Induction by Tom Dillon
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Emera woke up to an expansive awareness of pain. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was aware of every part of her body simultaneously, each part with its unique agony. She was lying half out of the water with something sharp digging into her back, and as she dragged herself up she felt it tearing her skin. The waves were slow, but infinitely stronger than her beaten frame, and every time one hit her, she was pulled back into the sea or thrust farther upshore.
After many attempts, she managed to get herself onto a patch of semi-dry sand. Her body seemed to recognize that it had reached a position of relative safety and she felt consciousness slipping away. She did not fight it.
When she woke up again she still hurt, but she felt more stiff and crusty than anything. She sat there, in the rain, exploring her body. Somehow, nothing was broken, although she was covered in cuts and bruises. She couldn’t open her left eye, and when she tried to rub it, the pain was so severe that she immediately pulled her hand away.
It was twilight or dawn, she couldn’t tell. And she was hungry. she looked around, only to find herself by the cave where she had found all of the mussels. She considered for a moment grabbing a few and eating them raw, but was spared from the prospect of eating raw mollusks by the fact that she wasn’t strong enough to open the shells. No, she would have to find easier prey. Her eyes settled on the tide pool between her and the rocks that blocked her view of the ocean.
The emptiness in her stomach turned the seaweed into perhaps the best thing she had ever eaten. The salt might kill her, but if she didn’t get enough strength to find fresh water, she was dead anyway.
She was halfway through her second salty-crunchy-squishy kelp when she saw it. A scorpion, like the one that had stung her on the cliff face, was perched on a rock perhaps a meter away from her. When she saw it, she froze, the food forgotten in her mouth, and watched as the scorpion skittered forward. It clicked its way down the rock and across the sand until it reached her and, much to her horror, climbed up her leg.
It stopped when it reached her knee, and lowered itself so that its cold scales rested on her already cold skin. It was then that she saw that it was cobalt blue. It was an Amekt. But what was it doing on the beach? A byproduct of any contract or agreement in which enough Ve was channeled, she had seen her share of them, though never so close. Then everything clicked in her mind. When she was falling, praying for something to help her, something had, and the scorpion had been created. Which explained why she wasn’t dead or lying broken on the rocks.
She held out her hand, hoping and fearing that she wasn’t hallucinating about the color. The scorpion got up, and crawled onto her hand, clawed feet digging into her, but not painfully. She brought the scorpion up to her face, and it looked right at her, relaxed. Emera reached out with her right hand and touched the top of the scorpion. She felt warmth flowing through her fingers and pleasant tingles of pain as the warmth spread up her arm and her body began to heal itself.
After a few hours, she was able to move, and she found a rivulet of water running down the rock face. The water tasted horrible, something between mud and medicine, but she drank anyway. Eventually, the dry and cracked feeling in the back of her throat subsided, and she rested. she considered eating more kelp, but the water had filled her stomach. Sitting up was wearing her out, so she laid down and watched the sky. The scorpion crawled up her arm and onto her chest, where it stayed, facing her.