Remember

A (sad) short love story by Misty. Do NOT steal or edit. Coding also by Mist.
== Awakening . . . ==
Nothing.
Where am I?
Darkness.
Heart beat.
Alone.
What is happening?
Emptiness. A dry, bottomless chasm.
Heart beat. Louder this time.
Deep, tender soul.
Fragile, hollow mind.
Heart beat.
Why is there a void?
Meaningless knowledge, slipping away. Or, perhaps it had it already.
Heart beat.
Silence. Wait, no, a voice. Painfully faint, but gradually growing in volume.
Heart beat.
Strange feeling, maybe once recognized as fear. Fear that there was nothing. Fear that it would stay that way forever, for he had spent what felt closely related to an eternity in there.
Wait. He? Yes, he was male.
What else? A name?
Nothing.
The distant voice was edging closer, becoming clearer to hear with each passing second. Or was it minute? A day? A week? For him, a century.
A flicker of hope. A tiny spark within the immortal darkness.
Heart beat.
Words could now be made out, but when he attempted to decipher them, they slid away, like slimy fish between his claws, when he wished to grasp them. To hang on to them, for the sake of his life, his being, his sanity.
Heart beat.
Is that light?
A faraway glow slowly permeated the surrounding darkness, filling him with a new, welcome feeling. Joy? Yes, that’s what it was.
He knew so far that there was fear, hope, and joy. There was more. More to feel, more to experience. What was it?
Heart beat.
Something nagging at the back of his consciousness. Another unknown thing?
It was on the verge of being revealed. So close . . .
Heart beat.
Heart beat.
Heart beat.
When the voice spoke this time, he was able to process the words. To his immense joy.
Heart beat.
“He’s moving,” uttered the speaker in a concerned voice. That was another thing. Concern. But not the one he was looking for. The voice sounded male.
Heart beat.
Suddenly, another voice. This one a sigh, drenched in relief. Add that to the list. Relief. “He’ll wake up soon, right?” That was worry. This one sounded female.
Heart beat.
“Probably.” That must have been hope.
Heart beat.
The light was expanding quicker, chasing away the blank blackness until it eventually disappeared entirely. Too bright. Too much light at once.
Blinking.
Heart beat.
Sight.
Breath.
Movement.
Heart beat.
== Sight ==
The darkness was gone!
When my vision adjusted, I found myself staring at a ceiling that was a dark, sandy color. Sunlight made its way through in an opaque fashion. It was moving, so I guessed we were inside a tent of some kind. I was lying down, on a cot I assumed was reserved for medical purposes.There was an abrupt, sharp pain in my head, and I winced. I couldn’t bring myself to sit up, but I could touch my talons to my temples with an agonized grunt.
Confusion left me almost angry. Why was I here? What had happened? Why couldn’t I remember anything? Why did my head hurt so much?
“You’re awake!” cried the second voice I had heard. I forced myself to lift up my head through gritted teeth.
Before I could glimpse the female speaker, the dragon that belonged to the other voice walked close enough to be slightly visible through my peripheral vision, even though the dragon was right next to me. My sight was still rather fuzzy. “No, lay back down,” he ordered, carefully pushing my throbbing head back down on the cot. “You’re still weak from the injury.”
Injury? What injury?
It was then that I noticed there was a pack of something cool sitting on my forehead. The thing had nearly fallen off when I had tried to look up.
I didn’t need to look up to discover who the second speaker was, though. She had snapped quickly to my side, like the one who I assumed was the medic, but in a more urgent way.
A warm presence made itself known at the back of my skull, which I realized was a talon cradling my head. I curiously tilted it to the right, towards the dragoness doing so.
What I beheld was startlingly bombarding for me.
She was smiling down at me, but not a smile of exact joy, like I had felt before. No, this was mixed with many other things. Exhaustion. Anxiety. Fear. So many emotions. But there was also something else. Something I could not quite pin. Her arm was outstretched, where her left talon supported my head.
In a soft voice like honey, she inquired worriedly, “How do you feel?”
