Mages And Dragons

Of My Kind

"Kyra? Kyra! Are you alright?!" A voice urged for my response. I struggled to get air into my lungs, thrashing and hitting just to get the thing off of my mouth. I grabbed something, pulled with force, and was able to free my mouth and swallow gallons and gallons of air, burning my lungs on contact. I felt my face heating up, abnormally warm to the touch. I heard someone grunting and breathing heavy, so I turned to its source. Aaron was on the floor, slowly propping himself up with his elbows and grunting from pain in the process.

"Aaron! What are you doing here?!" I blurted out, making an attempt to help him, only to find that body movement was useless. From my chest down to my legs, I felt binds constricting my movement, but my arms were able to move freely.

"Making sure you were alright. But it's great to see I'm a welcoming sight to you." The sarcasm in his response could not be more clearer, and I would have grabbed his arm and squeezed hard enough for him to yelp, but he was out of my reach. He stood up and made a soft noise of pain, which was only clear enough for me to hear because of the deafening silence in the room. He looked me up from head to feet and made a nod of approval. "You seem well. How come you often spend your time here, when you've barely been a month here?"

"Oh, shut up and help me out of this." I responded, struggling to be free without success. Aaron pushed himself up and pulled the covers off of me. At that moment did we both realize I was absolutely naked apart from the violet bra and navy blue underwear I had worn this morn-...the last time I had woken up and gotten dressed. I could feel my face and body boiling up to burning temperatures and changing my complexion to a bright red, as if I had cooked in the sun for too long. Though Aaron couldn't see the embarrasement plastered on my face, he went to undoing the binds right away. He grabbed each bind and ripped them off one by one with the same ease as ripping paper. The binds had chaffed my skin, it was plain to see, because as soon as Aaron lifted them off my body, pain nerves wriggled and swam throughout my body as the raw skin peeled off of the binds, leaving angry, pulsing marks starting from one side to the other where each had been. Some had started bleeding, others were an array of pinks and reds and white, and each made my body burn and sting in pain.

I wanted to throw up. Not just from the ugly wounds but from what previously happened before I got here. I had been attacked and almost got killed twice; once in my mind and once in reality. If it weren't for my weird abilities, I would have been dead by now. These strange fucking powers that people are killing me for. Because I'm this key or something, apparently, that can cause absolute destruction if I'm put in the wrong hands. And that thought absolutely scares me. I felt stomach acids roiling and bubbling in my stomach, and I would have thrown up there and then if Aaron hadn't been there to calm me down. It's not like he said anything in particular, or anything at all. It's his prescence that helped my fear and bothers get pushed back a little farther in my head. Or it was probably the fact that throwing up near him would be all the more embarrasing for me.

He looked at my wounds and I saw him cringe. "Geez. What, did they tie on you that made something like those? In fact, why did they tie you in at all?" He took out his right hand and it started to glow a soft pink. Starting from the wounds on my legs, he took his pointer finger and thumb and closed the two ends of ripped skin together. The process made my skin burn and hurt more, and made me whince and tear up from the pain. I felt something grab my left hand. I tensed up, which made the wound on my stomach bleed more. Aaron had taken it and started rubbing my palm.

"It's going to hurt, but trust me you're going to get more help from me than what these people are doing to you." As if on command, I relaxed and let him close up each wound, despite the agonizing pain it put me in. The pain had become almost unbearable when he had gotten to my stomach to the point where I had ripped the coverings of the bed and nearly broke Aaron's hand. If he had felt any pain from my thrashing and almost snapping his hand, he certainly didn't show it. He was focused on putting the ripped skin together and rubbing my hand rhythmically to calm me down, never looking up or away from his work.