Molly’s vision went blank—not dark, because that would have at least been some sensation, but no—her eyes ceased to exist. She saw nothing. She felt a whoosh of movement like air rushing by, but not exactly… thrumming, electric somehow. Then, within moments, there was darkness. Her sight was back, but it was completely dark. Did that breeze she felt blow out her candles? She felt wet seep through her pajama top—was her hair still that wet in its towel? But wait…. there was freezing cold damp seeping up from the ground into the butt and back of her pajamas too, chilling her quickly.

Molly's senses continued returning, and she was getting pelted with water EVERYWHERE and was getting more soaked by the second. She opened her eyes, squinting and blinking rapidly in an attempt to rid her eyes of the torrent of water. She tried to wipe the water from her eyes but her hands were also so wet that it was useless. More hard blinks. Flashes of sight came through the blur of water and darkness as lightning cracked. Grass. Long grass, like what she imagined a prairie must be like, all around her, above her head. She sat up, disoriented, from the ground. The long grasses thrashed in the wind and rain in a way that was completely disorienting, like the very ground was caught in a stand mixer. But the ground did feel secure, and she needed to get her bearings and out of this storm. What must be a storm, right? How? Molly unsteadily got to her feet, still blinking wildly. Panic was rapidly taking hold of her chest and squeezing it hard. It didn't improve when she looked around and couldn’t make sense of anything… couldn't see anything to try and make sense of. Where was she? And how did she get here? The rain was hitting her so hard. The grass was whipping at her in stinging, scratching lashes.

A lightning strike cracked--and it felt close. Her body involuntarily jumped as she was startled by the sudden light and sound--which amplified the panic and adrenaline in her system. That was it; Molly was a coiled up spring and that crack released her. She just started running as fast as she could. She thought she saw distant shapes looming to her left during the brief moment of light, maybe back to the city? So she ran that way, a racehorse with blinders on. She stumbled and was forced to take large, high awkward steps as she tried to sprint away from whatever threat felt ready to swallow her, all around her, but the grass was hip height on her and very hard to navigate, especially barefoot where roots and sprouts threatened to snare her toes.

She finally reached the edge of the field and found it contained by a log fence. She ducked awkwardly between the beams and just kept on sprinting. Oddly, it was the fence that sent Molly's mind over the edge. First the prairie grass (She had never visited a prairie) and now this agriculture-style fence made out of heavy logs that was definitely not something she had ever seen. Outside of TV or something. She wasn’t from farmland. Even if it was, she didn’t know how she was even outside right now, much less wherever this was? That fence created more questions than she even knew how to verbalize. A crack of lightning, and more large looming shadows to her left. The panic that had been violently spiraling unspoken questions through her head in an unending stream raised in pitch to an unintelligible buzz in her mind, that vice still tight around her chest and ready to snap her in half. There was no more thinking, only running. She was a prey animal, and she was fleeing for her life.

When she reached the giant wall of shadows that she had been beelining toward, she did not stop. The rain dumping onto her lessened, only enough for her to be able to see and hear a little bit better. Just enough for her to see that there were no buildings, no shelter for her to find refuge. This was no city or  stronghold. This was a forest. Endless. Somewhere in her mind she felt like she was floating above her body, watching herself in the third person. That floating part of Molly’s mind idly thought that as a child she had been told not to go under trees when there was lightning. But it could have been the other way around, her head was so mixed up. It didn’t matter anyway. That part of Molly wasn’t driving right now. The panicked animal inside her was.

There was no sense of time, no thought. Molly had no perception of how long she ran, barefoot in her soaked and muddy previously yellow pajamas. She traversed upward slopes and downward slopes, large stretches of slippery mud and roots to trip over as she bypassed the landscape. Eventually something had to begin to look familiar. Eventually. All she knew was running. All she had ever done was run, and all she would ever do was run. Nothing existed except running away. Just away. She was dimly aware of stings on her skin as branches dug into her, but the adrenaline was a natural painkiller in this moment and she paid them no mind.

