I've managed to find a fantasy story I started to write last year...
I've run through it to clean it up... Please let me know what you think to the first thousand words...
And a title would be good too
The throbbing pulse of a pounding headache roused me from my sleep with its insistent, dull jabs, as if my brain was trying to escape my skull. I opened my eyes to look around, only to rapidly snap them shut again as the bright seeming light lanced into them like needles, causing me to hiss sharply.
“Easy now,” a low voice purred suggestively from nearby as I felt the edge of the bed I was laying on sink on that side.
I carefully opened my eyes again and turned to the speaker slowly, so as to keep my brains inside my head, and smiled. I smiled much wider as I saw the face of an angel smiling back down at me. She had a halo of light surrounding her golden curls that left her beautiful smiling face in partial shadow. I sat up to embrace her but immediately regretted it as an explosion of pain blew through my head, shattering my consciousness. Mercifully, I blacked out quickly, with only the memory of my angel’s face remaining.
When I next awoke, the headache had lessened, although not vanished completely, so I held still, not willing to repeat my previous mistake. As I looked at my surroundings through slitted eyes, allowing them to become adjusted to the lamplight, I saw my angel stood with her back to me beside a table. She looked slender, almost thin, in the dun coloured dress that she wore and when she eventually turned to me I saw that she was younger than I’d first thought... and less angelic too, she had the rough look of a street urchin. Not that she was not pretty... far from it.
She looked to be about twelve years old and the tight bodice and waist of her dress boldly advertised just how flat her chest and how narrow her hips were. What had looked like golden curls, were in fact unwashed blonde, and the dun dress looked like it had been many days since it had even glimpsed soap and water.
As more of my faculties returned to me I was able to make out more of my surroundings. I was lying on a crude camp bed type cot in a windowless storeroom of sorts; I could clearly see wooden boxes and crates stacked against one wall and a door in the far corner.
“Back with us again?” the sultry voice of the girl interrupted my inspection of my surroundings as she sauntered over and sat on the edge of my bed with a cup in hand.
“Who... who are you?” I asked croakily, my throat feeling rough and dry.
“You can call me Kitten,” she replied with a saucy smile as she gently lifted my head and brought the cup to my lips, letting me slowly sip the chicken broth it contained. “The real question is,” she asked once I’d finished the cup, “who are you?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but could think of nothing to say. “I don’t know!” I yelped, and felt rising panic clench my throat in its tight grip as I desperately tried to remember who I was.
“Easy... Easy!” Kitten tried to calm me while holding me down on the bed. “It’s probably just temporary, from whatever happened to you... What’s the first thing you remember?”
I stopped straining to sit up against Kitten’s restraint and relaxed back in the bed again. “The first thing I remember...” I replied softly, “is seeing your face... there’s nothing before that.”
“Well that’s something,” she smiled again. “I’ve heard tell of people losing their memory when they got a knock on the head, maybe something similar happened to you.”
“I guess it’s possible,” I considered, feeling much calmer than before, “my head definitely felt like it had been cracked open.”
“And you remember how to speak,” Kitten added with a grin, “so it’s not all gone.”
I relaxed further and smiled as Kitten took the cup back to the table. She was right, I had heard of cases where people with head injuries had lost some memory but had recovered them with time. I then realised that I could remember that, but nothing about where I had heard it or from whom. The strain of my previous panic quickly began to make itself felt, leaving my body feeling leaden and lethargic. As I wondered what else I might remember and what else I might know, I slowly drifted off to sleep.
When I next woke, it was to the blessed absence of pain. I lay still, luxuriating in the peace when I heard the sound of hushed whispers. I remained quiet while I listened to the susurrus of their voices but opened my eyes when I head footsteps approach the bed.
“How are you feeling today?” Kitten asked as she stood near my bed. “Remember anything new?”
“I’m feeling much better,” I replied with a smile, and surprisingly I did feel more refreshed and full of energy than I had before, “but I can’t remember anything more.”
“Right,” she smiled and prodded me unceremoniously, “So you can get up out of your pit and get on with your life.”
“My life?” I asked incredulously as I gingerly climbed from the bed to stand before her. “What life, I have no memory of who or what I am.”
“Put these on,” Kitten commanded as she thrust a bundle of clothes into my arms, obviously done mollycoddling me. I pulled on the rough cotton shirt and trousers as Kitten continued, “You need to move on with your life... such as it is.... face the world as you are and if, or when, your memory returns you can deal with it then.”
“But what can I do?” I asked, unsure of myself. “What possible job can I do when I don’t even know what I’m good at?”
“You may be good at a lot of things,” Kitten said as she started toward the door. “Just leave it up to Aran.”
“Aran?” I asked as I chased after her. “Who’s Aran?”
“Let’s just say...” she replied looking back at me with a sly grin, “that he’s a broker of talents.” She then sped up and added as she opened the door, “Hurry! He doesn’t like to be kept waiting."
Thanks for reading
Andrew
