Chapter Text
Nora woke with a start and a pained gasp.
“Mrrgh owh.” She moaned.
It took her a moment to remember what had happened, and then a few moments more to move any part of her body which was not cooperative at all and was weirdly numb.
She was relatively sure she had only taken a tumble down some stairs but everything hurt. Her throat was raw and her stomach churned, she felt like she had been poisoned and then possibly ran over by a truck.
Her day until this point had been of the regular sort. She had got up in the morning and headed to work, a medium sized laboratory where she worked as a gemologist.
Nora had liked all things sparkly for as long as she could remember, and when she had discovered in her youth that there were actual professions involving gems? Well..
Perfectly lab-made jewels had less charm than the natural ones it was true, their interesting flaws and unpredictable impurities fascinated her to no end.
All the horrible ways humans used each other to mine and generally acquire said natural jewels? Not charming. Not charming at all. All in all she had felt that this option was better, lesser in so many ways but better.
Her coworkers were a friendly bunch. They had lunch together as they always did and chatted about everyday things and then they went back to work, making and assessing the raw products before shipping them off to be cut. She had wished she could be the one to do that part of it once, but machines weren’t really her thing and she sadly found she had no talent nor the patience for handcutting.
After work she had stopped by her mother for coffee and then met up with some friends before going back home. And now she was here. Splayed out on the bottom of her stairs.
That thing that people sometimes said about time slowing down during accidents, your life flashing before your eyes?
She’d thought it impossible to experience such things in seconds but sure enough when she had tilted sideways and realized that the fall was inevitable she had experienced something of the sort.
Well, she thought she had anyway. She vaguely recalled a feeling like floating through space too, and that was just all kinds of strange.
The pain lessened somewhat as she laid where she was, gulping in air. Every part of her body tingled strangely now, like her feet sometimes did when they fell asleep from being sat on for too long.
Trying to jog her brain in to remembering more made the low-key nausea turn to need to sick-up, her brain felt a so scrambled and she had some kind of horrible flickering flashes of color going on.
Blurs of reds and oranges and yellows, almost like fire.. The fire! Her apartment was on fire! Oh god she had to get out of here!
She rolled and scrambled up on all fours and stomach contents splattered the ground.
“That’s - Disgusting.” She panted to no-one and shook her hands. Yuck, yuck! But she needed to get out out out!
She hastily moved backwards to get away from her puddle of sick and to hopefully find her door but froze when she felt something grating on her legs. What.. What was wrong with her hardwood floor?!
Eyes still closed against the onslaught of whatever was going on with her head she reached down to touch the ground by her knees. Grass. This felt like grass.
Come to think on it.. Hadn’t she glimpsed some strange ass trees at some point after she fell down the stairs? Or while she was falling?
Opening her eyes a smidgen in case of smoke she let them take in her surroundings.
“What.. What the hell?” She whimpered.
Maybe she was wrong, maybe she hadn’t fallen down her stairs at all? Had she gotten out already and gone somewhere? Perhaps had an accident she couldn’t remember in a park or something?
Sitting back on her haunches she swallowed down another bout of nausea that emerged at this new, disturbing scenario. Where in the world was she? And what time was it? It should be nighttime but the sun was out, had she slept here?
There were trees, and huge mountains surrounded her in three directions. Grass, rocks, twigs. Not a single lamp-post or walk-way in sight. What kind of park was this?
A nearby bush rustled and Nora let out a scream as some sort of raccoon emerged and then promptly bolted at the loud sound the intruding human had made.
“Get it together Nora, you’re clearly outdoors. The outdoors have animals.” She told herself and was about to clap her cheeks but wisely decided against it.
Looking down on herself she realized that not only was she outdoors, she was also stark naked.
Fresh fear reared its head at this and she held back a wail that instead turned whimper. She had been maybe taken and she was naked, there was no more tingling but she was shaking like mad as she checked her wrists and arms for any signs of a struggle and there was no stopping the second bout of sick.
Spitting and sobbing she clenched her insides and noted that there was no pain. It didn’t help overly much and she dissolved in to fit of crying. Disjointed thoughts of why and how were dominant for a while but never having been one to despair for long her rational side quickly took over to try and soothe the worst of her turmoil. Gradually she straightened from her hunched over position.
Alright, so she was lost in some park. Apartment might or might not be on fire. She was naked, unwell and confused but possibly not violated.
First things first she thought and got up on wobbly legs to find some kind of water or moist grass or anything really to clean her hands. Then she would worry about.. Literally everything else.
A light trickle sound had her turning and stumbling her way towards what had to be a stream. Oh please let it be a stream or a fountain she thought. Blessedly it was water, and she didn’t have to walk far either before she spotted the little river that cut through the landscape.
Rinsing her hands vigorously in the cold stream before doing the same to the tips of her hair let her mind calm a bit more.
She couldn’t possibly be far from some kind of entrance or exit, there was no sign of a road so clearly she had either walked or been carried here and while she was rather short and averagely built she knew that carrying this kind of dead-weight (If that had been what had happened) was hard work.
Civilization cannot be far, she thought. This bolstered her so much so that even in her naked and weak state she strode determinately along the bank of the stream, heading downwards and away from all the mountains.
-----
Civilization was far, really fecking far!
Nora had walked and walked, rested and then walked some more. She hadn’t seen a single sign of people, she was hungry and tired and she realized with dread that it was starting to get dark. She had gone camping once or twice with friends and family, yes, but she’d had company then and lots and lots of gear and food.
Her stomach gave a loud displeased rumble and she patted it futilely. There was no food to be had so it would just have to settle. Ugh.
She supposed she should settle somewhere too, it wouldn’t do to trip over something and break a leg in the darkness. She shivered slightly. It wasn’t cold per-se, but it wasn’t warm either and she was very much not looking forwards to trying to sleep. Outdoors, defenseless and in the nude.
Striding over to a suitable looking tree Nora did the only thing she could think of on the fly and started tearing up great handfulls of grass and straw which she gathered at the base of her wooden guardian for the night.
She tried gathering a few dry twigs too to make a fire like she had seen people do on tv, but spinning one stick vigorously on to another she only managed to make blisters on her hands.
No fire or even a hint of smoke.
Attempt thwarted she gave this whole day up as a bad job and huddled in her little pile of grass.
Even with everything going on, even though she was scared almost out of her wits and the grass was making her feel all kinds of itchy, her mind and body were so exhausted that she fell to slumber within minutes – Hoping that perhaps she was just having a bad dream, and praying to anyone who might be listening for a better day tomorrow.