A Brief Interlude

The pain hit her like a blow. For a moment she was blinded to all else; her vision was blackened and she could taste acrid iron. Then her eyes began to clear and the world seemed to melt back into focus. She blinked furiously in the suddenly bright light, and struggled to raise her head. Her mouth felt as if it was stuffed with cotton wool, and her ears were filled with a shrill ringing.

As her brain slowly began to register her surroundings, she bit her lip, drawing blood, and tried to keep herself from withdrawing into primal fear. She was hunched over an endless plain of dried grass, utterly exposed. Apart from a few vague shapes in the middle distance – grazers perhaps – she was alone in a strange world. For a moment, she refused to believe her own senses. She struggled to reassure herself that the pain she had only recently felt was nothing more than a delusion, this place a mere manifestation of her own fear and confusion. She wished to believe that she would wake up at any moment.

She continued to struggle to rearrange her thoughts for more than an hour; the only sounds her troubled mutterings and the whisper of the dry wind in the grass. Suddenly a shock ran through her, electrifying her very flesh. She blinked rapidly, and the world seemed to ooze into blackness. The pain hit her like a blow…