Darkness in Eloria

Hospitality

It’s soft and warm here, she thinks, rousing from her deep slumber. I feel better now, maybe the pain and all was just a bad effect of the morphine. I didn’t know you could have bad trips like that. I thought it was like falling asleep. Oh well, can’t get everything we want, she concludes.

She opens her eyes to see the firelight on the wooden rafters and hears people talking, but muffled, maybe through a wall?

She sits up, confused again.

How did I get here? She wonders. I don’t think this is how dying works.

Standing up she looks at herself, well, it seems the pain and all wasn’t a trip, her night gown is torn and dirty, and her head starts to hurt a bit with standing.

“Mam, she’s up!” a girl calls from the corner making Mallory jump and look at her.

“What?” she says. What is going on? She can’t breathe, why is it so hard to breathe?

“Mam! She fainted!” Moira calls again as Mallory crumples to the ground.

Koren leans over Mallory, waving smelling salts under her nose.

Mallory sneezes, thinking “Dead people don’t sneeze!”

“There we are dear, slowly now, what’s your name, dear?” Koren says softly as she helps Mallory into a sitting position.

“M-Mallory” she replies, surprised she can even speak, or move, or breathe for that matter.

“Aiden over there say you think you’re dead. May I inquire as to why?” She asks bluntly.

“Because I am dead. I am. I killed myself.” Mallory replies, looking curiously at this person, everything is so confusing. Maybe this is the afterlife, boy are the Christians gonna hate this.

“Well, I’m a healer held in pretty high regard, graduated top of my class at the university, so I consider myself qualified to judge and tell you that you are quite alive, dear.” She states.

“No, I don’t think you understand, I really can’t be. I took more than a lethal dose of morphine, and I don’t weigh all that much, so I’m very certainly dead.” She says. Maybe this is a test to see if you know what happened to you. Seems superfluous to me, Mallory thinks.

Koren looks to Aiden questioningly, he shrugs as if saying, “You’re the smart one, you should know.”

“Morphine?” Koren asks.

“It takes away pain, and when taken in high doses, you die. Hence the me being dead.” She says, starting to get impatient.

“Let’s say you’re dead, then. How do you usually tell if someone is dead?” Koren asks, seeing that Mallory honestly believes she is dead.

“You look for a pulse.”

“Yes, and love, you have one, see, feel it.” Koren puts two fingers to Mallory’s wrist and brings Mallory’s index and middle finger to her wrist. “See there, that’s your pulse. You’re not dead.”

Mallory looks at her in shock. “How can I not be dead, if I’m not dead, then why am I not in my bed, where am I? And who are all of you?” She cries, nothing makes sense! She thinks, desperately trying to bring some reason in to the recent events in her life.

“That, dear, is what we are trying to figure out. We know that you came from Earth and you somehow managed to transport here. How you did so, I don’t know, it takes a lot of power to safely teleport to another world, three mages worth roundabout. And that’s here, where magic does exist. In your world magic does not exist, so I honestly have no clue how you could have arrived here.” Koren explains.