The room she awoke to was dark.
Leyla stared at the ceiling in vague comprehension mildly aware of the throbbing pain behind her eyes when she strained to raise her eyebrows.
The simple act of blinking required immense effort, and every time she did her lids grew heavier, dimming the world around her.
Exhaustion wrapped its limbs around her and steadily drew her back under its depths.
When Leyla resurfaced again her skin was damp and glistening with sweat. It was hard to breathe, each exhale thin as a whistle, and her mouth was dry.
Mum?
Her eyes hurt horribly each time she tried to look through the darkness.
And so she shut them while breathing whistle-like sounds in the room, focusing on the rise and fall of the damp blanket as another weight curled around her chest and sunk her deep deep into the utter black.
This time the dream had shifted to a row of little boys all naked and standing against a wall with their chubby hands cupped over private parts.
An elder dressed in a silken suit was walking up the row in a slow procession. He paused every now and then with his head tilted to the side casting a shrewd eye on the subject like an auctioneer at a slave market.
Little rills of blood trickled down the back of their ears where the freshly branded barcodes had been imprinted.
He stood before a six-year old and crouched low.
The boy whimpered, tried cringing back from the man's hand which now cradled his face. Shallow dimples formed where the elder grasped his flesh and squeezed prying the boy's mouth wide enough to gauge the size of it.
Something must have appeased him for the elder made a low sound while patting the soft cheek in finality. He rose, hands braced on his knees, and turned away while gesturing off-handedly at two guards stationed by the entrance.
"He'll do."
The guards peeled from darkness and walked in sync towards the little human now cowering towards his peers with wide eyes staring hopelessly at the men who grabbed at his arms.
He stumbled in their grasps as they led him in the direction of the showers. He would receive his first set of clothing there and his hair would be shaped according to the likeness of his elder.
Leyla woke from the dream as though a hand had reached through the haze and yanked her out of it.
She was still lying on her back but the duvet had been drawn down to her hips and only a plain cold sheet was spread over her.
She was sweating and breathing hard.
"H-hello?" Her voice sounded thin and unsure.
Her mind was still in a dull haze of confusion. She couldn't grasp where she was and how she had got here.
Maybe I–
The darkness moved suddenly; something infinitesimal and far too subtle for the eye to see.
But she saw it.
Leyla stilled on the bed.
I'm hallucinating, she reasoned as her throbbing eyes peered into the black that throughout the room. It swelled and narrowed like a set of lungs.
I'm still dreaming.
But why was she conscious of her aching body, and why did the cold breath of air fan over her body like someone had crouched by the bedside to watch her.
"Hello?" She called out, weakly grabbing at the sheets on her sides.
A jolt of pain lanced up her right forearm. The sensation of it was so jarring she cried out, tears misting over her eyes and trailing little rills down her temples.
Then, out of the darkness something reached for her.
Not a monster, but a hand roughened around the palm and warm,heavy, on her damp forehead.
Leyla was too weak to cringe away from the palm as it rested on her forehead, so large it seemed to span from one temple to the other. And then a voice spoke out of the void, its warm breath stirring the little curled hairs at her ear.
"Rest."
In obedience her body began to slacken, not from the terror but the reassurance that came with the voice. The hand lifted from her forehead only to be replaced with a damp cloth cold to the touch.
She sighed and sunk deeper into the pillow.
Those familiar tendrils of sleep crept along her periphery. She saw them, felt their limbs twine around hers and tug her underneath.
Just as she began to succumb, the intruder's finger gently swiped at her temple collecting the stray tears that dampened her collared shirt.
It lifted off her face.
And she heard him suck his thumb.
The fever had her drifting in and out of sleep.
Most of her dreams had to do with the harvest and her fellow humans in the farm. She had seen familiar faces of those alive and those dead, but many of them were unfamiliar, and the faces of the elders were obscured from where she stood.
However, all of them left her gasping for air and trying to clutch at her chest which was anxiously pounding.
When she resurfaced with a cry from a dream the room was empty and there was no presence hovering by her bedside cooing at her to rest or lapping at the tears staining her hair.
But there was sunlight.
A cold wintry light that slipped through the partially drawn curtains into the room.
Leyla blinked tiredly at her feet which were suddenly visible in the light. She turned her head slowly feeling a strain behind her neck from lying in one position, and stared all about the room.
It was small with spartan furniture; a wooden dresser polished to a dark gleam had been placed by the wall and a single desk with a lamb and chair.
In the far corner of the room was a cushioned seat that looked recently sat on; the indentation of someone's bum was still imprinted.
