Running Red

Chapter 10 - The Changeling's Name

Wow, I can't believe how long that chapter was. Sorry guys. I hope it's not too boring. Please leave a comment! We all know how I feel about feedback.

I'm dedicating this chapter to Smilies because she my newest, greatest fan and she commented awesome stuff on like every single chaper. Thanks Smilies! -FO97

It was exceptionally cold when I woke. Whatever I was lying on was freezing and solid. I curled around my bare body, huddling to conserve body heat. Slowly, very slowly, I reacquainted myself with my senses, just as I had done the first time; smell, hearing, and taste. There was, again, a foul and dead taste in my mouth. I gagged on it and heaved the contents of my stomach onto the hard ground and continued to convulse even after it was gone. I realized that my eyes were open, but for some reason I couldn’t see.

I was still mostly muddled and confused, so this wasn’t something that I focused on or else I may have realized that it was very dim. The moon had fallen away and the early morning sun was only just minutes into breaking the black horizon. I only saw the sky through a small opening. A quick glance around processed that I was in a cave.

I found myself exhausted, sore, and dazed. And I was so cold. Very cold. . .

When I woke next, it was light outside, but the temperature was still alarmingly low. I had a blanket on, thick and furry. I blinked until my eyes adjusted to the painful brightness.

There was a man sitting on the floor near my feet. He was wrapped in a blanket of his own and hunched over to conserve body heat. I couldn’t see his face because everything was still too bright and he was silhouetted by the source that was coming from the opening of the cave.

“Good morning my friend,” he said. His voice sounded muffled, like I had cotton in my ears.

I braced myself on my elbow, forcing myself to sit up. Immediately stabbing pain slashed at the area below my ribcage. It hurt badly enough that I cried out and fell back to the ground, a hand placed on my abdomen.

“Easy Dheul. Your furry friend did quite the number on you. You’ve healed on the outside, but it will be a little while before your insides fix themselves.” It was Senrid’s voice speaking to me.

I breathed heavily on the ground, the exertion from my feeble attempt having sapped my energy.

Senrid stood, bare chested, his furry blanket draped around his shoulders like a cape. He kneeled beside my head, giving me my first good look at him.

His usually expressive eyes had forgone their muddy brown pigment for an violently sulfuric yellow. Coal black strands of his hair, which looked much longer than usual, cut across his forehead, hiding his eyebrows and bits of his bizarrely attentive stare. His lips looked split in more than one area, though blood had congealed and forced closed what would otherwise be painful cuts in his skin. His ears, I saw, were pointed. The tips could be seen poking through his hair. At his fingertips hung curved inch long claws. Though he was not as hairy as I would have imagined, his bronzed skin revealed tattoo-like markings that could only be described as those of a wolf. I could see the slightly darker shadows that marked his eyes and nose, his shoulders, his ribs, his calves, his bare feet. . . He looked wild, like a man left in alone in a room for too long, like a boy who had just faced the monster that lives in his dreams, like a man who was cursed. Cursed and with no escape. Cursed because he was. We were.

“Don’t be afraid Dheul. I’m not here to hurt you.” I realized that my ears were not muffled. It was that his teeth were making it very difficult for him to speak.

“The last time I saw you,” I choked out through the burning rasp in my throat, “you hurt me badly enough to cause me to lose consciousness. Why would I believe a word of what you say?”