3 Nimrus 798
Cold mist threads about her – like clammy fingers reaching through the night. Insistent. Annoying.
I have better things to do, mist. Leave me alone.
But even this thought doesn't distract from the low ringing within her ears, slowly trilling its way into a skull-splitting whine. Like a tea kettle left too long, it drowns out all thought. She hears the murmur of voices beyond. The soft lilt of someone's laughter. Some thread of conversation reaches her, piercing through the pain like a shard of glass puncturing her mind.
"The only thing I think you could smuggle, Sayyid Marzani," she dully interjects, eyes half-closed and vision hazy as she lets the wall behind her support her weight. "... would be modesty, no? You're so… very good at hiding it."
Darkness suddenly swallows her vision, devouring the already hazy sight of the deck before her. The world spins. Her knees threaten to betray her.
… what in the name of…
"Sayyida? Easy now, Sayyida…" The words come from far away, nearly drowned out beneath the pounding drive of her own pulse which echoes within her skull. "... will you sit?"
Wasn't she already sitting?
The mist caresses her again with its damp fingertips, demanding, though still she tries to ignore it.
This mist is more insistent than… that boy, Ahmed… from school… That sharp whine trills on, shattering her thoughts. She tries to hold onto them, though, to piece them back into something coherent, to save at least a small sliver of herself from the ever-present pain. He had pretty eyes, though, she desperately reminds herself. But she can't recall the color. What color were they? I do like pretty eyes…
The pain refuses to relent. But now she has bread. Who brought her bread?
"I'm quite alright," she forces herself to say, enunciating each syllable with a great care. But then the darkness threatens again. Her thoughts haze. Her stomach turns.
The mist seethes on.
Her mind flirts on the very edge of shattering completely. She has no more quips. No more pithy remarks. There is only pain.
The warmth replaces the mist – a welcome reprieve. But there is no reprieve from aught else. The darkness still threatens. Weak. Her mind screams beneath the weight of unrelenting agony. Pathetic. Her stomach roils like the storm-tossed sea.
Disgraceful.
But he cleans her. Again, he cleans her. Why. Pain – blinding pain – arcs through her mind, leaving her breathless. Thoughtless. Helpless. All save for the one thought that lingers on. Why.
"I will carry you," she hears like a whisper threading its way through the torment. He says something else… it is not the what, but it is the how. It is the how of what he says that nearly has her balking. But she's too weak to balk.
"I will let you boss me about… this once," she mumbles in return while her skull pounds and the darkness threatens once more.
"I hope I'm not too heavy," she hears herself whisper beyond the realm of agony which holds her captive at present, something long buried trying to burble its way into the cacophony of her mangled thoughts.
"You are quite light…"
There is no rush of memories within his arms. No warm feelings of days long past, of a gentle father carrying her to bed, of an elder brother tending to her as a girl. There is nothing.
There is no one.
But perhaps… just this once.