She swallowed then groaned as daggers dug into her dry throat.
"Hello… Hello?" Her voice was a wheeze. She wet her lips and tried again, "Hello? Is someone there?"
Was it noontime? Dusk?
Beyond the window the tweeting of birds called to each other and a long mournful sound of wind, like a foghorn, blew through the hollow parts of the roof.
How long had she been asleep?
And then another thought; where am I?
She shifted then, a miniscule attempt at lifting herself onto her elbows, when her body leaned onto the broken arm.
Leyla cried out loud as white hot pain flared across her body in violent waves. The intensity of it clouded her vision as she fell back writhing on the bed and choking on her suddenly-tight throat.
She trembled violently as the pain left her immobile.
Isolated in the room with no stranger to attend to her cries, Leyla wept long and hard, the little barrel of her chest a trembling thing.
She didn't know how long she had been at it but the pain subsided to a harrowing warning and exhaustion, the constant nurse in this world, finally answered to her call.
It was the sound of movement and the gentle curl of a breeze across her torso that stirred Leyla from unconsciousness.
Her eyes were laden so she let them remain shut and her mind was a numbing echo.
Something – or someone– was moving her limb carefully.
She knew this because she could vaguely feel the pressure of fingers pressing into her skin. It wasn't jarring. In fact the sensation of her body was like cotton stuffed into every limb.
And her head. It was blissfully quiet.
Anaesthesia.
Leyla made a sound akin to a grunt and tried shifting her arm away but a voice resounded calmly like steel gliding through silk.
"Don't."
It was not a request.
Leyla tried opening her eyes but fell short of a tired peer from beneath dark lashes. The man crouched by her bedside was cast in a shadow but the candlelight by the nightstand glowed amber on the cut of his cheekbone.
His eyes turned from the cast he was reapplying, and to her. The yellow irises glinted like a knife's point.
Her heart should have spiked.
Her blood should have been pumping as alarm bells went off in her mind.
But the anesthesia that sluggishly rode her veins had a terrifying calming effect. At worst she was drifting atop a cloud on a summery day.
Leyla began to speak but her swollen tongue muffled the words; "Mnghh…"
A little rill of saliva ran down her mouth corner.
The man's hands were wet with plaster, his adroit fingers deftly sculpting the limb which looked like a foreign object to her.
She stared in wonder at what was once her arm now a mangled twisted mess at the elbow as the edge of her bone poked through the skin leaving it distended and blue black.
The part of her brain that had not yet been touched by medicine calmly reasoned that she should be crying and wailing and vomiting… while another louder voice told her to lie back down and close her eyes.
"Nhhng–dism…" More drool.
It tickled her neck while soaking the pillow beneath her head.
The man finished her hand and gently set it by her side.
He reached down and brandished a small wet cloth which he wrung carefully – did he keep a bucket by her bedside? – then cleaned the drool from her mouth.
Leyla stared long and hard at his half-shaved jaw and in particular, the nasty scar that ran from the corner of his mouth down the line of his neck. It had healed a while back, decades maybe, but the flesh still had that tender raised look.
Her eyes lifted to his own and she stiffened as their gazes snagged.
The scar twitched.
Her eyes darted down to it then up again in a haze of confusion. She couldn't understand why his scar was suddenly so interesting to her, much less why it twitched like the flank of a horse.
"You fractured your right elbow and left foot."
Leyla blinked slowly.
"It would be wise of you, next time, to not use those limbs until you feel better."
A light of clarity cut through the fog of confusion as the memory gently resurfaced; the one where she woke and tried to call for help before sitting up on her arm and that violent pain that made her pass out.
She shuddered vaguely and he must have seen it for a pleased hum flickered behind those silver eyes.
The man rose.
One moment she was staring at his face and the next his knee was in her line of vision. She lifted her eyes and winced at the throbbing behind her eyelids.
"Your fever is down but it will take rest to completely heal."
His shadow eclipsed her form on the bed.
She felt suddenly very small before him and it brought a niggling memory in her mind which was quickly dampened by the medicine.
An elder.
Was he an elder?
Her eyes lifted in an attempt to catch a look at his face once more but the man had turned away, stopping once to collect some items on the floor. His jeans were faded at the seat and a small hole was on the back of his left calf.
She followed him up until the door where he lingered with his hand on the knob, the breadth of his shoulders wide enough to fill the doorframe.
He looked at her from his periphery for so long she began to wonder if he had left something behind. Until he spoke; "Rest up, little human."
"We will talk once the medicine fades."
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