She shouldn’t have called out.

Her thoughts screamed her mistake until her mind ached with a flaming burn. Waiting until the peril passed― that should have been the obvious plan of action. However, following logic proved to be easier said than done when explosions of emotions clouded proper judgment. In any case, the choice had been made. Her voice had signaled her presence, and now here she fell. If her eyes were open, they saw nothing. Spinning and spinning and spinning in a whirlwind of force, a tugging rush scrambling to rip her limbs from their sockets as effortlessly as she popped dandelion heads from their stalks threatened to be her eternity. Up and all around she bounced, yet still did she fall. The shrieking winds tortured her existence with their piercing screams. Would there not be an end?

As it came to be, the end was no better than the beginning. Almost everything ceased at once. The dominating bludgeoning of her body fell victim to paralyzing stillness. The deafening gales became chilling silence. The obsidian darkness, however, remained, and the searing ripping of her skull splitting apart crackled with intensified fervor. Why had this happened? Why did it hurt? What exactly had she done again to cause this? Some mistake had been made, but the error of her ways fluttered off without hesitation as a creeping, lusting blackness even more pervasive than the one encapsulating her slunk forward from the horizon. With its arrival it took what little remained. She had but one moment to pitifully resist before the scalding headache climaxed, staggered, and vanished with an alarming coolness. No more questions tempted her with unreachable answers. The dragging seconds morphed into an endless passing of untraceable time. Not so much as the simplest of desires survived. The darkness devoured her into a cocoon, and within it she resided.

Yet this too would end as all things cease to be in time. She could not answer when. She could not answer why. She could not give any answers, for she knew nothing. Light abruptly blasted away the blackness, the only familiar thing, to present a long forgotten gift. Colors. Large blobs of them swarmed, swirled, and swished in and out and from side to side. Peach and brown and white and blue danced with the most energy before her. Entranced, something else returned when the darkness flashing impossibly fast broke her out of her stupor. Emotion. Fear. The darkness terrified her, yet the darkness thankfully didn’t persist. Again and again it stole everything just to give it back in a seamless cycle. Colors slowly blossomed into shapes, and the sensation of curiosity tickling her chest bequeathed rationalization as the world focused. The interruption of light, well, that was no more than her blinking. In a bed she lay with clean though heavily worn brown sheets neatly tucked all around keeping her still. Heavy white curtains divided the long room of smooth gray stone and deep auburn oak into small sections with space enough for one person to stand on each side of the bed. The lingering glow of crimsons, golds, and deep oranges of the fading sun streamed through the thick glass windows aligned perfectly in every other quartered makeshift room. Across the way and to the left, she spotted an elderly man with a frown and frustrated glaze in his eyes lean against his elbow while he stuck his nose further into the book he held. Off to her right, someone lightly snored. Further down her left, a dry, hacking cough rattled someone’s chest.

Her head slowly turned to that noise, and her body didn’t appreciate the movement. From nowhere the daggering pain returned to scrape every inch of her head it could reach. A thick hiss escaped her lips, and her arm wriggled with enough strength to break free of the blankets and sludge of exhaustion weighing her down. Shaking fingers met a thick wad of bandages wrapped around her head before finally interlocking with stray strands of hair, chestnut brown in color, sneaking out of the braid keeping her locks neat and tidy. Soft rubbing eased the ache somewhat, yet the clearer understanding came into focus the more the pain blurred her sight again. She lay in a healing ward. That much was obvious. A severe injury to her head had occurred at some point, and it was the reason nothing else made sense. The more understanding she reached for, the less she found. For instance, as she sucked in another deep breath through her teeth she found something truly bizarre next to her bed. A crib, simple yet sturdy, held a sleeping infant no more than a year old, if that. The little boy with gentle brown skin sprawled comfortably, one chubby fist deeply entangled in his thick strands of black hair that attempted to curl at the ends.

Another pulse of pain seized control as she tried to recall the child. Did she know him? She had to, otherwise why would he be placed beside her? The quiet clacking of shoes on the polished wood floor halted further investigation or attempts at remembering. Her recent tightening of pain caught the attention of the old man. He motioned to a woman dressed in a white and light blue outfit, a worker of the ward. The two spoke words she couldn’t make out due to the ringing her stinging head now produced, and the other woman walked off before returning with a man dressed in a much more tailored suit. His skin the color of damp earth and his bright brown eyes contrasted peacefully against his outfit’s colors of white, silver, and navy blue. He and the woman spoke to each other for a moment more as she succeeded somewhat in sitting herself up before the woman departed a second time.

