Deep breaths in and out. No time to count.

So, how did one heal? How did you close wounds? He remembered having to stitch a nasty cut on his thigh in his youth, thinking it was too deep and he was going to die. It wasn’t nearly as dangerous as he thought in the end, but still.

He thought of the numbing, the feelings throughout his body as his wrist stopped hurting. When he shaped stone. When he commanded the bird. Though notably the connection forming process didn’t bring such a sensation with the bird or snake. Step one: whatever that was.

When he began to feel… something… mass around his wounds, or at least those he knew of, he thought of the process for managing such wounds as best as he could recall from his passing interest in surgery. One by one his mind roamed from wound to wound, including the one he now felt in much more detail inside him. In a human it’d be an artery, he recalled. The abdominal aorta, right above the hips. In a healthy adult human male, exsanguination could occur in twenty to twenty five seconds if completely severed.

Not long to work with. Here goes.

He began stitching. Without a needle and thread, without even moving if he even could. But he stitched. Felt the thrust of the needle through flesh, feeling wounds begin to pull into the peculiar shape rent flesh took when held together by thread. He whimpered with pain, feeling so many tiny little tugs through dying meat screaming its final protest.

Stitch stitch stitch. Sew sew sew. Flesh to flesh. Who knows how long for. It felt like an eternity. He was vaguely aware of changes in the light conditions around him, a much better indicator, if a bit surreal. He wanted to scream. For fury, fear, frustration, agony, and disbelief. He didn’t know what the fucker was that brought him here, but they were gonna get it.

He wasn’t ready to die yet.

There was too much to do.

Eventually, after what felt like years and years of commanding flesh to hold itself, after pain and barely clinging to consciousness, he could finally get to the next stage of treatment: bandages.

Of course he didn’t really have any bandages, and they were much larger and more daunting to craft. The imaginary bandages were working all the same though, he could feel it as flesh began to knit together more thoroughly than the strands that connected in the stitching. The trouble was whatever resources he was using were tapping out.

Panic began to push through again, surfacing like a familiar, unwelcome housemate that always made a mess and never cleaned it.

No way, damnit! He was so close! He was so damn close! He could feel that he was still straddling the razor's edge of life, but the pain in his head was just too much at this point. Thoughts beyond the most basic wails of defiance shattered into a million pieces upon formation. If he could move enough to vomit he would. The poison burning his veins still made it impossible. Thankfully in this case. Otherwise he’d be choking on puke.

That… that really was a lot of poison.

His vision began to fade once more. The little bit of definition that had begun to return as he worked abandoned him again. The bandages ran out; there was simply nothing more to give. His well was empty. Tapped out. Run dry.

So he dug. Desperately thrust his fingers into the metaphorical earth and pushed and pulled and fought and clawed and scraped.

Everything was dark now. He couldn’t even feel or hear vaguely anymore. It was like a sensory deprivation chamber, but extending to all senses. He didn’t even feel heavy.

Though, he did experience something in a sense. Not quite lightness, more like weightlessness, an utter lack of connection to gravity or any other physical force. Like there was nothing in particular keeping him in position except for his own lack of direction to do otherwise.

Come along, whispered a smooth, comforting voice softly, from some unidentified distance. It was different from how he communicated with plants, though. It felt more like stray thoughts that appeared on the periphery of your mind. You did well. You didn’t have a fair hand, your ups were few and downs were extreme… but it’ll be better next time. I’ll make sure of it. Come with me.

Tedrick became vaguely aware of the world again, but it wasn’t like before. It was… fuzzier, with empty spaces that shouldn’t be so.

Above him crouched a young… something, he couldn’t tell their sex. They looked like an elf from the traditional lore he was used to like Lord of the Rings, but with slate-grey eyes, short hair, and robes. They looked very gentle and regretful without going so far as pity. They pet his hair, radiating a soft warmth throughout him originating from the point of contact. All his fear and anger dissolved, his frustration fizzling out at the sight of them. Death happened to everyone, after all, and wasn’t always fair. But it did give a chance to let the weight go, the regular pressures of life that built up until you were numb to it all.

What a way to go. It was a hell of an adventure, even if he didn’t ask for it. Certainly more extraordinary than dying of old age or heart disease or something.

It surely was, they said without words or movement of the lips, giving him a soft smile that radiated sympathy. Trust me. It’ll be better next time. I promise. They took his hand and slowly pulled him to his feet, a door there that wasn’t previously. It was very simple looking, a solid piece of stone in a frame made of dark grey wood covered in hypnotic swirls that drew the eye and relaxed the mind.

His arm was over this strange fellows shoulder now, moving him along, though neither of them walked. The energy pouring from the door was… odd. Different. It wasn’t like anything he’d felt in life, and it suffused him, pulled at him. It was as though it was inviting him in, promising change from what once was.

A change he had experienced before, he realized as he pondered the feeling. Not that he could remember it, because back then he wasn’t “Tedrick.” Back then he was someone else, with as full and real a life as the one he just experienced. Likely not as fantastical, few were those where he was from that could say such a thing honestly, but no less genuine than this one was.

The familiarity was alarming, not because it was necessarily evil, but because it was the end to everything he knew. Who knew what came next? Something “better” the strange gender neutral figure promised, but what did that mean? He wouldn’t say his life was necessarily bad after all. There was hardship, but Tedrick lived knowing that every step of ground he had he earned as honestly as anyone from a position as privileged as his could have.

Every inch he had taken was an achievement, a declaration of will to the world. No, he didn’t need you to help him reach the shelf, he could do it himself. Tedrick worked his ass off and because of it he had taken back the autonomy that was nearly taken away.

Staring at this hypnotic, improbable door frame, contemplating his achievements both great and small, he felt something stirring in his chest. Pride, and achievement. A hunger to take everything he was told he wasn’t able to do and claim it as his own. A passionate desire bordering on greed.

A refusal to allow his circumstances to define him. A hot something spreading outwards from the center of his chest, a bitter flame that felt like it was between hatred and fury, a mixture of willpower and malice that clung to him like bile in the throat, refusing to be washed away with the cooling wash of accomplishment.

Filling him from head to toe, his ever-present wrath that sat like a weight at the core of his being and stubbornly refused to settle for a sub-par reality returned with a vengeance. This wasn’t over, not yet.