Hidden In Plain Sight

Her head was spinning. Nothing seemed right and everything felt shrouded in pain, all from her ankle. It felt like someone had crushed her foot under a shelf. She cried out into Sebastian’s shoulder. She could hear him speaking to her distantly, but everything felt clouded in pain as he picked up his pace. They were going somewhere but she didn’t know where.

All the bouncing hurt. She tried to tell him that, but it came out garbled and unintelligible between her cries. That only seemed to make him pick up his frantic pace even more. She tried to open her eyes, but everything was blurry with tears as she looked at an unfamiliar world around her.

Finally all the bouncing stopped and she felt she could cry all over again. She could hear words being exchanged but she couldn’t understand them, the words sounding warped and strange. She could hear Sebastian’s voice and then someone else’s, a voice she knew but couldn’t recognize.

They were moving again and she gripped Sebastian’s coat, more tears filling her eyes. Why did everything hurt so much?

It wasn’t long before she was placed in a chair, her legs laying flat in front of her as she was pulled from Sebastian’s warmth. She took it back, she wanted Sebastian again. She cried loudly, only calming a bit when she felt a hand rubbing her head, Sebastian running his fingers through locks of her hair as he tried in desperation to soothe her.

She tried to turn in the chair to grab onto him, but pain lashed up her leg when she tried rolling around to reach him and another round of screams were at the tip of her tongue when a much softer hand grabbed onto her shoulder and pulled her back into place gently, a hand she only felt in her dreams now.

Mom?

All her cries softened to hiccups almost instantaneously as she opened her eyes, rubbing wildly at them so she could see through the tears.

Her head might be spinning and she might be a few breaths from passing out but when she looked at the woman in front of her, brown curls cascading down her shoulders as she looked up over her at Sebastian, presumably speaking to him but Alicia couldn’t hear a word over the ringing in her ears, she knew it was her mom. She came back! She didn’t abandon her!

She hiccuped as she choked on her sobs as she started to cry again.

“Mommy! Mommy, Mommy!” She cried, reaching out with grabbing hands towards her. The woman looked down at her with a startled look.

“Alicia…?”

She didn’t remember her? She watched as her vision started to be covered with small black dots. No, no, her Mommy would never forget her, was her last thought as she slipped out of consciousness, watching as her mother lunged forward to catch her slumping form.

After that, all she could feel were the sensations around her, too tired to wake up but in too much pain to fall asleep. Careful hands prodding her leg, a firefly slash along the side of her ankle that thumped and dulled. Scratchy fabric encircling her foot and a hand that rubbed her head comfortingly, trying to be strong and confident but she could feel it trembling as it raked through the very ends of her hair…

When she finally pulled herself back out from the darkness of sleep she was back in Sebastian’s arms, cracking her eyes open. She could see the purplish sky clearly as the sun started to rise above the empty stall of the marketplace. A cold wind whipped over them and she couldn’t suppress a shiver that rolled up her spine, despite the fact that she felt incessantly hot and she could already feel herself starting to break out in a cold sweat.

Yet despite this, she pushed past the sickly haze shrouding her mind to look up at Sebastian, her hand coming up to tap at his wet cheeks, his tears almost glistening in the darkness as he looked down at her with wide eyes.

That was the first time she saw him cry.

Then he did what he rarely did and pulled her into a hug. She looped her arms around his neck as best she could as he clung to her tightly, his arms shaking around her slightly from the strain. She had so many questions about where her mother went or why she was back or even where they were, but those could all wait ’cause Sebastian was sad and that mattered so much more to her right then.

It was only a few days later when she sat on her plush bed, mind finally cleared of the haze from her fever. She looked down at her ankle, unwrapped from the scratchy fabric that had been held tight there as Sebastian rustled through a bag on the floor, looking for a clean bandage for her foot, the old bandage tossed aside on her bed.

She looked down at the red line on the side of her ankle, held together by 5 neat black stitches. Proof that her mom was still there. That she still wanted to take care of her. Why else would she help her?

She smiled down at her new favorite cut before being cut off graciously as Sebastian pressed a burning cloth to it and she wailed and squirmed in pain.