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+---- Thread: One rises as another falls [Solo] (/showthread.php?tid=628)
One rises as another falls [Solo] - Faredin - 18.Dec.13
Faredin trembled in the darkness, curled up as tightly as he could manage, as the noise outside his small shelter subsided. He glanced up at the fallen timbers and (was that what was left of a cot?) that had protected him during the worst of it, not quite trusting that it was done. This day was just going from bad to worse and for the first time he could remember, he didn’t know what to do.
He’d only wanted to soothe the stomachache he’d woken up with when he’d trotted over to the Healer Hall this morning. Then chaos had erupted and the most responsible thing to do – after sending Bo to check on Diolon- had been stay around and help out. Now he was glad he’d instructed the little brown to stick with his little brother, even if part of him could have used the firelizard’s comfort right now. Bo was better off out of it. Who knew the Healer Hall would be in the danger zone too?
Once he tentatively concluded that he trusted the quiet around him, Faredin slowly lowered the arms he’d flung up to protect his head. His shallow, panted breaths sounded loudly in his ears as he started to push cautiously at his shelter, eager to get out of here. The pain in his left hand, until now just another unnoticed part of the general ache of his body, flared enough to tear a sharp cry from the boy as he snatched it back and cradled it against his chest. Automatic tears welled in his eyes that he blinked away as a voice shouted in response to his cry, eager not to be seen as a baby by whoever the voice belonged to.
“Here! I’m here!” He called out, a bit dry-mouthed and raspy but coherent. He fretted in frustration that he couldn’t help as the man on the other side worked, watching the planks and dirt shake and tensing all over again when some mud plopped down into the pocket he’d weathered the ordeal in. But he remembered all too well what the grinding bones in his hand felt like and he’d never been a kid to make the same mistake twice.
After what seemed like forever, the someone was grabbing him beneath his armpits and hauling him up into the open. Faredin blinked rapidly as the man –B’run, Olemuth’s rider, a corner of his mind noted absently- set him down with a businesslike thump and a quick “Alright there, boy?”
Faredin opened eyes he’d shut sometime during the process and looked up with the intent of thanking B’run, as a man should when someone saves his life. But just then the ruin of a ceiling groaned alarmingly, and he screamed and backpeddled until he tripped over a chunk of wood and landed smack on his butt on the mud. Still, he couldn’t take his horrified eyes away from the sight of his rescuer being knocked down by fresh mud and debris- sat frozen as the man’s bronze gave a cry of distress and started flinging stuff away to free B’run.
It was another small eternity before Olemuth finally unearthed the man and Faredin’s heart cautiously lifted with hope. The bronze’s sudden keen dashed it like the mud had the rest of Katila and his spirits –and mind- sunk into a numb kind of fog as the dragon collected his rider and disappeared Between.
His fault.
He wasn’t sure exactly how, but his feelings insisted it was as Faredin dimly followed the directions of other voices and stumbled off in the direction they wanted him to go. And for once, his brain lacked the willpower to overrule them.