It could have been minutes or maybe hours later, but Molly was shocked back to herself when she found herself in a freefall for a split second—then crumpled in knee deep water . The shock of yet another shot of adrenaline to an already over-charged system fizzed along her nerves and tingled at her fingertips. She blinked, hard, truly taking in her surroundings for the first time since the fence. She must have come very deep into this forest. She moved unsteadily to get out of the rising water and pain shot through her ankle. A brief shout of pain escaped her in between already heavy, desperate breaths as she grasped the sheer edge of the ravine she had fallen into and hauled herself up over it. A cry of determination and desperation wrenched out of her as she used all her strength to escape the ravine. As she rolled up onto the sheer embankment, another dark shadow loomed over her, not right for a tree. A lightning flash and its form came briefly into view. She saw that it was an old stone cottage. Her salvation. Part of her didn’t believe it was real. It looked like it had seen better days, but abandoned or occupied, opulent or squalor… it could have been radioactive for all she cared. Right now, it was shelter, and she needed it.

She ran toward it—or what was passing as running now, ignoring the pain in her ankle, as well as the other pains that were starting to surface now. She didn’t bother to knock. She burst through the door, almost buckling it under the force of her urgency.

“Celestial Whe—!” a man jumped to his feet in surprise at the sudden intrusion. Somewhere in the haze of her mind she took in her surroundings. The room she found herself in was quite bare—a couple of items of wooden furniture in the corners. A threadbare rug in front of the hearth—a glorious hearth blazing with a warm fire. A tin bucket by the fire, for ashes? Relief spread through her, euphoric in her animal instincts knowing that there was heat and shelter here. She was about to take in the man, when suddenly the world tilted on a diagonal and she lurched toward the tin bucket—where her body felt like it was trying to dump all of the adrenaline and fear out through her stomach. Her vision filled with shimmering phosphenes, and then blackness.   

What in the ACTUAL Wheel just happened?

A woman just burst through the door of the abandoned millhouse—where Jorj had taken refuge from the sudden monsoon. He also happened to know that no one had lived here in years, as he often stashed backup hunting supplies out here for easy access. So this wasn't the owner. This woman had looked absolutely deranged, vomited in the ash bucket, then collapsed practically on top of it right next to the fire. All in a matter of seconds. Jorj stood frozen from where he had jumped to his feet in shock. He felt beyond perplexed and momentarily stunned, until a gust of wind sent the door flapping on it’s hinges and he moved to stop the deluge from pouring inside. He closed the door, wishing that the storm was any less intense and he could keep walking right through it and back home. He did not want to get involved with anything weird out here.

He took a breath before turning back to the room, unsure of what to do now. He heard a faint sizzling sound and realized a tendril of her wildly splayed out hair was right on the edge of the burning fire that was warming the cottage. Alarmed, he realized that likely the only reason her hair hadn’t been set ablaze was because of how thoroughly soaked through she was. He moved to get the hair out of the fire, but hesitated before touching her. This was weird. Something was off, and he did not want to get involved. Touching her definitely felt like getting involved. He thought about trying to use his boot to kick the piece of hair out of the fireplace. “Don’t be childish,” he muttered to himself, bending down to brush the hair briskly to safety.

He paced back and forth, both hands moving to his head as he looked at the ceiling, blew out a breath, and tried to think. All his instincts were yelling at him to get out of here. But… he looked back down at her. She looked so vulnerable…and uncomfortable. She had fallen into a very unnatural position. Whatever unconsciousness she was in, it certainly wasn’t restful. Ok. At the very least he could move her body into a more natural position. If she suffocated because her neck was bent like that, he did not want that on his conscience. Moving her a little wasn't getting involved, he reassured himself, and he had already touched her hair. This wasn’t any more involvement than that. He was still determined to touch her as little as possible though. It felt… wrong. Not only because he was trying to push away speculation on this woman, but also because it felt indecent in her condition. The sopping, puddling fabric of her clothing was much too thin. Touching her definitely felt indecent. Some disconnected part of his brain wondered if these were some sort of foreign undergarments. His sisters never wore anything like this. Crepe thin. The water that soaked her molded the fabric into a second skin and showed... everything. He tried not to look and weighed in his mind how to balance propriety and respect versus assisting someone in an emergency. His mind came up with nothing. This girl was weird, this storm was weird, her clothes were weird. Weird was bad. Weird was dangerous.

After hemming and hawing for a moment over the best place to put his hands, and cursing himself for acting like this, he grasped her ankles. Muddy water squelched through the thin fabric that was there and dripped down between his fingers. He dragged her as lightly as he could onto the rug in front of the fire, close enough for warmth—Wheel knew she needed it. But far away enough that she wasn’t at risk of getting burned anymore. As he set her ankles back down he noticed her feet looked wrong. They were scraped and cut to hell, but the skin underneath was what disturbed him. Starkly white with blotchy patches, hard to make much sense of under the smeared blood and scrapes, but something very clearly was not right. They appeared waxy and pale. He felt like he swallowed a rock. He moved to her arms, at an even more awkward angle now that he had dragged her, and examined her fingers. Not nearly as bad as her feet, but not good. “Shit,” he muttered to himself, “This girl’s gonna die, I can’t have a dead girl out here!” He placed her hands carefully on her torso.

