Dawn Chorus (Proxies x Reader)

Dawn Chorus

"Turn and roll once we get through the worse of the thorned plants," she says.

Then she is sliding, leaning back against it and lifting her feet slightly. The incline is steep, ground loose, so gravity wastes no time pulling her. I can see her progress skitter and stop in some places. If the land had a little less slope or was a little drier or wetter, this wouldn't have worked. I plop down myself on the edge, looking down this terrible slide. Unlike Camilla, I dare a glance back over my shoulder. The tall creature is even closer now and I can see darkness moving like ink on the ground around his feet. It shifts from a loose pile to several long tendrils shooting towards me.

My stomach clenches and my heart picks up. The back of my throat burns. I push myself off the edge, closing my eyes and holding my breath so I don't choke on the dust. I feel something cold touch me. My eyes pop open and I am cocooned in black, slivers of the night sky visible in little gaps. I slip right through like nothing is there at all.

I had jerked, twisted and recoiled in the black ball. I hit the ground hard and bounce. Instead of sliding, I am tumbling, slamming into the ground, crashing through the brush. I warp my arms around my head and drag my knees into my chest to shield my softest parts. Branches cared into my skin, rocks leave instant, deep bruises. I feel hot as blood swarms the new injuries attempting to start healing. A particularly big and rough-edged stone slams into my back, right on my spine and causes me to partially uncoil. The pain is white hot and breath robbing. I can't even gasp to refill my lungs.

I'm not going to make it all the way down like this. One bad hit and that's it.

I uncurl one arm from shielding my head, adjusting the other to protect the soft bits of my face. I am flailing, scrambling. My joints pop. Twigs nestle deep into the flesh of the inside of my knuckles. I can feel the skin break, the blood well-up, but I jerk to a stop. My body uncurls. I'm heaving deeply, muscles twitching slightly, as my tumble comes to an abrupt stop.

I'm only halfway down. I've cracked my head because I can't see through the curtain of blood running down one side. I hadn't even felt that injury. The rest of the fall seems steeper, or the distance keeps changing. The brush falls back to long, lashing grasses, a path flattened in Camilla's wake. Camilla. Camilla, Camilla, Camilla. My eyes search for her. She is a spec at the bottom of the hill, climbing onto her feet and running for the pond, for the exit. She doesn't look back. She knows better. A smile spreads on my face, and even that hurts a little.

She'll be mad if I don't make it too. I turn to my side and straighten out my body, flattening my arms by my sides. I take a steadying breath. Then I roll. Everything spins, slowly at first, then faster and faster as I pop over stones and gravel, then roll through the thick mat of grass, soft and itchy, so gently itchy. I hit the bottom with a soft thump. My body is numb, but it isn't heavy. I pick myself up and feel the first jolts of pain from my rolled ankle. Camilla is ahead, arms pumping, leaning into her run, the bright splash or color decorating the back of her shirt to show she isn't a deer. She isn't prey.

Movement draws my eyes to the left. Bright orange rushing through the trees, silent, fast. So fast. How did he get down her. I stumble on my first step, lurch on my second, and my third could be described as the start of a stroll, but my fourth is the first long stride in my sprint. Camilla's head shifts slightly to the left. She's noticed the man in the orange hood too. Instead of banking to the right to go around the opposite shore, she leans into her run, faster, faster.

The man in the orange hood is closing in.

They are both so far. Getting farther and father.

My pace is slowing. I'm beat.

I won't reach them.

I won't reach Camilla in time to help. He is reaching for her.

I open my mouth to scream. To distract him.

To do anything besides just run and watch.

The water splashes. droplet sparkle in the air. Camilla slips beneath the surface and the leather clad hand of the man snags nothing. He stills. I stumble to a stop. We are both watching, breaths held. Camilla doesn't resurface. Camilla doesn't resurface. Camilla--

There is a ripple in the water, far out into the pond. Camilla pops up gasping. Her dreads have fallen from their knot, now spread around her face. She is paddling quickly through the water, glistening wet under the moonlight. Her strokes are powerful and steady, moving her quickly out, quickly away from the forest. Just as the horizon starts to grey. Glee swells through me.

The man in the orange hoodie straightens his posture then relaxes. He places his hands in his pockets and watches her slip across the pond, making no effort to follow. He raises his hand, and I follow the direction of the motion to see the man with the goggles suddenly stop in his sprint through the woods to the other side of the pond. A light shake of the hooded man's head, a jerking shrug from the man in the goggles. Camilla climbs out the other side, mostly rinsed of her blood. She stands tall and proud, slowly stepping away from the water and to the forests edge. And then she is gone through the trees. Out. Free. Safe.

The man in the orange hoodie slides his foot back. He half turns in my direction. In the greying light, the brightness of his hoodie and the red stitched frown are softened. It isn't dawn yet. The sky is grey, but there is no orange line, no sun about to reach over the horizon. I have another few minutes at least. I take a step back. My ankle screams. I let my eight sink into it as I take another backwards step. He tilts his head. His gaze makes me shiver. Then he jerks his chin. Like a wild dog, the man with the goggles starts sprinting toward me, crashing loudly through the low hanging branches and the underbrush.

I turn and sprint for the further bank of the pond. There is no way I can jump in and swim across before the man in the orange hoodie grabs me, or before his friend gets to the other side to snatch me up by the time I make it out. I'm not Camilla. I leap from the bright clearing of the base of the hill and around the pond back into the shadows of the forest.

The light is rapidly changing. No longer silvery blue, it's a dull grey. I can see fine shapes and the patterns of the bark. I pull myself through underbrush, not bothering to be quiet or look for the path of least resistance. I'm stumbling. The man chasing me is intentionally loud. After a night of perfect silence, they mock me now by crashing through the woods gleefully.

Heart racing, chest heaving. My night has been a series of identical moments, nearly impossible to distinguish one form the last. Camilla out. Sadie out. Mason dead. The drive to keep going as I start to reconnect with my body, the stinging cuts, the pull on my skin of other people's blood drying and crackling, my rolled ankle, my bruised spine, my bleeding head, flickers. I stumble more. Knock into trees adding to the burden. A series of small things adding up into an overwhelming need to just stop. Dehydrated, hungry, sleepless. I glance back when the crashing stops. And I'm clotheslined.

I slam into an arm. It doesn't budge and my body recoils, slamming into the ground, knocking my head again on the dirt, or maybe a root. Stars and dark spots flood my vision. In and out, in and out of darkness. The white mask stoops low, incredibly close to my face. His breath is warm and smells of nicotine. Behind his back, the light starts to soften into a pinkish orange. Orange. I think I hate that color now. The first birds start to chatter, call, sing. Their disjointed morning chorus.

"I'm here!" They scream. "I'm here! I made it through the night safe and I am still here."

I scream along with them.