Kanna [https://shadowsprey.com/wp-content/uploads/story-images/01_41_Kanna-S7.png]
Becoming hurt.
Kanna could feel every bit of herself. She could feel her bones where they met, the muscles that ached and burned from exertion, the tears in the fibres of them from being battered and pushed beyond limit.
Her skin was seared from the sun. She could feel where it was ripped open, where her blood flowed out and dried. She could even her body's effort as it desperately tried to knit the wounds closed.
It was too much. She wanted to climb back into the dark.
“Kanna?”
Her lungs awakened with a gasp and she coughed, choking on the grains of sand that cut down her throat. She remembered to exhale.
The smell of dust and old bones, the copper of her own blood, and the lingering scent of panic assaulted her nostrils.
The sun against her eyelids was too much and she turned her face, met with the easy rise and fall of another’s breath.
There was the beat of another heart outside of herself.
Her focus snapped back with a jolt. She shoved the body that held her and sprang away. The arms around her released reluctantly, resigned to her need to escape.
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Kanna blinked against the glare of the light. She covered her eyes with one hand to protect them from the burn while scuttling back on the ground. Her legs wouldn't work, still numb from the dark and quaking with exhaustion, but she needed to put distance between herself and this new threat.
Her hand touched the hilt of her discarded knife and wrapped around the grip, stopping her mad escape.
The burning in her eyes subsided and she blinked a few times to regain her sight. Nothing seemed right. The sand beneath her had changed. Around her, the world was still black. Panic rose in her chest, but the dark thing fluttered and grounded her.
The man in front of her rose to standing. His uniform gleamed white, her own blood smeared across it. He held his hands at his sides, away from the hilts of his weapons but in a ready ease. The light around him seemed impossibly brighter, the deep black of his hair set against it in a vicious contrast. Gold burned in the blue of his eyes, moving like molten liquid.
The specter from her dreams had somehow manifested here, and he was still looking at her in a way she couldn’t begin to understand.
The dark thing inside of her nearly purred at the sight of him, settling back and retracting its claws. Her heart clattered for new reasons.
She didn’t know him, but she should. Everything screamed that she should know him, that she was somehow found and safe here.
It had to be a trick.
Kanna shook her head, trying to focus on something, anything, but it was impossible. Everything was so slow and so fast in the light.
She grit her teeth together, the ache in her jaw a solid thing she could understand, and settled her gaze back on him.
He hadn’t moved. He was still there, unwavering and steady, demanding nothing.
She relaxed her jaw, waiting for her breath to still long enough that she could trust it.
“What are you?”