I would have been tempted to laugh if the situation had been different. How did I feel? Absolutely terrible. My burning head along with the fact that I knew nothing was enough to make me want to pass out again. But not then. I needed to know.
After an extended silence, while the dragoness held her breath, I managed to croak, “Nothing.”
That was apparently not the answer she had been waiting for. Her face was now tainted with double the worry. And dread. Why was there dread? “What do you mean, Baryte?”
Baryte? Was that my name?
“He’s still regaining his full consciousness,” said the medic. I thought he sounded a bit uncertain. “You might just be confused,” he suggested to me.
Ha. Well, that was an understatement.
“What do you remember?” asked the girl anxiously.
The stabbing in my brain ensued tirelessly. My brow created caverns above my eyes as I frowned. I decided to echo my first word. “Nothing.”
I thought I imagined her dark, dark brown eyes growing shiny. Her whole face fell, and she lifted my head closer to her’s. “Don’t say that. You must remember something. You must.” She sounded pleading.
The hurt in her gaze affected me more than I would have thought. Why did I feel so sorry? Why did I care? I did not know this dragon. But, I was supposed to. Who was she?
I wanted to voice my questions, despite the further conflict I knew they would bring upon her. Quietly, I asked, “Who are you?”
Then I knew I wasn’t imagining it. Her eyes were becoming more misty by the second, and I feared tears would roll down her cheeks. She shook her head. “No,” she insisted. “No, stop that. You can’t have forgotten. You know who I am. Somewhere in there, you know who I am.”
“He might have severe amnesia,” said the other dragon, his voice low and sympathetic. “He suffered an awful head injury. I’m sorry.” Whether that apology was directed towards me or her, I did not know. Just like everything else.
Amnesia? I thought and said simultaneously. Oh, no. Now I had to know what happened.
“Yes,” answered the doctor, voice tilted towards sadness. “Are you positive you do not remember anything?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, closing my eyes for a moment. “It’s all empty up here.”
“That can’t be true!” exclaimed the female stubbornly. I could hear the struggle in her speech. “I know it’s not! Please, remember. Do you remember your name? Baryte?”
I shook my head slightly. “But thank you for telling me my name anyways.” My eyes reopened at snail-pace. “What’s your name?” I couldn’t help asking her.
There was a short bustle of noise to my left, out of my line of sight. Then, the medic said, “I’ll let you talk to him alone.” The sound of him walking away and ducking under a tent flap reached my ears.
As soon as he left, the dragoness next to me loosed a sob. She leaned down and cradled my head higher, so she could touch her snout with mine. Another two sobs escaped her in rapid succession. I shut my eyes again temporarily. One of her tears rolled onto my snout and began its decent down my warm scales. Sudden sorrow gripped my heart. I didn’t even know why, but it did. This dragon clearly cared for me. In what way, though? I had a suspicion.
“You still don’t remember?” she tried finally, voice gentle. When my eyelids parted, I beheld her tragic expression.
I was genuinely sorry when I replied, “No. Forgive me, please, but I don’t.”
She leaned back again, where she’d been before, but still held up my skull. “My name,” she informed, being torn apart as she spoke, “is Gale. We are both SandWings. We’re, uh . . . we’re together.” Her eyes betrayed a flicker of hope, as though she was wondering if any of that information would spark recognition.
SandWings. Yes, that sounded familiar. I wasn’t too surprised by the last fact; she obviously cared for me in a special way.
I just wished I felt the same.
Maybe I did, deep down, and just did not realize it yet.
“Oh,” I responded, not knowing what to say to all that. Guilt swelled within me at Gale’s crestfallen face. “I mean, thanks, that’s helpful. And by ‘together’, do you mean, something like you’re my girlfriend, or—“
She cut my sentence short, saying: “I’m your mate, Baryte.”
Oh. That was different. Well, I guessed close. “Really?” I asked, curious. “How long have we known each other?”
Gale made an odd choking noise. My sight had lost its fuzziness, and I was able to see things with a significant amount of more clarity. “Seventeen years,” she answered, staring at one of her wings. She smoothly lowered my head against the cot again. In a clipped voice, she added, “Most of our lives. And I’m sort of with egg.”
