✧The Earthe of the Elves✧

49

Mia's POV

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My head hurts.

It's been days since the first day with Elmer. The first two are basically the same. To be honest, half of the first day and most of second are hazy. I think my mind is trying to protect me from the pain I went through by not letting me remember. I'm not even exactly sure how much time has passed, but in that time I've just sunk farther and farther into a loneliness that penetrates deep into my chest. I wrack my brain every day for a way to escape, but I end up just sitting in silence, my mind empty with fatigue. I needed something to spark life back into me. I thought about my friends and family once, but that just made me cry- thinking about how I might die here, in this awful place, and never see them again. So I stopped thinking of that.

I didn't tell Elmer where the stone was, and it cost me. By the end of the second day I end up with another small cut across the one on my arm, so it kinda looks like an x now. My head hurts from a punch. I have a few bruises on my face and probably my head. I'm confident there are a few finger marks on my neck, too. There's another cut on my face, down one cheek, but it's not very deep. It'll heal fast. Luckily the poker wasn't used again, probably due to how it went last time he used it.

My leg is looking bad, though. The cut is starting to heal a bit, but right across it, vertically, is a round line of red, dry looking skin where the burn is. Luckily the poker wasn't held on long enough to go too deep, so I can't see any yellow stuff, which I think would be tissue, if my memory of anatomy class serves me correctly. That would be bad.

I feel like I should feel worse, like I should be wallowing in despair. Either that or trying nonstop to find a way to escape. It's not that I've given up, I'm just tired- so tired. I don't want to have to be strong anymore. I want to hug Knox, Elanil, my mom. I want to be home. Whichever world that is.

Every time I've been in trouble, someone has been there to help me. Knox, Elanil, Rose, someone. Now I have no one.

I'm alone.

-

Footsteps echo down the corridor, waking me from my sleep. I'm guessing Elmer is trying to think of another way to torture information out of me, which terrifies me, but at least I get a day off. Ok, that sounds weird. Bad. Maybe I'm going crazy.

The guard that's dropping our leaves of food is the teen-looking guard I saw in the hallway a few days ago.

My back is leaning against the far wall of my cell, my legs stretched out in front of me on the dirt. When the boy tosses a leaf into the cell across from me, I try to get up so I can reach my food when it comes. Putting no weight on my leg goes okay, but when I try to push up pain snaps through my arm like a strike of lightning. I collapse back where I was, a groan coming out out of my mouth.

The boy turns, tossing a leaf into my cell. I watch is feet, and I see them stop. I look up to find him looking at me, hand still out, frozen.

"Why are you here?" The boy asks in elvish, and when he speaks, it's clear that he's no older than me. "Cin never put kids down here."

I make note of the fact that he says Cin, not us or we. Now that I have something to focus on, my mind feels sharper, less sluggish.

I smile, but it quickly drops into a grimace as it pulls at the cut on my face. Gingerly, I touch a finger to the cut. It comes away red.

"I guess I'm not your average kid," I say back in the same language, wiping my finger on my stained shirt. I look back up at him, and I see a mix of disgust and discomfort running along his features. Time to get some information, I think, feeling some excitement with the change in routine.