(Photo by Marta Wave)

Two days had passed since Syn fled the valley and she was reasonably certain that she’d gone far enough that she’d escaped the patrol’s search area. That was the good news. The bad news was that her entire abdomen felt as though it were on fire. Waves of nausea were common, as were sudden hot and cold flashes. The skin around her wound, though still stained from the iodine Pierce had applied days before, bore the obvious red and green tinge associated with infection. The cart she’d brought along with her, filled with whatever food stuffs she’d managed to harvest, was long since abandoned. Not only did she lack the strength to keep on pulling it, but she couldn’t manage to hold any food down for more than a few minutes. Even though she’d only eaten a small amount of food after being stabbed, she hadn’t been able to pass any solids and her stomach felt as though it were still full with the last bits of food she had eaten no matter how much she threw up.

Pierce had said something that night after she’d been stabbed about these sorts of injuries, and the more she thought back on it, the more dire Pierce had seemed to sound. Of course, that could just be her own imagination projecting onto the memory. Syn couldn’t actually remember what it was exactly that Pierce had said.

Thinking about Pierce didn’t make her feel any better. She simultaneously hoped he had gotten away or been killed outright so he couldn’t give her away to the patrol while also wishing every ill and punishment upon him for being so incredibly stupid as to go back to where they’d come from and bring his friends along. Whether their escape had been noticed or their fire had alerted a patrol didn’t really matter at this point in time. All that mattered was that Pierce had ruined everything from the very beginning.

From time to time the thought occurred to her that she could try to be discovered by a patrol. As long as she didn’t resist, they would probably just take her back and lock her away again. While being captured was not an ideal situation, it would mean that she’d be able to get medical care. The longer she waited, the worse her stomach got, the less confident she grew about her chances for recovery. It also reduced her chances of being able to benefit from any sort of medical care as well.

Syn adjusted her weight, lying on her back was the most comfortable position she had found but even that wasn’t very comfortable. She’d found a shaded copse of trees where she could lie down and hadn’t moved from that spot for several hours. She kept telling herself that she’d get up in just a bit, but as more time passed and the sun sank lower in the sky, she began to look around for the means of building a small shelter for herself. Her hands were shaky as she began to grab at nearby branches to use for the skeleton of her shelter. She had to focus to keep her hands working and even then they were slow to move and lacked much of their usual dexterity.

“Come on,” she moaned as she failed for the third time in a row to brace two branches against the nearest tree.

Try as she might, the branches kept slipping and falling over before she could get another branch into position to stabilize the first two. She tried jamming one of them into the ground first but the effort required to do that caused such a powerful wave of pain and nausea that she collapsed and all but lost consciousness. When she did come fully back to her senses she discovered that either her straining against the stick to force it into the ground or her collapse had resulted in reopening her wound.

Puss and blood oozed from the edges and the smell was incredibly overwhelming. She wanted to hold her stomach, to apply pressure, but looking at how filthy her hands were she knew that would only make things worse. Instead, she tried to press in from around the wound, squeezing it almost as though it were a pimple. More puss and blood came out and it didn’t seem as if there would be any end to it all. At first, the pain from her squeezing wasn’t as bad as she had thought it would be but it soon ramped back up into intolerable levels and she had to leave it alone and rest on her back once more.

If she’d had the strength, she would have crawled farther away from that spot, if only for fresher air. As it was, Syn shifted herself to at least be up wind of where most of it had pooled. The puss no longer oozed out now that she wasn’t squeezing the area but the bleeding did not stop. Her bleeding wasn’t alarming in its rate, but rather because it wasn’t stopping. In the past when she’d aggravated the wound it would bleed for a short while and then scab back over.

As the sun set, Syn finally accepted the full reality of her situation. Even if she wanted to try and get the attention of a patrol she had no way of doing that. She had fought from the very beginning to make it out of that place, to find safety beyond the reach of any patrol, so that she could live out the rest of her life in freedom, and in a way she had succeeded. It wasn’t the freedom she had expected and it certainly had not lasted as long as she’d hoped, but she was free. She had chosen to come to this place, chosen to lie down beneath these trees, and now it was her choice to close her eyes. Her body relaxed piece by piece and slowly the shaking in her limbs subsided. There was still the pain but it wasn’t as demanding of her attention anymore.

Night finally enveloped Syn and she found rest, unburdened from fear at last.