He flinched back as her head rolled back toward him. She opened her eyes blearily, not seeing, yet he still felt exposed. She started shivering violently—her body convulsing in on itself, but she kept her eyes on his. Not with the intelligence of full consciousness, but they did carry kindness. Her body shook so hard that her voice shook too, as she said “you’re... ok. it’s... ok.” Her eyes closed as she spoke. He froze for a moment at the kind words, completely derailed. Did she mean to say that? The words of a woman delirious with The Cold Grip to be sure. He snapped back to reality. She had stopped shivering again and lay unnervingly still for a few moments, until another wave of shakes racked her body a few moments later. He realized with a palm to the head that he should have been a lot more concerned a lot sooner. She should have been shivering from the start. The fact that she wasn’t was very worrisome indeed. She was now, so maybe that was a good sign? He was feeling vastly under-qualified and under-equipped for this.

As he sat contemplating what to do, he noticed the shiver episodes were now getting weaker and less frequent. She really would die if he left her here. Wheel turn me. He needed to snap out of this paralysis of decision and act. He put his heavy cloak back on and dashed as quickly as he could to the outdoor cupboard where he stashed extra supplies for when he was out here hunting. He grabbed the bundle in the cupboard and dashed back inside. He glanced worriedly at the woman as he slammed the door closed against the wind and rain. He shook off his heavy cloak and hung it on a nail by the door. Now that his body was moving his brain was moving too, and more was coming back to him about The Cold Grip. Wet is worse. Shivering is a good sign. Don’t leave them cold or wet.

Along with the rucksack of supplies, he had grabbed his extra cloak and bed roll that he kept stashed. He shook them out. They weren’t new by any means, but they would do for survival. He turned. Now was the part where he had to get far, far more involved than he wanted.

(section break)

Jorj sat slumped in the wooden chair in the corner, staring at the girl. She was now nestled comfortably on the bed roll, underneath his cloak laid over her like a blanket, which was now the only thing covering her. He blew out a breath. It had been sketchy there for a minute, but he felt confident that he had saved a life tonight. Taking her wet clothes off had been agonizingly uncomfortable for him. It was a little hard to tell himself he wasn’t involved with whatever was going on here after what he had just done. Not that he had done anything indecent, of course. He was completely proper, completely respectful. He had kept his eyes averted and his hands to himself as much as was possible while still saving her life. He thought his sisters would have approved. Not that they would find out anything about this. He looked at her strange clothes, which he had hung over the fire to dry next to the now-soaked rug, which he also hung.

He again forcibly diverted his thoughts away from speculating about where she came from. Still not involved, Jorj. She was out of danger, and it was time to think of himself now. How to get himself out of this situation. How to make sure he had zero connection to this mysterious stranger if the village ever found out about her. Which really, was true. He wasn't involved. He just happened to be in the same place at the same time as her. Whether or not the town knew that he was there that night didn’t change that he truly wasn’t involved. As soon as the rain let up, he would leave. No one knew he was here, he had been out laying traps in the woods when he got trapped in the sudden monsoon. It was that time of year, but this one came even more out of nowhere than usual. If he left when the rain was lessened, not gone, he would still arrive plenty wet to allay any ideas that he had been warm and dry by a fire when ostensibly in the storm. He didn’t like feeling dishonest, but it would probably barely even come up and he wouldn't have to be.

The only possible loose thread was if the girl wandered into town and remembered him. But he genuinely doubted she would. She had stirred a few times while he was undressing her--ahem—saving her life. It was mostly shivers, moans and little cries of pain if he touched around her ankle again or accidentally pulled her hair. Her eyes had opened a few times too, but in an unfocused way. If the wheel turned in his favor, she wouldn’t remember a thing. He couldn’t help the tiniest smile when he thought about the sigh she had released when he settled her onto the bedroll and tucked the large cloak around her. He hoped she didn’t remember him, but he hoped she did wake up feeling safe.

