Part 5
A name haunts Aurora’s sleep, infiltrating her dreams. It seeps into her thoughts, despite how hard she has tried to push it away for all these months.
Elwen.
It repeats over and over again in her mind - sometimes loud, sometimes soft, but always there. With it comes a deep cut of pain, the intolerable sting of regret and anger at what happened in the past. It’s a bitter taste, because the past is something that can no longer be changed, no matter how hard we try.
Aurora wishes she could change it. She wishes so dearly to be able to turn the clock back to that early spring day, nearly a year ago, when her life changed forever. The day that led her to where she is now.
She was still with her tribe, then. It was her turn to keep a lookout for danger during the night, while the others slept. And by danger, that meant Wildebeast. Although not nocturnal animals, they were particularly keen on catching humans during the night when their defence was down. The tribe had already hidden their den far out of sight, and not were they in a Wildebeast’s territory. They shouldn’t be attacked. But someone in the tribe would always stay up and keep watch anyway, just as a precaution.
Aurora didn’t enjoy the dull night watch, hours of sat doing nothing, unable to drift off to sleep. But despite this, she would always do her duty carefully. Everyone had to do it, so it was only fair that she should too. And that night, she sat wide awake until light melted into the sky and sunrise came once again. She turned to wake the others, gently shaking the shoulder of her best friend first.
“Elwen. Time to wake up,” she whispered softly.
The eyelids of the girl fluttered and opened a crack. Her chocolate-brown eyes peeked out the tiniest sliver. “Hmm...Good morning.”
A smile played on Aurora’s lips. Her and Elwen had always been in this tribe together, and had been best friends since birth. In all that time, Elwen had never been a morning person. She awoke as if yesterday she’d been knocked out by running into a tree by accident.
“Wake up, you lazy log.”
“Toad-face,” she mumbled in retort.
“Slug slime.”
“Arachnid dung.”
They shared a conspiratorial smile, and then it was time to get up and begin the day’s tasks. Elwen made to leave the den for the first task of the day: collecting ice for water.
Aurora wasn’t watching her as Elwen got closer to the den’s entry, which was the mouth of the cave they were sheltering in. She had her back turned, busy placing new kindling on the fire to light it again. But some of the other tribe members could see Elwen, and Aurora could see them in turn.
That was all she needed to realise that something was very wrong.
In the snap of a moment, everything changed. The tribe members’ faces dropped and they yelled out, waving them arms with the fierceness of warriors in battle.
A sick feeling pitted at the bottom of Aurora’s stomach.
By the time she had spun around, Elwen’s scream had already disappeared. Scarlet blood pooled at the entrance of the cave, and a huge figure stood there blocking the light.
Somehow, a Wildebeast had found them.
Somehow, it had managed to sneak inside their den.
And now, it had done what Wildebeast do best.
Its glinting black eyes surveyed them for a moment, and then it turned away, still holding Elwen’s limp body between its claws, as if she were no more than a rabbit. With surprising agility, the beast darted away from the den before any of the tribe members had a chance to counterattack. It melted into the forest, carrying away the spoils of its hunt to enjoy later.
For a moment, time stood still. It froze, colder than the winter ice.
Then Aurora sank - or rather, slammed - to her knees.
Fury and grief rose and swirled and crescendoed inside her, a blistering snowstorm spiralling out of control. She couldn’t control the sobs that racked her body of the way her hands trembled. A knife was being plunged into her chest, as if it was her blood, not Elwen’s, that was seeping out and staining the floor of the den.
The pain of her emotions was too much to cope with. It was swallowing her whole.
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