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The first thing that he is aware of is the dryness in his mouth. He can’t recall the last time he had a drink of water. For that matter, he can’t recall anything before waking up on the post.
As he had become more aware, the pain throughout his body had assailed him. The pain in his side was the greatest. He drifted in and out of consciousness and he supposed that was a small mercy. At some point he knew he wouldn’t wake up.
His arms had gone numb from being held out for so long. He had struggled against the barbed wire strapping him to the boards but that had only aggravated the pain in his side. Unable to break them, the struggling caused them to dig further into his skin. He was going to die strapped to these boards and he wasn’t even given the courtesy of knowing why.
All around him the earth was blackened and littered with charred bodies. He hoped that that they had died quickly. Smoldering ruins sit atop a hill in front of him. It could not have happened that long ago. He supposed it couldn’t have been more than a couple of days since it had happened. Though he couldn’t be sure since he had not been keeping track of the days passing.
The brick road in front of him was covered in yellow poppy petals. They dotted the rocky hillside. The only real color other than the dusty brown of the rocks and dirt. The road ran its course along the side of the hill and at first he had hoped that someone would pass along. But with each passing hour, that hope grew fainter. The smoke could be seen for miles. If anyone would have come, they would have come by now. No one was coming. He resigned himself to his fate.
It was getting hard to keep his head up. The bright sun beat down on him and he was so tired. But then the crows started to come. Their black feathered bodies were the first sign of life he had seen on this hillside besides himself. Not that they could do much for him. They left him alone at first, the other bodies interested them more. As they pecked away at them, they began to take notice of him. They looked at him with their beady little eyes and cawed at him. One got up the gumption to settle on the board he was strapped to. It pecked at his arm curiously.
When he tried to shake it off, it only cautiously stepped closer to his face. Soon a second and third joined it. The birds were heavier than they looked and when one landed on his head he didn’t even try to raise it anymore. He would only shake it but they were persistent and he only had so much strength left. At least now he wouldn’t die alone.
There was a shuffling noise coming from the direction of the road. He looked up for what might have been the last time and there was a young woman standing in front of him. She was dressed in a black leather coat and trousers. Her long wavy brown hair drifted in the breeze. A large dog stood at her side. The woman’s dark eyes met his and he spoke for the first time, “Help me.”
They held each other’s gaze for a few moments until she seemed to come out of the daze she had been in.
“I’m going to get you down!” She cried as she ran over to the post. The crows flew away at her presence. Her dog followed faithfully behind her. She examined how he was tied to the post and stepped back. The young woman seemed at a lost for a moment on how to get him down but then she looked at the ground and he could tell she had an idea. Moving to the back of the post, she put all her weight against it and tried to move it back and forth. He groaned at the movement since it caused the barbed wire to scrape even more against his skin. She did this several times until he felt the post give way. It began to fall backwards but she was there to gently lead it to the ground where it ended up resting against two boulders.
“You okay?” she asked as she removed her coat.
“I … I can’t feel my arms.”
She tried to remove his right arm first. Pulling at the barbed wire, she slipped his bloodied wrist from beneath it. Then she moved on to his left. Feeling was starting to come back to his arms and as it did so did the pain. He couldn’t help cringing. All he wanted to do was curl and forget about the pain but the woman had other ideas. She moved around to kneel down beside him in order to examine the wound on his left side.
“You have a deep wound here,” she stated as she placed on her hands on it. When she placed pressure on it, the pain was so immense that his neck strained and he groaned in pain. The woman gently pulled him up with one hand on the back of his neck and the other on his shoulder until he was sitting up. She put a hand on his chest to steady him. .
“What happened to you?”
“I ... I don’t know. I don’t remember,” he stammered. His whole existence before the pain was blank, a black void.
“What about your name?”
“No,” he said slightly shaking his head.
“What’s your name?” she asked again.
He could only stare at her. Her hand suddenly moved towards his head and he flinched.
“I’m just gonna check your head. I’m a healer,” she tried to reassure. Her hands moved up to examine his head.
“I think you’re too late,” he claimed as he looked up at the smoldering ruins on the hillside. Any within were likely beyond the help of a healer. The woman grabbed her pack and dug a white box of it. She opened it and removed bandages which she used to tend to the wound on his side. All he could do was sit there and take it, grimacing every once in awhile. She seemed to know what she was doing. At least now he no longer had only the crows for company.