The Sacred Blade

Chapter 7- A New Friend?

I screamed. Really loud. Like, loud enough that the entire town of Coldwater Creek back home would've heard me. It was enough that Darius, still asleep and enclosed in the curved branches of another tree, awoke with a start, immediately but fruitlessly trying to fight his way out of its rooted grasp.

"What is this? What happened?"

Still squirming, he looked around and then tried to start a fire with his fingertips, but his hands were pinned so tightly to his sides that he couldn't even snap his fingers.

"I... I cannot move!" he grunted, his alarmed face turning and looking at me. His eyes showed for the first time a sense of terror, making him look like a young, trapped boy as his usual facade of confidence was gone.

"I can't either!" I grunted back. So much for an escape. Now would've been a good time for a Happening, but fate decided to let me suffer the fate of death by tree strangulation. So much for dying by fighting for some noble cause like I'd always envisioned.

That was probably the worst thing I could have thought of at that time because I immediately began thinking about my mom and how I didn't even get a chance to tell her about Jessica Pierson being a bully that led to all those years of dreams and hopes scattered about in the mud and water. It finally dawned on me that I hadn't even properly said goodbye to my mom.

A pit opened inside of my heart, and I began to cry. Tears streamed down my dirty cheeks as memories I had had with her began to replay in my head, the memories flooding back in giant waves while pinned in that tree. I saw myself at home sick, with her at my side spooning homemade chicken noodle soup into my mouth. This then quickly morphed into the two of us together at the park near our house, sitting on the swing and catching up on each other's day, swinging back and forth slowly. Another memory, more recent than the others, waved over me of us watching a cheesy movie together with popcorn, dying with laughter, overwhelmed with the feelings of happiness that I knew I wouldn't feel again.

  I'll never be able to truly go look for my father I thought, after memories of Mama hurt too much to imagine. I realized that I would never know what it would be like to have a family, with a mom and a dad. I'd never be hugged by him with a protecting grip that was so tight that nothing else in the world mattered. I'd never see Mama happy. Never.

Well, I finally knew what it meant when people say that they see their lives flash right before their eyes before they die, but they didn't mention anything about what could have been.

Darius too had gone stock-still, his eyes staring off into the distance, no doubt also forced to see all the things in his life that would never happen to him.

His eyes slowly moved from their fixed point out in the woods and met mine. "I have failed you," he whispered, looking fragile and pitiful. I forgot about myself for a moment and answered back.

"No, you haven't. This wasn't your fault. If I hadn't disobeyed my mother's rules, I would never have gone into the woods, accepted Theneaus's invitation, and been stuck here getting squeezed to death by a giant tree."

I didn't care if I was even making any sense anymore. Knowing that death was moments away will do that to a person.

"I would rather have spent a short time with you than a long life without you," Darius said, which would have made me sigh dreamily if I had been watching this all on a movie with popcorn back at home since magical, talking birds would usually be helping us within moments as well, but all I wanted to do was slap him in the face. We weren't in a movie, and peril is NOT romantic at all. We were both accepting our fate, even though it was not the death that I had imagined. All romance movies aside, I had always wanted to pass away peacefully in my sleep after fulfilling a long life, without any drama or complications.