If I had told you earlier what true pain felt like then, I must have lied because what I was feeling now was way worse than any kind of torment or agony I had experienced yet. Hearing Elliot's cry of pain and seeing him panting for breath, while barrels of blood escaped his shoulders made me feel like my heart was being squeezed with a thousand sharp needles, piercing deeper with every drop of blood that fell on the earth. 

A thick bony shaft had pierced Elliot's shoulder and as it seemed the bone arrow was directed on me but..but Elliot saved me. And yet he could only save me from the physical injury. The feeling I had right now was worse than what a hundred such arrows could have ever inflicted on me. Seeing Elliot hurt because of me..felt like...it felt..like Dying!!

My mind felt blank as I sat in the dust, stunned and shocked. Elliot was still in his senses. He got up, held my hand and ran away from the direction where the arrow came from. I didn't resist but neither did I respond. I let myself be taken away with Elliot. I was numb both inside and out. I couldn't see, I couldn't think. All I could do to help Elliot was to let him pull me. How useless..!

Suddenly, I felt a blinding light in front of me. And then, we both were enveloped with nothing more than empty darkness. I could not feel the earth beneath me. It was like I was just floating in that vast stretch of nothingness except for the part that I wasn't alone. Elliot was still there in that darkness clutching my right hand. "Yo...u...alri..ght, Zeo?" I heard his weak voice say before everything went silent.

 This voice brought comfort to me but at the same time it also ignited the never ending pain and regret. The pain of not being able to save Elliot was drowning me, the regret was crushing me under its weight. Why? Just why was I such a weakling? Why couldn't I protect Elliot? Forget about protecting. I couldn't even help him, instead it was him all along. Am I so useless? Is this why my parents left me? Because they knew what a waste, I was.

Amidst all these thoughts, I felt the world silent, too silent. Elliot wasn't speaking anymore, the warmth of his hand was slipping away like a dying fire. 

"Elliot!!" I cried but he didn't respond.

 "Elliot, can you hear me?"  I cried again but the reply was the same utter silence.

 I moved my left hand to touch his soft, warm, cheeks, from which I had rubbed off those unknown tears earlier, and felt them icy-cold right now. He was still breathing, I could hear his breaths but even they seemed to slowly drift away in the silence. Wait! Was he dying??

"Elliot! Elliot wake up!! .." I heard myself cry. My eyes were brimming with tears, flowing out with no dams and bounds. This can't be real!! Please tell me it is just a bad dream!

"Please wake up..please..just for me." I said in a low voice. I clutched Elliot's small body in my embrace. Probably, trying to keep the leftover life in his body from escaping.

"Please..I can't live without you!!" I whispered in Elliot's ear and without me realising it, I said what my heart wanted to say at the moment.

Unexpectedly, I felt some kind of liquid swirling around our bodies. It felt like shadows or a kind of dark energy. Those foreign shadows made strange hissing sounds which were more like whispers than meaningless sounds. It was like these shadows were trying to tell me something but I just couldn't understand it. They were all around me, I felt their strong presence surround me. Were they some kind of sorcerers??

"Hey! Can you hear me?? Please, please save Elliot. I need him." I yelled. 

And I felt Elliot's bleeding stop. All the shadows then again circled around me but with greater speed. Some of them occasionally even entered my body, and I felt a sudden outbreak of power. What was happening to me?? The obscure whispers continued. Even now I couldn't understand any of them, except for one. Finally, when the last of the shadows entered me I heard a deep voice say something more strange than the whispers before.

"Never..let..Elliot..be hurt again!!" The voice said in an almost commanding tone.

After everything went silent again, I felt a kind of flame burning inside my soul. A flame that felt like power that had never existed in me. I felt a subtle movement from Elliot. My grip tightened as if I was scared that someone would take him away from me. I could feel the warmth on his cheeks again, the tenderness of his skin, as imperceptibe as it maybe, was there again. Then I felt that flash again, which had brought me to this place. And in an instant, I was back in the forest.

I sensed the brown earth beneath me and the blue sky above me. The hushing of the fluttering leaves was back in the air. But more than all this, what I saw, was Elliot, lost in the serenity of his own slumber. I had a mixed feeling of regret and joy, fear and happiness. Elliot lay there in my arms, returning from the brink of death. His cheeks and clothes were wet in his blood.  The blood was on my hands too, probably more on mine than on him.

I hugged him again, embracing his every breath, his every heartbeat, his mere existence meant so much to me. I knew I was sobbing again, letting out every emotion that was seated in me. But I felt alright now and more than that Elliot was alright now...and that's all that mattered