I'm With You

Chapter Fifteen: Marcella

Chapter Fifteen: Marcella

            Waking up with the absolute clarity that you are royally screwed is just about the equivalent of waking up to discover one of you fingers had indeed been chopped off the night before.

I must not have been knocked out for long because I awake in what seems to be a forest from my upside down view as I'm being currently manhandled by some brute throwing me over the back of a horse.

Whether it's from the vertigo of suddenly being tossed like a sack of potatoes or its induced by the throbbing pain coming from both my head and hand, I immediately retch what little food remained in my stomach. The poor horse dances beneath me at the horrible retching noise, and for a moment I feel myself start to fall.

A pair of hands immediately latch onto my hips and hold me steady on the steed.

Whichever of my captors was standing on the other side of the horse gets a deserving splatter of my sick on their boots.

I hear a very feminine yelp of disgust and then, "The worm threw up on me!"

A humored snort responds from whoever is currently tying me to the saddle.

When I feel a hand land a little too heavily upon my ass for it to be an accidental brush, I jerk my leg in response and I try to get a glimpse of the offender from over the side.

All I catch sight of is a wisp of snowy white hair.

I feel the same hand pat my backside once again as if to placate me.

"Now, now little worm. There's no need to get so worked up-" I cut the smoky voice off with a deliberate kick to the middle of his abdomen.

No sooner had my foot made contact than I was suddenly ripped off the horse and thrown to the ground with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.

As my assailant leans down with a sneer to inspect me, I tried to force my lungs to contract. Breathe, dammit!

Acid and blood burn at the back of my throat when I finally drag a breath in. It is almost sickening enough to make me throw up again, but as I have nothing left in my stomach I settle for dry heaving to the side.

As the world spins around me, a wonderful kaleidoscope of sunlight, green leaves, and two perfectly round drops of blood, I can't help the tears that well in the corners of my eyes.

In less than a day in this new world I've managed to be fooled by a little kid, get kidnapped by two elves (whom I can only assume are the infamous Salvion assassins), and send Ash off far away from me.

Long slender fingers slide around my chin and jerk my head back around so that I'm staring straight into the magnificently garnet red eyes of the elf that threw me from the horse. What I had thought in my delirium before were two splotches of blood, were in fact his irises.

I hardly notice the breath that finally comes a little easier through my lungs as I stare transfixed into the face of my second kidnapper.

While the woman who knocked me out carried the easy beauty of the alfar, this elf radiates an aggressive attraction that seems to dare anyone to say otherwise.

Unlike most of the alfar I'd seen with varying shades of darker skin, his skin is so pale that it seems to match the straight snowy hair that drifts delicately down over his shoulders. For a moment he sits so perfectly still, not blinking an eye, that one could almost mistake him for a marble statue. Each sharp edge of his cheekbones and jaw line seemingly to have been cut to perfection.