I wonder what it feels like being a golf's ball.
This is not a question a normal person usually asks herself.
It's not like, during your chilly Sunday morning while half asleep and with your feet still under the blankets, you start pondering on the feelings of a little object thrown at 176 km per hour just for fun.
Well...after that I knew what it felt like, and it wasn't pleasant. At all. You're so damn fast that everything around you just melts into a blur. You can't see anything.
You can't distinguish anything.
You can only stay there and wait for the world to retrieve somewhat of a physically recognizable form.
Unbeknownst to me, the planet below me had not the shapes and the colors I was used to, resembling more the place I left not long ago: the ground seemed fake, spectral, as one's sight could easily go through it and gaze at the darkness below. Many colorful currents, lakes and oceans scattered here and there, some bright while others slightly dimmer, while millions of microscopic floating lights populated that spectral land.
If I could see that scenery I would have described those little lights as an infinite field of coneflowers. It would have also reminded me of one of those photos made by high altitude drones, where the camera was so high that the scenery was not flat like a photo made on the ground, but spherical with the endless sky disappearing in the horizon, beyond the earth.
But alas, I was still trapped into the "Blur".
I wondered what I looked like from the outside. If I was falling brightly as a comet or if I was invisible to the world below.
I'm not going to lie: If I had to jump into a totally new world, an entrance like a comet's fall would be pretty sick.
The two small groups of lights beneath me now were close enough for me to distinguish numbers and variation of brightness: twenty to thirty in total, the brightness was completely casual, I didn't see any pattern in it. I was falling directly into the larger group, with many lights stacked close to each other while two of them were a little outside the edge.
When I felt the need, I "closed my eyes" letting my soul into something warmer..... a body.
In those first moments I felt like an intruder, similar to pushing for space on a full train.
The true owner was there. Then, whoever it was, the presence disappeared as if it was never real, leaving me with a sudden sensation of guilt, and freedom.
Did I just kick someone out of his own body?!
I did not have time to think more deeply about what happened, as a new wave of feelings assaulted me. It was kind of nostalgic but........... they were not welcome feelings: the emptiness of hunger, a burning pain in my eyes, the dryness of my throat and a sense of fragility and overwhelming fear I could not explain.
Someone grabbed me by my armpits, then threw me as some kind of puppet on a flat solid surface.
Ohy!
That was not the peaceful awakening I was expecting, in a forest or in a village, in the embrace of my "new" parents.
Noises finally came to my ear: rustling of steel, scratching of wood, voices, laughs, screams and cries.
As I struggled to open my eyes, a hand grabbed my face and raised it, putting something around my neck. Something tight and cold.
I did not have to imagine what that was. It was obvious.
A collar.
I freaked out.
Forcing my eyes open, I tribed to see what was going on but everything was blurry, a mess of colors.
My voice was non-existent.
I tried to move somewhere and any movement I made felt like in slow-motion. I tried to stand up, but as soon as I got on my knees that damned collar held me back. A tingling confirmed my fears.
Chains.......
I was in a cage.
Tears started rolling down, as fear transformed into terror.
Those voices kept echoing around, completely indifferent to me. Voices I have never heard before, completely unknown. That bastard of a god was nowhere to be found.
I reached for the chains which were holding the collar and, following them with my hand, I touched a metal ring deeply planted in a wooden floor. Now blind also by my own tears, I tried to search for an opening in the wood, then any kind of mechanism in the ring and in the end, as terror kept growing and growing, I tried to break the chain with my bare hands.
The attempt didn't last long.
Someone grabbed my hair and tugged it, pressing my head on the metal bars between me and him.
"What are you trying to do, little shit?"
In a fraction of a second, I repeated the simple and intuitive act of speaking dozens of times, but when the first whisper came out, it was already too late.
When I felt the strength of the pull on my hair lowering drastically, I instinctively tried to gain some distance....completely falling into his trap.
He grabbed my hair again, pulling a second time. My head crashed into the bars and my world, which was already blurred by the wave of tears, started to dance around me wildly.
Then he really let go of my hair, leaving me to fall on the wooden floor. I didn't even try to resist when he reached out for my neck.
