Shadows of the Lithium

I open my eyes, and am nearly blinded by the sun. Has it always been this bright? I can't seem to remember. In fact, I can't seem to remember much of anything. Wary of opening my eyes again I I focus instead on my other senses. Immediately I am almost overwhelmed by the cacophony of scents and sounds assaulting me.

I want to scream, but a sudden sound near me makes me freeze instead. There's some sort of large animal snuffling in the bushes. I must be in the forest then, I remember that bushes are rarely allowed to grow inside of towns and cities.

Suddenly the snuffling stops, as does my heart. I hold my breath as I wait to see what happens. After what feels like an eternity I hear the animal begin to move off through the trees. I wait for all sounds of the animals progress to cease before I begin rolling toward the bushes. I hope it's dark enough under them that I will be able to open my eyes; I have no desire to spend all day blind in the forest.

I sense the bushes a moment before I roll into an outstretched branch, hard. Turns out they're thorn bushes, figures. I carefully feel for an opening and at last find one I can fit my head into. As I slide my head into the hole it feels as though the temperature as dropped by twenty degrees.

I haven't realized until now that I'm burning up. Unfortunately the hole isn't big enough for my whole body. I crack my eyes, testing how bright it is. I don't feel as though my eyes are being burned out, so I open them the rest of the way.

My first thought is, what was I thinking crawling in here? the thorns on this bush are at least an inch long, and some are much longer with a barbed tip. my second thought is, have I always seen so much detail? I can see the tiny hairs on each individual leaf of the thorn bush, and while I don't remember much, I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that before.

I close my eyes and focus hard on trying to remember anything before I woke up in the forest, but all I get is a vague impression of fear. I give up as my head begins aching from strain and fatigue. I open my eyes and look around me again. Beyond the thorn bush I'm lying within I can see the clearing that I woke up in. It doesn't look like anything special, just an ordinary clearing. I look toward the other side of the bush, but from where I'm lying I can't see through the tangled mess to the other side.

I can't lie under this bush forever, already I can feel hunger gnawing at my belly. I gingerly begin moving limbs aside, thinning the shade in which I lie. At one point the light grows too bright and I'm forced to wait as my eyes adjust. It doesn't take long, and from that point on I don't have any more problems with the sun.

I pull myself out from under the bush and stand up. The forest seems to stretch on forever, but I can hear and smell a town nearby so I'm not to worried. I walk around the bushes and examine the ground where I guessed the animal had been. It doesn't take long for me to find a track.

It's wider than my hand is long, which I estimate means it's about a foot wide. It has six toes evenly spaced around its circumference and there are deep holes about three or for inches deep at the end of each toe.

"Obviously not an herbivore," I think.

Satisfied as to the nature of the creature that I had heard I turn toward the sounds of bustling civilization.

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It takes longer than I expect to walk to the village. About halfway there I realize that my feet are bleeding and I don't have any shoes. Shrugging to myself I continue walking hoping to reach the town at any moment. By the time the first cottage comes into sight I can't feel my feet anymore, and I don't really want to either judging by the way they look.

I stumble up to the door and knock. After a few seconds I hear someone on the other side of the door.

"Who's there?" It's a woman, apparently by herself because I can't hear anyone else inside of the house.

"I'm a stranger here. I need help please, my feet are torn to pieces."

She doesn't answer for a minute, and I'm afraid she's not going to help me but then I hear her unlatching the door.

"Thank you," I begin to say, but as soon as she sees me she screams and slams the door in my face. Perplexed I walk over to a watering trough nearby and look at my reflection. My hair is blond with black highlights at the tips, and it's sticking up all over the place. My face is somewhat pale, but I'm pretty sure that's from blood loss and fatigue. But what catches my attention more than anything else is my eyes; they're not one solid color, instead their constantly shifting between black and purple in a hypnotizing pattern.

I suddenly know what's happened to me, and it explains everything; why I was in the forest; Why the sun hurt My eyes; My enhanced sight, hearing, and sense of smell; and, above all, why the woman had screamed when she saw me. I've become one of Them, the hated Lithilium.