fadewalk

Cold. She was…

Pain bloomed across her body, but Meredith refused to fall back into the sweet, quiet darkness. Pain was real. She was…

Meredith opened her eyes to darkness as absolute as that which had held her back from her pain. She couldn’t feel her fingers, until she tried to move her arm and they exploded into tingling sensation. The toes of her right foot would not wiggle, but her left did and they would have to be enough. She lifted her head and she was…

She came close enough to the surface of the darkness to notice that she no longer felt the cold. She knew that was not a good sign, but she was…

She was awake.

The chains of the shackles holding her wrists rattled as she felt the links. They were threaded through an old metal loop stuck into the floor, presumably in the middle of the room. She wriggled carefully downwards and found the wall nearly her height away from the loop. When she tried to stand the shackles barely let her get to one knee. At a probing touch to her bad ankle, she nearly screamed for the pain, and the crumpled, sticky state of her greave left her no illusions as to what state she was in.

Meredith sat, legs bent with her right closer to protect it. Her mouth was dry, but she was not yet hungry that she could tell. There was an itch. And something she was forgetting, something important.

Meredith took the metal loop in both hands, and pulled. It shifted. Her fingers moved downwards, searching along the metal plate attached to the floor. One bolt, tight. A second, loose. She tried to twist it, but her numb fingers couldn’t catch on it. The third was similarly not quite loose enough, but the fourth.

Meredith smiled, and licked blood from her lips. It was a start.