?”
The man furled an eyebrow. He had been expressionless, staring at Thomas unhesitatingly, but now he was confused.
“It’s Laeia. Where did you come from, kid?”
“New York City. Where am I now?”
“The Eastern Front, ‘bout a five day trek out from Split City.”
“Never heard of it.”
“...Yeah, well I’ve never heard of York, now calm down and let me help you, that gash looks nasty as pit, and I’m not letting some kid die in front of me if I can help it.”
The man stepped closer, but Trevor backed away. The man screwed his eyes shut, brow furrowing in clear exasperation.
“Oh, Wilds, kid, I’m not doing anything! You want me to throw it to you, or something, if you’re that jumpy?”
Trevor wasn’t confident he would be able to hold back the man in front of him- Onda- if things got violent. A small fairy he was able to kill like a bug was one thing, but this man was tall, six foot at least, and had the hulking build of a pro-wrestler.
“Sure, throw it over. Don’t come any closer, please.”
The man grunted, reaching behind him into one of the pouches of his bulging pack, and retrieved some leather pouch, corked with a small stopper. He tossed it, and it landed in the dirt at the boy’s feet.
Trevor slowly crouched down, still watching the stranger carefully, picking up the pouch. It didn’t feel like there was liquid inside, or any kind of small object. He couldn’t hear anything moving inside, when he shook it next to his head.
“Kid, it’s Laeia, not a bomb, alright?”
He uncorked the pouch, peering inside for a quick moment, and saw a dark, teal powder filling the pouch inside.
“What does lei-a do?”
“It’s Laeia! Put it on the gash, it’ll help you out! Pits!”
The boy wet his lips, deciding to trust the man, as little as he could. He was weak, he had lost blood and had no sleep, if Onda had wanted to hurt him he would have already done so.
He poured a small dash of powder from the leather pouch onto his bare shoulder.
As the teal powder came out, falling almost unnaturally slow in the dawning light of day, he felt as it touched the bloody gash.
There was a smell in the air, tangy and minty, that seemed to permeate, the powder bubbling and flashing in a reaction that didn’t quite seem possible.
As he made out those changes, the light of the day and the scent of the powder, the constant pain that had followed him through the night, like someone taking a sledgehammer and pounding away onto his bone, was blown away by a pleasant breeze, in a single instant.
The pain was gone. Instantly.
“Yeah, kid, I thought you might like it. Can I have it back now?”
“...Thanks.”
The man walked forward, slowly at first, then as he saw the boy not running, with more firmness. He gently took the pouch out from Thomas’s hands, carefully placing the stopper back on and tucking it away.
“Now can you talk, boy?”
Trevor opened his mouth, looking up, into the eyes of this strange man in the forest, but choked on the words.
He started to cry.
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