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it was burning. she was burning. the trees were dying and already dead and burning around her. hands and branches strangled her, molded her into porcelain like an artist and then threw her to the ground, shattering her, like its antithesis. she was a little girl again, sobbing over a broken doll and over the fact that she couldn’t close her eyes without phantom visions of mangled small animals painting her eyelids. they were just all so defenseless and innocent, and what if they were torn apart or strangled, or she went out and there was a house fire and they were gone when she came back and there was no reason for it but they died while she was gone and they’d be trapped in the house alone and either burn or suffocate on the smoke and she was still maybe a porcelain doll but maybe she should go check the oven again anyway and throw out all the candles and trim her claws so she doesn’t accidentally hurt someone and check the oven again and board up the fireplace even if her fingers were glass and they were already cracking. she covered them in tape and gloves and band-aids but the glass kept poking through. she tried again. she checked the oven again. she tried again. she locked the door again. she
wakes up surrounded by an uncomfortable feeling of aching, itchiness, and what may or may not be a fever. There’s a thick blanket of dread covering her as well as a literal one, though she’s used to that after she wakes up. This time it feels suffocating, though- the literal, physical blanket, though she supposes that the dread does too- and she moves to kick it off, alerting her body to the fact that she is, in fact, awake, and alerting herself to the aching, burning pain in her face, neck, and left hand. She is also, suddenly, horribly aware of the fact that she can't see out of her left eye.
She sits up quick enough to make herself dizzy (though maybe that's also the aforementioned possible fever) and grabs for the mirror she knows is on her bedside table, holding it up to inspect her face. She pushes the bandages away (when did those get there?) in a panic diluted by confusion, relaxing minutely once she sees that the eye was just covered, not damaged. The burn on her cheek must have just been difficult to cover on its own. Tracing the trembling, tender fingers of her left hand over equally tender skin, she attempts to put the bandage back in the position it was in before- the burns seem pretty fresh, and if whoever helped her thought that covering them was a good idea, then it probably was. She can feel that they're looser than they had been, but she thinks that fussing with it might make it worse, maybe even undoing them altogether. That wouldn't be good. Probably.
There's a small crack in the glass, she notices, as she sets the mirror down. No pieces are missing or jagged edges sticking out, there's just a faint fractal pattern that she doesn't remember being there the last time she'd used it. Oh well. She'll look for some tape to use later, just so that the pieces don't come loose or anything. There's this feeling that's somewhere near deja-vu that she can't really place, like there's some sort of meaning to the scene that she's just not getting, a pair of blue curtains that are more than just blue, but thinking about it is beginning to give her a headache, so she stops. Feelings are odd like that; it probably didn't mean anything.
Deytra tries to stand up slowly, this time, a little more aware of her surroundings as well as her current state. Everything feels too hot and too cold all at once, shivering and sweating at the same time. It’s hard to balance, and she’s shaking, both from the cold feeling and, she notices, from hunger. How long had she been asleep? Had she eaten before then? She can’t really remember the last time she ate. She can’t remember who had helped her, either (since she certainly hadn’t dressed the wounds herself, probably). What could she remember? Looking for something… traveling… a forest fire?
The headache returns, worse this time. She can figure this out after she gets some food. And water, oh, now that she’s thinking about it, definitely water. She’ll go to the bathroom first, to get a drink, since that might help with some of the lightheadedness and make it easier to tackle the stairs down to the first floor, where the kitchen is.
Her throat hurts as she swallows, but at the same time it feels soothing, though it does nothing to lessen the outer, skin-deep ache. Her head still feels like it’s full of cotton, though, and the world spins when she turns her head, so she opts to go down the stairs sitting, like she did when she was just a kitten. It should probably be mildly embarrassing, but she’s in the privacy of her own home, and she’s also dizzy, mildly delirious, and sporting what are at least second degree burns, so she hopes that even if someone did see her, they wouldn’t judge her too harshly for it. She wonders when she started worrying about someone watching her.