I was all of a sudden capable of sitting upright. I forced myself to shove the pain from my head into the far reaches of my focus, which was easy with that news. “What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”
She offered me the smallest of shrugs. “Trying to break it to you easier?” she attempted, returning her misty-eyed gaze to mine.
“It didn’t work,” I said, sneaking a glance at her torso. “What exactly happened to me?”
Gale inhaled shakily, clearly not wanting to say whatever terrible thing had happened. She slipped one of her talons into mine. “We were fighting in battle — which, by the way, we are in the middle of a war — and, I didn’t see it, but others did. Someone smashed your head hard against something, you were knocked out, and bleeding from a gash under your left horn. Whoever did it must have thought you were dead, and left you. You’ve . . .” she blinked quickly several times. “You’ve been asleep for a little over a day.”
I stared at her, shocked by all she had told me in about five minutes. Nearly died. Lost my memories. Didn’t recognize my own partner. Soon-to-be father. They were at war. Been asleep for a day. It was like something of huge weight smacking me in the face repeatedly.
“You should lay back down,” Gale told me. Almost every emotion imaginable was painted on her expression. Most of them were not good, though. It was indescribable. Partially because I still could not fully remember some of the emotions. Especially that one. What was it? “If you stay upright, your head might hurt worse.”
Nothing could hurt any worse.
== The Last Feeling ==
Over the course of the day, Gale informed me of my life. And our life. To both of our disappointment, nothing brought back any lost memories. Although, I felt better, listening to her drone on about the past, and reliving plans they had made for the future. Her voice cracked a lot.
She said things like: “When we were little, the other dragonets used to tease me about my name, 'cause they said it sounded too SkyWing” and “You and your best friend Venom decided to scare me by sneaking a harmless snake into my room” and “Your father wanted to kill me when he found out about us”.
“We were planning to get officially married when the war ended,” she had said earlier. With every new piece of knowledge, the female SandWing would look at me with that same tiny ember of hope that my memories would return. They didn’t.
The medic did, though, at some point. I had lost track of time. The pain in my head had subsided greatly, to my relief. If I were guessing by the sunlight coming through the tent, I would have said it was sunset.
“I’m sure there’s another wounded dragon who needs this cot more than I do,” I told the doctor. When he objected, saying he wanted to give me some medicines, I said I would be fine. He reluctantly agreed to let me go, but said I had to check in the next day to see how I was doing. Gale volunteered to take me to where the soldiers were spending the night. I gratefully accepted. Some part of me was hoping that seeing where they were outside and the dragons with them would bring back my former mind.
So I was harshly saddened when they didn’t.
Outside, the sudden brightness stung my eyes for a second, but they thankfully adjusted quickly. According to Gale, they were positioned at the northern border of the Kingdom of Sand. I was apparently a soldier working for someone named Burn, who was fighting to become queen. That sounded interesting.
As we walked past many other tents, dragons bustled everywhere, too caught up in whatever they were doing to notice me and Gale. Standing up, I realized her and I were about the same height. She appeared much different outside; her scales glittered brightly in the dusk light, more so than mine. Her dark, deep eyes seemed just the tiniest bit lighter; they had lost their withheld tears, probably because there were other dragons around. She remained subdued, though.
“It’s cold here,” I noted, glancing to the north.
Gale snorted quietly. “You think this is cold, just wait ‘till we reach the Ice Kingdom.”
Before I could question her further, she went ahead of me, leading me to a specific tent. She weaved her way through several dragons, as did I behind her, and she reached the tent, holding up the entrance flap for me. I ducked inside, moving a step to the left so Gale could follow.
“This is where we sleep, along with several more soldiers. One of them is Venom, your best friend,” she said, glancing around.
The portable structure seemed large enough to harbor about, if I had to guess, ten dragons. Though, to that full capacity, it would be crowded in there. No one else was inside at that moment, so I calmly walked around.
“Is there anything you can think of that might bring back your memories?” Gale asked me. She was holding back her sadness, trying to think of something to distract her. Sympathy welled up within me, sympathy for how terrible she must have felt.
