¤ Never Smile Again

Who’d expect to find your best friend lying in a pool of her own blood, with her life hanging by the thinnest of threads, when all you wanted to do was to ask her out for a little evening chat?

From the moment he saw the injured Silver, the next few hours of Rei’s life was a frightening blur of shouting Clerics and Priests barely noticing his presence as they scurried past him, rapidly opening and shutting Mystic Doors through which the healers appeared and disappeared, clinking glass bottles of potions and elixirs being brought to and fro…

And hovering the entire scene of chaos assaulting Rei, like some unwelcomed ghoul, was that image of Grendel, a heart-sickening expression of fear (something Rei had never seen before on the wise wizard’s old face!) as he looked up at Rei over the injured Silver, with her blood on his pale grey robes…

Finally, mercifully, it all slowed down to the nerve-wrecking, mind-numbing wait outside the emergency room of the clerics’ wing.

Staring at the shut door, Rei had half a mind to force his way inside, but the calmer other half told him that he would only get in the clerics’ way. So, with all the extra nervous energy left in him, he did the typical thing people stuck in the waiting areas of emergency rooms do.

He paced.

However, Rei failed to wear a significant groove in the polished wooden floor before Grendel emerged from the room. He was talking softly to a familiar looking Priestess in the deep purple robes of an Enigmatic, her dark red hair in a neat knot at the nape of her neck. Rei found himself wondering if bloodstains showed up on dark purple; maybe that’s why she wears those robes.

‘Ah, Rei. This is the boy that brought you to me, Esther.’ The old wizard saw Rei hurry up to the pair of them first, and the Priestess turned around too at Grendel’s gesture.

‘How is Silver?’ Rei asked anxiously.

‘It is a miracle yon Silver girl hasn’t died yet, boy. And it will be a miracle if she doesn’t.’ The Priestess replied bluntly. Esther was a pragmatic woman, and had seen too much in her line of work to bother being subtle; she also knew that wrapping up distressing details in complicated medical jargon never helped anyone, the patients and their fretful loved ones alike. ‘Her injuries were very grievous. We have managed to heal the punctured lung and fix the broken ribs; that was the worst of it. They would leave scars, but at least she can breathe properly now.

‘But the girl is still not in the clear. The bones in her right arm have been severely shattered, and the muscles and ligaments there torn and badly damaged. The arm might never recover completely.’

Rei swallowed uneasily on hearing Esther’s words. ‘So, does that mean…?’ He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

Grendel sighed. ‘Yes. Silver might become crippled in her right arm.’

Days passed quickly, turning into weeks. Weeks passed and blurred into each other as months. But to the young girl in the ward, the three months she spent in the clerics’ wing defied all conventional measurements of time. To her, the long stretch of time was distinguished only by pain.

Then rage.

Then finally, despair.

At first, pain, pure, sharp and senseless, was her constant companion, attending to every breath she took and every move she made. It made her cry and moan whenever she so much as hovered near consciousness and could only be dismissed by the sleeping and painkilling potions the clerics fed her. But Silver would not go down without a fight, and even in her potion induced stupor, she fought to defeat that pain.

Later, as Silver’s body slowly and agonising mended itself under the magical aid of the Clerics and Priests, the pain subsided into a dull throb she could almost forget about, until overexertion on her part set it off again, lancing hot and agonizing.

When she finally stopped taking enough potions to knock out a Balrog, and actually started to pay attention to her surroundings, the first thing Silver noticed was how the trainee Clerics that attended to her always danced around the topic of her injured right arm, giving her only vague assurances when she asked how her arm would heal.

She grew angry, of course. ‘Why can’t anyone just give me a straight answer!’ She yelled at the pair of Clerics that brought her her potions one day, breathing hard enough to agitate her healing ribs under the swathe of bandages around her chest.

Wincing, but not caring, she continued to speak furiously, making the Clerics shuffle backwards even more. ‘I’m an archer, an Ad Lib, damn it! I need to know if I can still do my job once this cursed thing gets removed!’ She jerked her head downwards at the thick cumbersome cast on her arm.

The Clerics mumbled something uneasily, and the bolder one of the pair spoke up timidly, ‘But we are only responsible for giving you the potions, not-’

‘Have you administered the potions to the patient?’ A woman in deep purple Enigmatic robes appeared at the ward’s entrance, her green eyes stern. Thankful for the intervention, the clerics shook their heads and mumbled, ‘No, Priestess Esther.’

‘Then I’ll do it. Now leave us.’ She beckoned authoritatively at the junior Clerics. Unloading about five potion bottles on the bedside dresser, the Clerics scurried past her and out the door gratefully, carrying their trays of potions away.

Silver was grateful too, for the appearance of someone who looked like she had the authority to finally answer her questions. Rising from her bed, she started to ask, ‘I want to know-‘

‘I know you do.’ The Priestess said calmly as she entered the ward and closed the door behind her.