He raised me like a doll, leaving only the tip of my toes with a grip on the wood.
"SO?!"
"I.......I........Ple...please...." I whimpered.
A nauseating smell reached my nose, as his face came closer and closer.
"I didn't hear you........" he said, faking my tone.
"I...c-can't breathe....leave me...leave me...." I tried to speak louder this time.
A second figure entered the corner of my eye.
"Come on Al, we can't sell corpses.... Leave this sack of shit and come, Fyn said that you must drive the first carriage."
The owner of the hand around my neck didn't answer on the spot.
He pondered for a few seconds.
"As the boss says then..."
But the strength of the grip didn't decrease.
Instead, he punched me right into the stomach. A punch with the force of a battering-ram.
The air in my lungs disappeared instantly.
I fell on the floor without a sound.
Every cell of my belly was howling all-together, my heart roaring in my ears.
I gasped for air, but at the same time, every single breath was a spear of agony trespassing my chest.
"When your owners ask, you answer. And you do it immediately" he threatened.
"What did I just tell you? Ah nevermind....there aren't many buyers of these things anyway. Wash your hands before you come." the other said, leaving.
"Better safe than sorry. These half animals are as vicious as disgusting. "
The two walked away. Distant movements outside and a few horse's neighs later, the cage I was in started to move.
Rattling of wooden wheels, patter of hoofs, as a light layer of dust rose in the air.
But again, loud laughs, deep voices, whimped sobbings and soft mourns stood above everything else.
And all I could do... was groveling to the first thing that was not a metal bar: a wooden wall.
Then...
I would really like to say that I check if I possessed any magic, any "hidden talent" or whatever which could have helped me with those assholes.
I would really like to say that, as I resisted bravely to the pain in my belly, I started to craft a clever escape plan.
But I didn't.
I stayed there, flinching at every single jolt that cursed cage would subject me, trying to stop the seemingly endless flood of tears, while carefully reducing every act of inspiration and exhalation to mere fractions of the normal ones.
{A few hours later.}
Eventually, after an eternity of short, controlled, breath my belly stopped aching.
Nevertheless I did not dare to move, lightly hugging myself against that rugged wall.
A hand reached my shoulders, its touch gentle and comforting. When I found a skinny middle-aged man smiling softly in my direction I couldn't stop myself from jumping out of my skin a second time, propelling myself toward the opposite side of where he was.
The collar held me back again, but I kept trying to get as far away as possible from him.
I knew he was not dangerous.
I knew he wanted only to calm me
I knew he was not one of them, yet I did not want to have his hands on me.
He looked away for a second, then another hand, smaller than his, drew my attention. A woman, skinny as the man but a bit younger, brought my eyes on her.
I could see the kindness in her eyes, the pity. But I stared at her with hostility, and fear.
I had very little self-control of me....No, that's not right. I had none. Self-control was very.... very far from my thoughts at that moment.
They kept trying to soothe me, and after a while, they started talking to me.
"What's your name?"
"I've never seen you...where do you live?"
"Where is your family?"
Normal questions. I don't even think they hoped for an answer.
My mouth, after all, was completely sealed.
The woman kept caressing me. She started to narrate an old fable. Something that her mother used to tell her when she was little. But I did not give the story any attention.
Even though my body started to relax. Even if my nerves, tensed to hours, had a bit of respite. I kept her and her husband in sight.
At this point, my eyes were clear and my hearing was fine.
I wanted to look at my surroundings, but looking away from her was like giving her trust, and I didn't trust her. I didn't want to.
Bits of blue sky and sporadic clouds entered the corners of my eyes. I knew the cage was still moving thanks to the bumps and the dust.
The sun was not hot, a lazy but fresh wind kept blowing.
And in that instant, with my eyes still locked on the couple, that voice rang in my head yet again.
The voice of a liar.
"Oh finally......Hello, little soul."
_.-_.-_.-_.-_.-_.-_.-_.-
A.N
Hello,
I'm somewhat unsure about this chapter. It feels weird to read yet I cannot see anything to modify or correct.
If anyone has any idea i'll be a thousand times glad to hear them, even the tiniest detail!