It was an abrupt change: one moment, you were floating along, sleeping and unaware of your surroundings. You weren’t dreaming, but you could almost feel your body working to… to do something. You weren’t quite sure what it was, but it was something necessary, something it needed to do to keep going.
And then everything changed. You made some small motion - shifted your weight or twitched a toe - and the world came crashing back down. Everything hurt.
Everythinghurt.
For the first time in your life, you were horribly aware of the entire length of your throat leading down to your lungs. Letting out a breath stung - drawing one in was even worse. How badly had you been injured that it was painful to breathe?
You coughed lightly, more to counter the cold burning sensation in your lungs than out of any need to clear something from your throat, but that only made you aware of a dull ache in your abdomen and ribs.
You kicked your feet a bit, dissatisfied with the quality of everything at the moment. At that moment, speech was the last thing on your mind. You could only show how unhappy you were by moving your body. For an odd moment, you felt a kinship with infants, but all of those strange thoughts were knocked from your mind when your leg actually moved.
Despite what you tried, your ankle wouldn’t twist. Instead, your foot seemed locked in place. That was enough to send you into a panic for a reason you couldn’t explain, and you woke up all the way, launching yourself upward to stare down at your leg and foot.
