My legs and head ached dully and made me feel both uncomfortable and feverish. The pain throbbed and stabbed and made me irritable.
My heart burned and ached with the unfairness of it all. Other people had all hurt me and yet I had to forgive them? Had any of them ever said sorry to me or apologised? Why should I have to be the first to give in and forgive? It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair!
Even if they ever came and bowed their heads or begged for my forgiveness, I was the last one who would have wanted to forgive any of those people. What had I ever done to them? I was the victim here. I was the one who had been injured over and over again. Was it just because I was weak that made them think that they had the right to trample me into the dust?
Angry with the Creator Father and everyone else around me, I couldn't help being short tempered. I couldn't be that mean or grumpy to Homeward or Apricorn though. They had done nothing but shower me with love and care since the moment we had first met.
Apricorn was glowing. I figured that Homeward must have found a way to bring her to meet the Creator despite her weaker empathetic abilities. Maybe she had awoken spiritual abilities too? I was glad that she had now joined the glowing club.
Come to think of it, every time I saw another of my closer friends or acquaintances, another one seemed to have met the Creator and begun glowing as well. It was secretly thrilling. Some of them would be bursting with excitement and want to tell everything that had happened to them to everyone they knew or met. Some were far quieter.
Now they had a better understanding of why I might have run out of my room hollering at the top of my lungs in excitement to the point I jumped out the fourth storey window and broke my legs. Whenever I related what the Creator had said about healing my legs and they saw my glum look, they laughed. Laughed! It wasn't even funny.
It only added to my irritation and with my shortened temper, made me start to push them away before they could finish their laugh. I'd mentally push them until I discovered how telekinesis worked and then I physically pushed them out, closing and locking the door behind them.
"When did she learn telekinesis? Who taught her? Whose fault is it?" I heard someone outside the door demand, probably with their hands on their hips.
"Shigure, what's wrong with your Uki-chan lately? There's something wrong with Kim. Why is she so easily upset and angry? Give me back my sweet little friend."
"Don't ask me," said Shigure's voice, sounding like he was throwing his hands up in the air. "She's been blocking me out, avoiding talking to me and refusing to see me. I don't even know if it was something that I did. She's especially grumpy whenever I'm around. Her emotions are all over the place. She's become a particularly defensive, prickly little hedgehog."
"She has been through a lot and only very recently awoken out of her coma, following which she was suddenly healed only to break her legs. All these ups and downs as well as adjusting to the missed time and still having to deal with the mental trauma from during the war, maybe she just needs some time."
"I think there's definitely something on her mind that's troubling her," Shigure said.
Hearing them talking about me outside my door only made me even angrier. I threw a pillow at the door and then regretted it because I had no way of getting the pillow back, because I couldn't walk yet. Wait. I could move things with my mind now.
I reached a hand out toward my pillow, pulling it back toward me through the air. Unfortunately, partway through, my brain shutdown. With all the recent events, stressing over the need to forgive so many people, being decidedly grumpy, being newly healed, suffering the pain from all my broken bones, only just recently awakening the talent for telekinesis and using the new gift so heavily to push everyone out of the room, I think my brain had decided that it had had enough.
Fair enough. Maybe I'd be able to sleep away the irritation at having to forgive when I didn't want to.
Just before I disappeared into the dark, I heard a bang of the door being broken open and someone rushing to my side with worry.
My mind was filled with stale, murkiness. Like the stink of sweat in an enclosed room on a humid, hot summer's day where there is no wind. Uncomfortable, annoying, unsettling. The high temperature and baking sauna heat that comes before a big storm made my face twitch. The stillness and restlessness, crying for a change to come made me want to run and escape. Before something happened.
I knew what my problem was but I couldn't make the decision. It was stuck. I was stuck.
Looking at the long lists of people on my list of grudges, I scowled. Fine. If I had to forgive, then I would at least start with the simple easy ones. Perhaps those few simple ones would ease my discomfort.
I started with Sarden. No, Sarsen. I had to keep in mind what the Creator had told me about respect. I'd forgive him for enjoying helping Flint and Mary Belle bully me, and for being so annoying. I'd forgive him for secretly making digs at me when he thought I wouldn't notice. He had been a good friend and teammate after all. He had done the best he knew how to help and protect me. It wasn't all his fault. He had tried to tell people about our predicament and had failed. On account of our friendship and that I knew he had actually tried, I would let him off. Sarsen was forgiven.
I saw his name disappear off my list and felt a very tiny loosening in my chest. The discomfort only eased a tiny bit, but then the grudge had only been small.
Taking a deep breath, I sighed. It was better to get this over and done with. The sooner, the better. I'd feel better too.
In the next breath, I forgave Mr Holt, the Director and Big Brother. They had just been doing their best with what they had. I couldn't really hold their ignorance and blindness against them. Big Brother was harder to forgive than the other two.
He had known, he had seen and he had not been willing to escalate the matter of bullying. He had thought he could handle it all. He professed to like me and want to be more than just teammates, but he had not protected me as he should have.
The Director should have punished him for his part in keeping it all from Mr Holt and overall management of the situation. I wondered what his punishment had been.
If he had dealt with the matter in a more mature manner and trusted Mr Holt, I might not have been so hurt by him. Would this be considered negligence or being an accessory to crime?
In the end, Big Brother had also done his best within his ability and experience. Perhaps he had also been sent for further training. I didn't know because so many things had happened after I had been kidnapped by Chad. I had been sick and then kidnapped again and…
When I thought of Chad, flames of fury rose. He had helped Shigure and I to end the war, but he had been using and hurting me all the way to the end in order to do it. I think I hated him even more than I hated Snake Eye and all his sinister betrayal of our city and Shigure. Just thinking of Chad made me cry with a helpless rage, because no matter how much I wanted to get back at him, he was dead. And there was nothing I could do about that.
It was like a big ball of flaming fire in my heart that made me get stuck. Unable to go forwards or backwards or breathe. If he was still alive, I would have thought up countless ways to hurt and kill him. Even knowing Chad's tragic background and knowing that he had become so twisted due to being Snake Eye's experimental subject and captive fo so many years did not make me feel any better. It made me feel like he might have deserved it, and yet I could understand that feeling of being betrayed by someone who was meant to be close to you. He must have been heart broken when his sister died, leading to him snapping and raging against the world.
It took a long time, but I wrenched my attention from that hateful man and character. I couldn't afford to keep dwelling on him. It wasn't worth the time or thought when I only had a limited amount of energy right now.
I tried to bring my attention back to the list.
Despite the knife twisting pain in my chest, I gritted my teeth and forgave the Forest Mother and Desert Father. They weren't human after all and they had also expended all their energy to help Shigure and I to defend our city and land from the invaders. I had been willing to be burnt to death in that final strike across the sea. I didn't and never would regret that decision. It was one of the first and only decisions I had made of my own volition where I was actually useful to the organisation and city that had given me safe harbour and trained me.
I couldn't expect those dinosaurs to think the same way as we humans did. They had different values, experiences and priorities.
I had to thank them instead for rescuing me so many times in my times of need, even if they had been overbearing and kept hurting me in the name of overprotective love.
As for the others, including Shigure, whom I loved, I couldn't bring myself to go any further forward. Their names loomed and grew bigger before my eyes on the list and I couldn't help the tears that were falling.
I felt so cold. So alone. Could anybody help me?