Eat.
The woman pushed the bowl towards him gently as she steadied herself against the table. There was a familiar scents of medicine that lingered itself around the air. But there was something else that mixed aloft.
A putrid stench of something rotting.
She stumbled a little as she pulls herself back to the seat, it's as if the motion of pushing the bowl had taken more from her then it should have.
Arinia did as he was told. He dipped the spoon into the bowl, lifting the watery grains.
It was thin, warm, and filling.
Enough for his stomach to be filled. He ate in silence until the bowl was only half-empty. Then he stopped and looked up at her.
She sat there, watching him silently. The way she stared at him, as if to her.
He was the only warmth left in this world.
What wrong m'child?
For a moment Arinia did not speaks. He could not remember who this woman before him was.
He knew her. He should know her. He felt that sweetness within his heart. He felt the warmth of her voice. But he couldn't remember and knowing felt…thin. As if something is missing. He stared at her for a long time, but his mind was in a haze.
He felt, tired.
Soon she reached her hand toward him, but it never arrived.
The putrid stench.
It was stronger this time.
Wet.
Rotten.
Not from her but the surrounding.
His grip tightened around the spoon.
"…Mother?" The word came out naturally without thinking.
His voice was weak as if he was trying to confirm something.
She smiled.
Her expression was soft.
Tired.
And yet relieved.
"Yes… I'm here."
Hearing those words he felt relieved but something in him did not settle.
The warmth did not return. The stench of the surrounding did not leave, it is as if there was something trying to take him away from the moment.
He knew something was wrong. In a breath, he felt the air completely changed around him, thick with rots and decay. But before he could speaks another word to her. The thought did not finish nor did the word come out. The smell vanished followed with a deep sense of unease.
His vision soon dimmed, then everything vanished as if the world had been taken from him.
Without a warning he felt warmth drained from his skin, then the cold struck onto his flesh like needles. It surfaced slowly, spreading through him in quiet, uneven waves until there was nowhere left that did not ache.
Only then did Arinia opened his eyes.
Rain.
It fell without mercy. His, which seem to be a torn and broken skin met the uneven drops of the pouring rain. It hurts! He wanted to scream! And roll his body toward the muddy ground filled with copper stenches. But his body failed him. It as if a great weight was pressing down preventing him from doing so.
Each drop stung where his flesh was bare. The pain was agonizing but there's nothing he could do.
"Please," He heard a murmured. "Just a little more."
The woman before him forces herself upright. She reached toward him, and pull him onto a slab of stone, its surface cold and unwelcoming against his broken skin.
Then something passed over his hand.
Clean and sharp.
A breath later, a thin line of heat followed—then the stinging pain came.
His palm was split opened, and he felt warmth bled between his fingers. Before he can get used to the pain, he felt a hand guided his own down, onto a fine surface of a translucent stone marked with rune of unknown origin.
Arinia looked up at the the woman before him. Her skin was pale cold and nearly translucent. He could see the bleeding wounds on her side and stillness of her barely moving chest. It is as if taking another breath will cause her to collapse entirely.
She looked at him in return.
There was something in her expression, strange. He could not named of it.
But he felts faint and the distant warmth lingered behind hers expression, though as if the hope was there once.
Her lips curve into a small and delicate smile. A ridiculous smile—out of place for such an occasion. He wanted to speak out and asked who she was and why? Why is she doing all of this? But again, his voice failed him. It as if he's in a dream only being able to follow the act that taking place within that moment.
A Dream?!
His thoughts came apart in uneven pieces. A face, voices and the faint memory of warmth—each trying to resurface only to sink again before it could take shape in his mind.
He could smell it again.
Air heavy with decay, wet and suffocating. He felt it. Something within him gave way.
Like a sealed door, finally yielding.
The darkness did not vanish. At first, there was no shape to the world. All he could makeshift off was something dark and wet. He gathered his thoughts trying to make sense of the world around him.
Finally, a thin glow of light seeped into the place revealing what stood before him. His stomach lurched at the sight. A bitter heat climbed upward, unbidden. He tried to force it down, but his breath faltered, uneven, and shallow.
It looks soft and subtly. As though it were growing.
Flesh.
That what it seems when he first saw it. But upon closer inspection. He could see petals that slowly blooming outward from the skin, it should have been grotesque.
And yet—
there was a quiet beauty in the way it bloomed, soft and deliberate, as though the rot itself had learned how to become something tender.
The root shifted, forcing their way through veins and sinew of the flesh before him.
He heard a groaned from above and he looked up. It was a person. Her hair was white and her face, though beautiful, half of it was rotting and petals had completely bloom from it surface. There was softness in her eyes, the kind that lingered as if the world had already taken enough from her.
He felt her gaze. It rested on him the way one might cradle something fragile.
My child… thou shouldst not woken… not yet.. not to this.
'Rest, my child… close thine eyes once more, and let the dream hold thee into the embrace of dream. Her voice soft, almost to a whispered.
Drowsiness came upon him without warning, soft yet sudden, as through his thoughts were being gently hushes.