Chapter 1: Jesumyn's awakening

Chapter 1

She woke to pain. A sharp, searing and almost unbearable pain. She was lying on her stomach, with her face in the dirt. She couldn’t see anything around her. She tried to get up, but found that she could not mover her right arm. The pain was coming from a long, deep gash on her back that ran from her shoulder half way down her back, and her arm had been ripped almost completely off, it hung on by skin and tendons alone.
She had hit her head in the fall, and she could feel blood trickling down her forehead from the cut above her left eye. She lifted her head to look around and the world went white, and a ringing in her ears blocked every other sound. She blacked out.

* * *

An older woman knelt beside the injured woman. Her hair shone silver in the morning light, and her eyes glistened gold through the tears that welled up at the sight of the woman lying almost dead on the ground. She closed her eyes and began to speak. The language was an ancient dialect that few had ever heard, and only a handful of people spoke. It was beautiful, and melodically soothing. Her fair skin seemed to reflect every ray of light cast down by the sun. It seemed to gather more and more light until it seemed the woman had become the sun. The woman on the ground murmured, and started to squirm on the ground. She tried to crawl away, but she couldn’t move far.
The older woman stopped speaking for a moment, and the light faded from around her. Her eyes still closed, she placed her hands on the woman’s back, and held her firmly. She spoke again, but this time in a harsh, forbidding voice, and another language, one just as ancient as the first. She said a few words and the woman on the ground began struggling. She continued to hold her firmly.
For a moment the day was clear, then the sky began to darken. At first some thought a cloud had floated over the sun, obscuring it’s light, but it was a perfectly clear sky. It got darker and darker until it seemed as though the sun was setting. The men looked to the singing woman for an explanation and found that it was the woman herself that was causing the unnatural darkness. It seemed as though she was now absorbing the very light around her, just as she had been reflecting it a moment ago.
Those few that were close enough to still see the woman clearly saw that her face was contorted by pain and the woman on the ground had begun to convulse. All the while the chanting continued getting louder and louder.
Some of the men were uneasy about the chanting. They didn’t like it in the least. It got into their heads and preyed on their fears. It forced them to play their worst fear over and over again until it seemed that that was all there was, that their whole life had been spent in that moment, in constant fear. Some literally went crazy and slit their own throats to escape it.
Finally, the woman brought the son to its terrible climax and held it there for a moment. Then she opened her eyes and it seemed as though the world exploded in light and sound. The song slowly faded, and with it the light diminished until it was a normal morning again. She spoke in the first language again, but this time the injured woman responded by waking up.

* * *

Jesumyn cried out as she woke from the dream, but quickly stifled her scream. There was no telling who, or what, might still be out there. The pain finally subsided and her vision cleared. Tears ran down her face. She hadn’t even realized she had been crying.