‘So can you tell-‘

‘Sit and take your potions first.’ She pointed at the bed.

‘But I-‘

‘Sit.’

Silver sat back down, realising with an irking sense of helplessness that that she couldn’t win this argument. Esther moved to the bedside dresser and picked up one potion bottle, holding it up to the light to read its label before handing it to her patient. ‘Drink.’

Obediently, Silver uncorked the bottle and gulped down the single dose it held. Then she opened her mouth, ’Now can I ask-‘

‘No, you can’t.’ Esther only handed her another bottle.

It was only when they had finally gone through the fifth bottle then did Esther say, ‘Now you can ask.’

‘Why isn’t anyone answering my questions?’ Silver burst out.

‘You must forgive yon children. They are only trainees and have not learnt how to break bad news properly to their patients. They only mean well.’

There was a brief silence as Silver considered Esther’s carefully chosen words. ‘What bad news can they have for me?’ Silver finally snapped, even though she could feel the weight of the answer that hung in the air, vague and half-formed, in the wake of her pretence of hot annoyance.

‘Your right arm might never heal properly, Silver.’ Esther said it as gently as she could.

‘It can’t be.’ Silver said automatically, her mind scurrying to deny what she heard, to deny what she already knew. She felt her skin under the cast crawl, her arm aching as if to confirm Ester’s words. ‘It can’t be!’ She insisted fiercely again, clutching at her robes with her uninjured hand. ‘It will heal properly, I know it will.’

‘The Lycanthrope is a dangerous creature, child, and you managed to survive two attacks from it. It is-‘

‘A wonder that I am still alive now, right? I know.’ Silver interrupted the Priestess, and turned hopeful eyes to the older woman. ‘But it’s because of you and your Clerics, right? Your team practically brought me back to life. Surely you can help heal my arm.’

‘We will definitely do our best to help you, Silver. But… but we are also human, and we have human limitations too. You must be strong, and be prepared for the worst.’

‘No!’ Silver said emphatically, forcing her growing horror and despair down. ‘I can’t have a crippled arm! I have so many things to do! I still have my second job advancement to Huntress, and I still have to finish my Project with-‘ She stopped, suddenly finding herself unable to continue, unable to speak the name that had always completed that phrase. My Project with Brandon.

Brandon. This is his entire fault, a resentful little voice said, needling at the mess of emotions in Silver, adding hate and anger into the mix like oil to fire. She was vaguely aware of Esther’s voice as the Priestess continued to offer comfort and advice to her, but they were all drowned out by the resentful voice muttering loudly in her head. He brought this to you, that lying cheating bloody idiotic son of a Cursed Eye!

You know why he abandoned you, don’t you? It’s because you are useless, the hateful voice continued. And you are even more useless now, haha! You will be crippled, and who wants a crippled Adventurer Librarian, huh? You can’t even draw a bow now, you might not even be able to pick up a pen to write. What use is an Ad Lib like that?

But this can’t be happening, Silver cried silently. The job advancement was a prerequisite to becoming an Ad Lib, a path that she had always thought to be hers to walk, a purpose that had always been hers ever since she had joined the Library, a goal that she trained hard and long to accomplish; it must not, it cannot end now!

Tell me then, the little voice sneered. What other way can it go now? Heavens, they might as well just throw you out of Ellinia Library at this very moment! It’s all Brandon’s fault, isn’t it! That damned sod!

The litany went on long after Esther left the ward, a baffling cycle of undeniable logic that went round and round like an underwater cyclone until it dragged her under the surface of a despair so dark and inexorable, she drowned in it every waking moment.

Sometimes, lying wide awake in the depths of the night, Silver found herself wishing for the seductively pleasant oblivion of the sleeping potions that had been constantly poured down her throat in the period of pain. She needed it then, but she had fought their effects, hating to be forced to feel so helpless. Yet, now, it would be nice…

But always, she would recoil hastily from that train of thought, as the voice berated her for choosing such a simple manner of escape. Just like the coward you are.

What made it worse was how she could not find the words to confide this despair to anyone; the voice told her over and over again, heaven knows how silly it must sound if you actually spoke about it aloud! No one would believe the foolish fears of a girl like you.

So she kept it all to herself, not letting even Rei or Grendel catch a glimpse of this black thing that kept gnawing at her heart. And so, left un-exorcised, it continued to nibble gleefully away at her.

How would anyone know how it felt? The change wrought upon Silver was not so sudden that those close to her could detect it straight away. As the days passed, she grew a little bit less naïve, a little bit more bitter, a little bit more silent; slowly, all the little bits added up and in the end, before anyone knew it, it was an entire chunk of her gone.

It didn’t seem as if the girl would ever smile again. And soon, Silver didn’t even care if she did or not.

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1990 words. I think this is the longest single section yet. Forgive the overwhelming angst and such; I hope I didn’t kill too many of your braincells with it.

Cookies~ A especially large one to Imppeh (XD) for proof-reading and listen to me whine about it over the phone and MSN.