Dzidzor was barely conscious during the first month of her rescue. She spent her days violently vomiting, shitting and oozing either sweat or pus from her pores and spent her night’s paralytic with pain and nightmares. She was riddled with so many parasites and organisms that she thought of herself as a lush forest, brimming and overflowing with life. She didn’t know whether she would live or die, although hopes for survival were bleak. At least she knew that the hunter didn’t rescue her for sexual pleasures, unless he was a very patient man. He took care of her, as if she were someone special, as if she mattered. He fed her, held her as her body shook with violent retching. He cleaned her shit, bathed her, changed her clothes and her bedding three times a day. She was barely conscious to appreciate all of that, but when she was, she thanked him. He always silenced her and told her that her getting better is all she can do to thank him.
When she touched her body, she could feel her bones underneath. If that wasn’t already unsettling, she kept on thinking about her predicament. What if she were sick when she was back at home? She knew she surely would’ve died by now. They would’ve discarded her body in a river or something, or buried her without a casket. There would be no funeral since she died at such a young age, there wouldn’t have even been a funeral nonetheless if she was involved. She wondered why they hated her. She wondered what she had done. These and many more thoughts plagued her, along with the bacteria living and breeding and eating inside her body. She wasn’t afraid of death, she embraced it, but with the hunter in her life it became hard to do so because she knew she had a future, and a happy one at that. Yet hope failed her once, because she died.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
That morning begun with a fierce sun. The medicine man had just come back from the farm and was bringing back some herbs for Dzidzor. He checked her breathing every 2 hours and he hardly had enough sleep but he knew he had a duty and did not waver but when he saw her lifeless body, he panicked. He tried everything he knew, he hit her chest so hard that he heard her ribs crack. He looked at her with tearful eyes, her emaciated body pulled so taut around her bones that it didn’t require much imagination to see her as a skeleton. He wept for a long time, cradling her lifeless body in his arms, then he stopped and looked at her thoughtfully. He weighed his options, considered the risks.
He removed both their clothes and felt an extreme sadness as he looked at her. Her skin was pale, her lips violet and she was so skinny. He had shaved her hair off to treat the ringworms on her head and her scalp was a dull chalky white, the color of the medicine. He wept a new wave of tears. He knew he didn’t need to but he did, he loved her so much. He loved her, he truly did.
Those words were on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t say it, not even when he dug her grave and put her in it. Not even when he lay on top of her, and not even when the dwarves came and covered their bodies with sand.