The close counters of the kitchen offer her stability, something to lean on while she rifles through cabinets with trembling hands. She’s definitely in no state to cook, but also probably needs something with more substance than the cookies that seem to be calling her name. She grabs them anyway before looking for something more; she figures she deserves a bit of a treat right now. Cashews are good, right? Nuts have protein. Cookies and cashews, a perfectly balanced meal. She giggles to herself as she sits down- cookies and cashews, hey, that rhymes! Wait, no, they don’t, they’re alliterate, that’s what she meant. Start with the same sound. She’s horribly, pathetically out of it right now.
Food is helping her feel more real, though. It can tend to do that. Never make decisions on an empty stomach, that’s what she always says. Hunger makes people irritable, and fragile, and impulsive, and emotional, and desperate. Not that people aren’t usually those things, but having them be amplified doesn’t do anyone any favors. Having something to eat has certainly helped her here.
Mind ever-so-slightly less foggy, Deytra once again becomes all-too aware of how much everything aches, and she curses herself for not thinking to find some pain relief medicine while she was in the bathroom (and/or cold medicine; now that she's been up for a while, she's positive that she has a fever. Probably. She should've found a thermometer, checked that too). She knows that she'll have to go back upstairs eventually, but the effort that would take feels near impossible right now. She'll sit here for a bit, have some more water, and then see if she can manage the stairs.
Despite the improvement that fulfilling her basic needs had brought, her hands are still weak and unsteady. In her half dreamlike state, trying to go about life as she normally would, she forgets to be careful or forgets to care, and she can't quite catch the glass before it falls, and-
Oh.
Um.
That- that's-
She can't deal with that right now. She really, really can't handle that right now. She can't just leave it on the floor but she's tired, and feverish, and her everything hurts like a lot and she really can't cope with this right now, and she doesn't know what to do. She's stuck. She feels like- she can’t move, even though she should really be doing something. She should be doing something! She should be- what? She’s… supposed to be doing something. She can’t do anything right now, she’s not in a state where she can handle this. Oh, gods, what is she gonna do?
She's gonna pick up the largest pieces up carefully with her thumb and forefinger, careful not to touch the edge. She's gonna use the small dustpan to get what else she can, and then, she's gonna wipe down the area with a damp paper towel, to get the tiny little bits that snuck their way between the cracks in the tiles. She's gonna check the oven again, just one more time. She's not sure why it would be on, but it's always good to be extra certain. She's gonna wear slippers around here for a little while, because glass in her foot on top of everything else really wouldn't be good. She'll get a mug, something easier to hold, and she'll heat up some milk in the microwave (even if she has to check that the mug's microwave safe more than a few times), a reminder to herself that she's gonna be alright. There will be loss and there will be pain, but there will be warm milk, and there will be quiet moments, and there will be little comforts and little tragedies alike. Time will move forward, for her.
She's not sure when she fell asleep on the couch. She must have, because she wakes up there, though she can't have been out for too long, because the mug on the table in front of her is still warm. She drinks the rest of the milk, slowly, soothing and comforting down her throat. Warm milk was a good idea. Maybe she should be worried about the fact that she doesn't remember making it, but she's scared that thinking too hard will make her head hurt again. Oh. Yeah. She should probably deal with the glass, if it hasn't already…?
Slippers glide over slightly damp tiles. Oh. She must've already taken care of that.
All the movement's been drawing her attention back to the pain, though. Right now, she'd really love to just take some medicine and then fall back into bed. But there's still the issue of the stairs. She feels… a little bit stronger than she did before. Maybe she can handle it.
While she's down here, though, she decides to grab a sweatshirt of hers from the back of a dining chair, using the pockets to store a handful of non-perishable snacks, so as to limit how much she has to get up while she’s still recovering (although she still doesn’t know exactly what it is she needs to recover from, aside from the obvious burns). It’s something to make it easier, a little comfort for her future self.
In the end, it takes her almost 5 minutes to get up the one flight of stairs. And it hurt, kind of a lot. But she made it. Time will move forward, even for her.