LYSANDER
The return of his consciousness is as slow as its departure had been swift.
At first it is much like dreaming. Hazy warm darkness with soft fingers of light filtering through. He is caught up then in a memory: salt on his tongue, safe under the waves, diving for oysters in the faint hopes of finding a pearl. It is weightless in the water, the current a cradle; there is little he loves so much as looking up through those slanting shades of blue.
But there is no staying below forever. Eventually his lungs begin to burn, to beg. Eventually he surfaces.
Lysander’s confusion continues once his green eyes blink hazily open. Or, rather, one eye; the other is swollen shut, the socket and his cheekbone throbbing dully. The other focuses on gray stone walls striped with shadow and he wonders when did I come home? It isn’t until he tries to reach for his injured eye that he realizes – that he remembers.
When his lips move to grin it’s a grimace they form instead, as his mind finally receives the pain signals his body has been ceaselessly sending. Slowly, slowly, he tests his lungs, pulling in a deep breath. He never finishes it; a different hurt stops him, sharp and silver as a knife. The pain makes him gasp.
No longer does he feel like that sun-golden boy diving for pearls. He feels instead like a fish flayed open.
He wonders if he should feel grateful to be opening his eyes at all.
It is that thought, as though it has unlatched some door hidden and waiting in the dim recesses of his heart, that lets in the first cold touch of fear.
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