The cool grass felt so good beneath his aching head. Something was shaking him. No, someone was shaking him; and yelling in his ear. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t acknowledge that person’s existence beyond what he was doing now. With a loud thump, someone else fell in front of him with a stump where their head should be. Blood spurted out and bits of flesh barely hung onto the neck. There was a battle going on around him and he could still feel the person shaking him. The person finally turned him over on his back and laid her head on his chest. She was beautiful with that long blonde hair and the blood on her face did nothing to diminish her looks. But...What was she saying? He finally realized that he couldn't hear, but only felt the vibrations of sounds. Her yelling pounded through his chest, and he could feel the vibrations of clashing, stomping, and explosions all around him, coursing through the ground to his immobile fingertips. Something sparked his memory, maybe the sight of the decapitated corpse, maybe the feeling of a beautiful girl crying over him as if he were dead, but it sparked the memory all the same, simultaneously curing whatever was holding him down, leaving his ears untouched.
'I...I am a soldier...And...' He curled his hand into a fist and forced the weak body he now possessed to prop itself onto his elbow, surprising the girl, 'I'm lying down on the job.'
The girl hugged him close. The feeling of her body made his face feel warm, and his heart beat so much faster, and he realized something that somehow disturbed him; like it wasn't something to notice on a battle field. Her breasts...were soft... Almost on instinct, he pushed her away and fought to kneeling position. It was almost as if she was expecting what had happened, and she respected him enough to let him try and get up. She shouldn't have sat back... He fell face first into the dirt and fought to stay awake. A new feeling was digging into him, tearing at him, making him grit his teeth and grasp an almost gaping hole in his side. And while the pain of an open bullet slowly killed him, robbing his will to live, his hearing returned just in time to hear the girl yell.
"No! D-D-Don't leave me! Please, get up! You...You've done it so many times before..." Her voice faltered as she pushed him onto his back and tried to keep the wound from bleeding, "Please! Please get up Cale... D-Don't leave me..." Darkness enveloped his vision and slowly his mind let him go. He was floating...floating...with her words still ringing in his ears; echoing, "Please...Cale...Get up..."
A boy in his late-teens gasped and shot up from his cot with a cold sweat and heavy breathing.
"Wh-Where am- Woah!" The teen took to twisting and turning on the cot, looking wildly around the unfamiliar room. Needless to say, the sudden erratic shifting of his weight overturned the scratchy bed beneath him. It landed on his leg, making no noise besides a dull thud, and he gritted his teeth while pushing himself off of the ground. Rubbing his sore leg, the boy looked around again. His mind was calming down from the initial surprise, and finally he could piece two and two together. He was sitting in a plain white room, no decorations at all. To his left sat a gray box of metal atop a sturdy wooden pedestal with screens reading out something... Something he had no clue on how to decipher. The overturned cot, of course, was beside the pedestal; something sat where the cot used to cover. It was another box, this time of... plastic, maybe? No, maybe something heavier, but it was still something he didn't know. There two flat pads with handles jutting out from the back in an L-shape, and they seemed to be connected to the box with a wire. The teen gave up on the two unknown machines and continued to look around. There was a white cabinet on the wall farthest him, beside an open doorway, and it had a red cross painted on it.
'Medicinal supplies...' said an emotionless voice in the back of his head. What? He froze and heard the voice echo for a little while before disappearing completely, and he tried to will it to speak again. Nothing happened...
Feeling like a complete idiot from trying to get a voice in his head to talk, the teen gave up and picked the cot up, putting it upright again and hopefully in the same position as before. He sat down on it and held his head in his hands, for some reason he felt everything would be clear if he did that... Nothing became clear, no thought to where he was came to mind. Only a question took its place among his confusion.
"Who am I...?" He said aloud, and he couldn't have picked a better thing to make him think. In the surprise of waking up so suddenly, he never realized something that should have been obvious. The teen had no clue who he was, let alone where he was. He tried to will his name to mind, but he only got brief flashes of faces and pictures. There was a square-headed man, with a look of anger and confusion. There was...some kind of... line, drawn with a pulsating blue light. There was a girl, looking like she was six, and then ten, and then... she was in her teenage years. He saw the same kind of age transition with three other girls, and even a few boys before the images gave way to different shapes drawn in different colors. A circle of solid brown, a pole of choppy blue-green... even a D that seemed to just be...there... In a moment of still-thought, music reached his ear, soothing his mind and body. He relaxed as it got louder, and nearly fell asleep... He was...floating again...the teen could tell that his body was swaying... Louder still, the music seemed to approach him and a clear image burst through everything else. A spiral giving way to a vertical line that went in the opposite direction of the spiral's own flow. That image alone was in his mind as he swayed more wildly and finally collapsed on the bed, sleep overtaking him. And before he lost consciousness, he felt his body fall freely, and a voice yell as he felt the thud of a sudden, painful stop.