But that was it. That was all he could offer. He did what any decent person would do for any other person in imminent danger. His part in this was done, and the sooner he forgot about it, the better. Hours later, the rain began letting up, and he was gone.

(section break)

“You’re ok. It’s ok.”

Jorj jolted awake. He had gotten home and gone to sleep for maybe 2 hours. But his sleep was full of fitful dreams. The rain outside his window melded with the pounding deluge in his dreams. The thunder, lightning, and rushing water had haunted him in his dreams in a way they didn’t in waking. And in the flashes of lightning, her face. In his dreams he saw his memories, but felt her fear. In lightning flashes he had seen her ravaged feet. Her terrified face. Her body convulsing. “You’re ok. It’s ok.” her words sounded in his head again. His heart was racing and his breathing heavy. With a groan of frustration he pulled himself out of bed and paced as he rubbed his eyes. He thought of her there, defenseless. What was she supposed to do? Get up in the morning and walk back to where she had come from? Yes. Yes, she was. But with reasonable clothes, and no shoes? That was her problem to figure out, she had gotten there somehow, hadn’t she? But on those feet? He felt fairly sure something was wrong with an ankle or two, not to mention the cuts and lingering effects of The Cold Grip. She wasn’t going to be fit for travel for at least a couple of days. He had left what supplies he had already stashed there in the millhouse for her use, but it was little more than a few rations of dehydrated vegetables and meat. A canteen as well. Those wouldn’t last long, and she would be in real need of medical supplies and shoes. And actual clothes.

By the spinning of the Celestial Wheel, why was this his problem?! He wasn’t the one stupid enough to be half naked in a monsoon! He didn’t ask for this! He never wanted to be involved! Because his conscience was eating him alive, that was why. He wouldn’t be able to get over this until he knew he hadn’t abandoned a child of The Wheel to suffering. What you put into The Wheel, The Wheel brought back to you. He would hope someone would do the same for him. For Alis, or Nolya, or Clyra. For his mother.

He looked out the window where the rain was a drizzle now. Based on the sky, he estimated he had a couple of hours before dawn. His family had been awake when he had arrived home, worried for his safety and kept awake by the storm. They were all sleeping soundly now. He had told them all that he had come straight home from the forest, only briefly taking shelter under a rocky outcropping on his way home. Only his mother’s eyes had lingered after his explanation.

Cursing himself and his good upbringing, Jorj tugged back on yesterday’s pants, but not yet his boots. He crept in his socks to the attic ladder, pausing multiple times to listen for any stirring. He mentally cursed this girl for putting him in this situation as he crawled to a back corner, but he couldn’t seem to muster any real malice for her. He arrived at the trunks that he thought held some of Alis’s old belongings. When his older sister had gotten married, she and her husband had spent a couple of years living in small lodgings in the city of Valos and had left much of her belongings stored here. By the time they had come back to their hometown to settle down, Alis was pregnant with their second and her old clothes didn’t fit like they used to. So here they had sat in the attic. Jorj certainly hadn't thought he would be the one next opening these trunks. In one he found a women’s cloak and shoes, and in another, he grabbed a dress off the top. He turned to go… then turned around and grabbed another dress. She might need an extra. He hoped they’d fit, but no matter what it would be better than what she had.

He tiptoed down the stairs of their farmhouse, stepping over the one that squeaked. In the kitchen, he wrapped half a loaf of bread and half a block of cheese in a tea towel he hoped his mother wouldn’t notice was missing. It wasn’t a ton of food, but it was as much as he felt could claim he took with him for an early breakfast. No one would know about this. Because I am not involved. But that was getting harder to convince himself of every moment.

He grabbed a tin of healing ointment on his way out the door.

By the time he arrived back at the abandoned mill house, dawn was breaking. Jorj found himself feeling nervous. He was extremely anxious to know if she was ok. But he also absolutely could not let her see him. There could be no ties. He slowed his steps as he approached the overgrown front walkway. He peered carefully through one of the cracked and dusty windows. She was still on the bedroll in front of the fire, but she was lying on her side, eyes still closed, from what he could see. Only the top half of her face was visible under the cloak he had wrapped her in. It was a good sign that she had moved, that meant she was alive, and likely resting instead of still in shock.

After watching a moment to make sure she didn't wake up, he chose to take a risk on her being asleep enough for him to open the door to set the bundle of supplies just inside. As he did, he noticed the fire running low. Holding his breath, he tiptoed over and set another log on the fire. Then he was gone, swearing it was for good this time.