A small room filled out with a bed and a small wooden night cabinet. Dust layered on a wooden ledge in front of a small window. The smell of old wood mixed with the odor of medicine turned the soft breeze from the tilted window into a rather displeasing flavor. Added with the scent of inflammation, sweat and bodily waste the air would most likely bring everyone who entered this building reason to gag. Faint light entered through the window and threw a light cone on the person covered by a thin blanket.

My eyes focused the window but I didn’t saw what was behind it. My mind was still filled with the occurrence that happened after I woke up several days ago.

Leather stretched tightly around thin and long sticklike objects. The front with its five crooked endings shook fast in all directions despite placed on a soft ground. Behind the trembling mass raised red bulges sporadically the ragged surface from its tubelike stuffing. More and more humps filled bigger areas the higher the weird object grew. At a point, the lumps took the overhand and connected to the muscles and skin on my shoulder.

With wide gaping eyes, I stared at the disfigured part attached to me. I didn’t comprehend what I saw. Time slowed down as I rotated my head to look at my other arm. Believing that was I had seen was not real. Trusting that my arm is alright. My head rolls over and the same horrible sight enters my eyes again. A small whimper escapes my mouth.

“It is all right Natalie. Your arms and legs might look a tad bad right now, but we are confident that they return to their normal form soon.”, said the calm man smiling.

“But, but you said I was completely healed. How is that healed?”, I screamed at him in fear and frustration. He raised his hands conciliatory.

“You have nothing to fear. On the contrary, you have reason to be happy. More than ten magicians used healing magic on you for over eight hours. And most of them were strong magicians at that. Under other circumstances, you would not have survived let alone keeping all of your limbs. I am confident that your limbs will work just fine in given time.”

I thought about his word for a few seconds. The tickling and itching in my arms and legs drove into my mind forcing most of my thoughts away.

“How can you be so sure? Before it was still painful and even now it feels like hordes of insects are crawling all over my skin.” Fear and lack of understanding what had happened to my limbs and what if they stayed that way numbed my reasoning even more than the constant tingling.

“Listen, just calm down and rest for a bit I promise that in a few days the world will look different. Just trust me ok.” He winked at me confidently.

I concentrated to suppress the annoying feeling with less success than I hoped for but I could manage to calm down a bit.

He said I will be alright. So I should trust him.

‘Or he is just trying to shut an annoying brat up, couldn’t he?’

I ignored the voice in my head.

Several days had passed and I was still waiting for my situation to get better. I had to take daily the medicine several times a day. Every few hours the medicine they gave me to ease my pain wore off from one moment to the next. A rush of fire and hammer blows tore through my limbs robbing me of all my clear thoughts. Following that nails and rusty knives were torn through my skin. At least it felt like that.

I tried a few times to move my hands but to no avail. Even with the help of medicine, a raising pain shot from my arms to my shoulder, neck, and chest.

They said that my legs were not as injured as my arms so I should expect earlier results with them but the agony when moving them wasn’t any less.

The door opened with a clatter and a woman entered the room. Her blue eyes smiled through the wrinkles that surrounded them. Her silver hair was covered with a cloth.

“It's time for your dinner, sweety.” Her small steps let her ankles long grey dress sway and her slightly hunched position did the same to the tray filled with foods, that she was holding in her leather-like hands.

“Thank you, miss Martha.” Slowly I turn my head and look into her direction as she moves to me.

“You are still throwing that look around?”, she asked and raised her brow. She let out a sight and gave me a look full of warmth. A warmth that never reached me.

“Natalie sweety, you don’t have to be so down all the time.” I didn’t answer. Martha was a good and friendly old woman but I couldn’t bear her positivity.

She put the trail on top of the night cabinet and sat on the corner of the bed.

“Well then, since we don’t want you to get dirty.” She put a napkin on my chest and tucked it into my grey knee-length shirt, which was the property of the hospice.

“I’ll start now.” Martha picked a spoon from the trail and scooped something with looked like soup from a small bowl. Hot steam rose from it. The old woman blew a few times on the spoon and then brought it very carefully in front of my face. Reluctantly I opened my mouth and let her fed me.

Since I couldn’t move my hands I obviously couldn’t eat by myself. But the help I required didn’t stop there. They had to wash me, dress me, and worst of all remove my excretions. This was painful. Even more painful than the pain my arms and legs gave me. It was not just embarrassing it was humiliating. This increased each time a day went by.

“And that's it. You have done well eating the whole bowl. With this, you will recover far faster.”

I didn’t realize the feeding as well as the taste of the soup. Just blank agony wrecked in my mind.

She put the bowl and the spoon back on the trail and took a mug from it.

“And here is your medicine.” The disgusting tasting fluid was poured into my mouth. Even though I didn’t get medicine in a set timely fashion I always got one mug full before sleep. For that I was thankful. Getting torn out of your sleep by unimaginable pain wasn’t something I was looking forward to. Also, the medicine stopped me from having dreams. Since I had only nightmares when I had any dreams I gladly welcomed it.

“I wish you a good night, sweety.”, she said with a smile on her cracked lips and closed the door behind her.

My head rotated back to the window again and I resumed what I was doing before the interruption. Getting my fingers to bend. With each try flames shot through my arm, blinding me with white light. Water collected on the edge of my eyes. I had given up on the thought of getting rid of that pain. The doctors said that since I was healed with magic there shouldn’t any pain to begin with.

‘But they also said that under normal circumstances your arms would have to be removed. So I don’t think they have much experience with this.’ I don’t believe that I am the first one who had injuries like that. ‘That not but maybe the first one who got so much attention from mages with healing magic. It is not common to have so many around moments after you got those injuries, now is it?’

Through the conversation in my head, I could suppress some of the pain.

‘How are you going to figure out if you actually managed to move a finger? They are trembling so much, now don’t they?’ I know. And they start to tremble even more when I try this. But I Have to do this.

After a while, I couldn’t endure the pain any longer and I stopped every movement while biting my lip. I waited until the pain subsided and started my next session. Letting my mana flow through my body. According to my late master, mana flowed through a sort of river which was interconnected to lots and lots of other rivers he called nerves. In a way like blood, but completely different. I didn’t understand everything he had told me but I figured that mana needed to travel through your body on a very real medium. So since there was stuff missing in my limbs I was very scared that I couldn’t use magic anymore too.

But this was not entirely true. I could still reach and push mana in my body around but not as much in my arms and legs. Mana still flowed into them, but it felt like there was not enough to carry it all through. The mana got blocked and just a tiny bit managed to seep through. The blocked mana accumulated and evaporated from my body into the air. I cried for a long time after I found out about that and after hearing it, the doctors just answered with that it should get better over time too. But yet again it didn’t.

I concentrated on my mana and let some into my arm. Instead of just forcing as much mana through it as possible I thinned it to the smallest amount I could muster to feel. I pushed it through the narrow arm, through the elbow to my wrist, ending in one of my fingers. But the amount was to less to produce any magic. But even though, it cooled my arm all along the way it traveled and it left a pleasant feeling for a short moment. I liked to try this when I wasn’t numbed by the medicine but I couldn’t gain the necessary concentration with all the pain.

I repeated this with every finger and each toe until a dreamless sleep fell over me.