“I don’t think so,” I answered somberly. Gale’s gaze dropped to her talons. I went over to her, gingerly taking her right talon in my left one. She didn’t look up. “Look,” I continued, “I’m sorry. Really. I wish I could remember what I used to before. Or feel what I felt before. Or knew what I knew before. About me, about you, about my family, about my friends, about everything. But, I just can’t. Everything is fuzz. Please, forgive me.”
Gale’s head rose steadily, her stare meeting mine. I realized she was crying, formerly-hidden tears flowing from her eyes, forming rivers on her face that carved deep scars in my soul. She didn’t say anything, only gazed at me in a melancholy fashion.
There was that thing again, tugging at the back of my mind obstinately, but refusing to fully come into the light. It only seemed to appear at very specific moments, though I had no idea why. I had experienced many feelings so far, but that one was different. What was it?
“I should go,” Gale said slowly, beginning to let go of my talon. “Leave you to sort yourself out. But first—“ She halted mid-sentence to do something that totally caught me off guard. She leaned in, faster than I could respond, and kissed me.
It was a soft, gentle kiss, one that lifted me off my talons and swept me up through the stars. It was an unbelievable, sudden shock that electrified my whole body. I found myself unable to kiss back, because of my entire incapability of movement. That must have shortened the kiss, for Gale released me from it sooner than I would have thought. Her eyes bore into mine, begging for a lost hope. “Just in case.”
Then, she darted out of the tent, leaving my frozen body and my soaring thoughts alone.
Everything happened at once.
With a feeling like a thousand bombs going off in my head, all my memories came wheeling back, pounding my brain mercilessly, but not in a painful way. I welcomed the images, knowledge, and emotions flowing through me. Everything. I was me again. My friends, mostly Venom; memories of him and I going on adventures, pranking relatives and acquaintances, sharing information, and chatting about complicated girls. The War of SandWing Succession, between the three royal SandWing Sisters, Blister, Blaze, and Burn, which had already lasted for about sixteen years. Me and Gale meeting, then hanging out, then falling for each other. My mother, who had tragically died in battle only two years ago. My father, whom I had once looked up to, then betrayed for the one I loved.
The one I loved.
Love.
That was the last feeling. The missing piece; the tugging in my mind; the pulling in my heart. The love in Gale’s kiss had brought everything back. I felt my former love for her return, strong as ever.
And I was filled with joy.
“Wait!” I called after her, charging through the tent flaps and bursting into the bleeding sun. I swiveled my head, scanning the crowd for my partner frantically. “Gale!” A couple dragons glanced at me curiously, but I ignored them. “Gale!” I walked at a quick pace through the camp, looking for her. Finally, I spotted her, sitting down on the ground, at the edge of the tents, wings tucked in closely, watching the sunset by herself.
As I silently approached her from behind, I heard her sniff quietly. No. I would not let her cry then. Or ever.
I was pleased that I had remembered that she liked watching the sun rise and set. She always said every day was like a new life, and it died every time the sun went down to meet eternity. You had to do as much as possible each day, so you could feel complete when it died. A strange philosophy, but one nonetheless.
I came up next to her, but she did not seem surprised. I sat down beside her without an invitation. My left wing laid tenderly on her back. In a low voice, I uttered, “This reminds me of the evening I found out you were with egg.”
There was an intensity in Gale’s eyes as she jerked her head to face mine. Her tearstained cheeks pulled up, as if threatening to smile. “Baryte?”
I nodded solemnly. “I’m back, my fierce breeze,” I said, adding in my old nickname for her.
I was tackled to the hardly-compacted sand by Gale’s hug. “Sweetheart! Don’t ever get your head slammed again! I’m so”—her voice cracked—“I’m so so thankful and relieved you came back! I thought . . . I thought I’d lost you.” She started laughing joyfully, while a few tears of pure happiness slid down her face.
I hugged her back, also relieved. This was all I wanted. To be there, holding Gale, watching the sunset, for the rest of time. I had time.
“You’ll never lose me.”
THE END
Category:Content (MistydaAwesomeSeaWing)
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon)
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)
Category:Genre (Romance)
Category:Genre (Short Story)