“God eyes, huh?” the man spoke with a deep, enunciated voice as he sat on the edge of the bed close to both her and the infant.

“What?”

Her own voice was quiet and slurred, and she wasn’t sure if her tongue was supposed to feel so swollen.

“You have god eyes.” the man clarified, or she assumed he meant that as clarification.

“I…I don’t…”

God eyes. She felt as if she knew what that meant, yet no answers came. The man stared at her waiting for the moment when his words sank in. She could only stare back in poorly confined confusion. A second later, he sighed.

“It means your eyes are one color at the top and another at the bottom. In your case, blue on top and green on bottom. Some people believe this means the gods have blessed you and given you the power to see spirits trying to hide themselves, but those people are idiots. The difference in coloration is merely a harmless defect created in the womb. Nothing more.”

“Oh,” she spoke quietly again, “I…I see.”

She fidgeted. The man continued to stare her way with eyes hardly blinking. Was he expecting something from her? Was this not a healing ward? Shouldn’t he be looking her over instead of sitting there in near silence? From over his shoulder, the old man glanced back and forth between them and his book. It seemed he kept an ear open even as he pretended to find fascination with the words on the pages.

“Do you remember anything?” the man finally questioned.

“I know that this is a healing ward. I know I have been injured. I can say it is a safe guess you are a head healer, or at least one of them.” she offered as much as she could as confidently as she could, and the one thing she did know for certain was that it wasn’t much at all.

“That is correct. But what about past that? What is your name?”

She couldn’t reply, and that disturbed her deeply.

“What is his name?” the man motioned to the infant, still sleeping, “Do you know what happened to you? Where are you from? Who is your family? Do you know what city you are in? What country you are in? What year it is?”

All of his questions produced one response. A negative headshake that grew more dismal with each swing from side to side. The man’s expression, in turn, grew ever so slightly irritated. He sighed a second time and stood up to pull the curtain running parallel to the open hallway closed, much to the disappointment of the old man. She contained a cry of pain within her lungs as she pushed herself into an even high sitting position. The pain flared, although with the passing seconds it lessened into something more bearable.

“I feared this. It is expected given how injured you came in, yet I still dared to hope.”

“What did happen to me?” she asked, ignoring how the despondence the man spoke with was for the inconvenience her not having any memories caused him more than for concern over her.

“I cannot say for certain. One of my assistants was out last night in the woods gathering midnight mallows for salves, and he heard your son crying. He came upon him, unhurt, and you, unconscious, with quite the terrible head injury. Had my assistant not been there, you would have been dead within the next half hour. He did, of course, find you, heal you as best he could there, and bring you here for proper examination and treatment.”

“Is…is that not what he should have done? The way you speak, I’m sorry, it sounds as if you think he made the wrong choice. You said I was correct in that this is a healing ward, but am I misunderstanding something?”

“Due to the strains of the war effort with the north, a missive came yesterday saying we are to hereby refuse any patients without proper identification and proof of credibility that their treatment can be paid for. My assistant brought you here a mere twenty minutes before that missive went into effect at midnight. Although you were admitted before that time, the officers who delivered the order are not happy that this ward is showing defiance against Suraryl’s wishes. I have heard nothing but grief since then. Have no fear though. The officers are allowing you to stay due to the technicality. Your healing will be complete by this time tomorrow at the latest, and it is at that point when you must leave.”

“Leave?” she spoke in dread, “W-Where am I meant to go afterwards? Will some memories come back? Is there a way to know who I am or where I should be?”

The man brushed away her concerns with a flick of his wrist, continuing, “I will send Ti’pahn to tend to you. I have other matters to address, and he has more time to spend answering questions. If you require food or drink, make sure to request it of him as well.”

He squared his shoulders, gave her a nod both dismissive and polite in nature, and left the privacy curtain half open as he departed. She sat there, her body frozen as her heart fluttered harder with anxiousness, and ignored the old man still curiously straining to understand what went on across the way to watch as the child next to her slowly opened his dark amber colored eyes. He blinked several times, made not a peep, and gently clasped his fingers around the one she offered to him as she awaited another set of feet making its way down the quiet hall.