"What the- Horst!!"
The music played on... Orchestra blaring, tempo rising, emotions rushing! He shot up in the cot just as the music hit its most suspenseful note, where the feelings of the scene the music portrayed rushed at you, 'Have No Fear, Attack The Rear!' Sitting there panting, he grabbed at his chest until he got a hold of both his shirt and the skin around his heart. Sweat ran down his face and hit the soaked sheets of the scratchy bed, all being a reminder that something had happened. He was... He was...
"Damn it! What was that dream about?!" He yelled at the air, now cradling his head in his arms with his knees drawn to his chest. With every grain of the Sands of Time passing, he quickly lost sight of something so recent as a dream.
"I haven't the slightest," Answered a voice, "But, then again, who, besides you, would?"
The teen started at the surprise sound of a voice and fell over the side of the cot, backing away quickly from a tall, lean figure looming over where he had just been. The figure was an elderly man, fighting to stay upright. The man's hands were wrinkled, unavoidable with age, and shaky. His long beard and unkempt hair was a fine grey, resembling that of stone, and not the traditional graying-to-white of a truly old human. Wiping a pair of spectacles on his green cloth shirt, the man looked to the boy through the aid of his eyeglasses.
"Considering we've had to fix the cot's position before putting you back, that's the third time you've fallen off. Accident-prone? Or is falling a new hobby in this day and age?" The man chuckled at his little joke, and then continued on talking, walking around with the purpose of helping the boy up, "Let's not start out a new relationship as friends with us being total strangers, shall we? I am Horstal Karmat. But you may call me Horst; everyone else does."
The teen accepted the help and he sat back down on the cot without a word, just a nod of acknowledgement.
"...Well?" Horst said after an awkward silence, "What do you have others call you by?" There was another silence as the teen gathered himself and tried to think.
"My name?" He croaked out finally, hearing words echo in his head, "My name is... is..." The words were so jumbled, he couldn't understand them, only that a girl was hysterically yelling them. Finally a single word broke through, and he said it aloud,
"Cale. My name is Cale."
"Ah, Cale, now is it? Well, let me tell you Cale, you've got some real love from ole' Goddess Luck. Do you know where you are?"
Cale shook his head, and looked to the door as a muscular man entered, skin a deep brown and hands toughened and rough. His hair looked to have been shaved, a dark and short fuzz where his hair would be.
"You're in a hospital, kid, and have been for the past year," The man announced, not showing any care that what he had said carried so much.
"Ah, Barett, still as blunt as ever..." Horst chuckled, shaking his head at the man as he stood beside him, "But, I guess it had to have been said. Yes, Young Cale, he speaks the truth; you have been asleep in that very cot for nearly an entire year. Do you remember why? Do you recall where you had been before being brought here?"
Cale slowly shook his head, looking to them with an unblinking stare. An entire year... But...Where was here?
"Do you have any clue about what's going on right now?" Barett asked, showing, again, no care to how Cale must feel.
Another shake of the head, and Cale finally looked away,
"...I...No, nothing..." He croaked out.
The two men suddenly ignored him, left him with his thoughts, and started talking amongst themselves, using terms, words, and phrases he couldn't understand.
"It's no wonder he doesn't know, being in a coma for that long has no result but amnesia."
"Yes, but there is still the question: Is it temporary?"
"I dunno, but we can't have him stay here to find out, it was hard enough keeping him with the buget we got."
"Are you suggesting we throw him out? Young Cale does not deserve that!"
The talking turned to arguing, something Cale could understand. Apparantly they never had the money for long-term patients and if he stays any longer for therapy and care, they would have to sell the hospital. But something didn't make sense. They never referred to a buyer, like selling this place would be impossible. Outside, animals and birds went about their daily business, making a cacophony of singing, rustling, and screeches. Cale looked to see if the men were paying him any mind, and then hesitantly stepped to the window when he saw that they were absorbed in their conversation. Through the glass panes of the window, he saw healthy, strong trees, scurrying animals, low, thick bushes, and clear blue sky. But no sign of another building anywhere; only dense, nigh-traversable forest and animals running in and out. And he could've sworn that strange little hare with the black spot had just run full speed into the trees. That other hare with the spot in the same place must be a different one. There's no way the hare could run in, turn completely around, and double back in just a half-second without him seeing it...Is there?
"Noticing the forest, I take it?" Horst said, having broken off from the conversation after noticing Cale was gone.
Cale nodded slightly and saw the same phenomenon all where he could see. Deer, birds, squirrels, most were running into the trees, only to turn around in a half-second and double back to exactly where they entered.
"Notice it well, because this is a forest to be known and wary of," Barett said, looking out the window to the same place as Cale, "Would you like to know what's going on?"
Cale nodded again and looked to the two men, their faces grim and unlike before with a tired look setting in.
"This forest is the Forest of Anone."
