It started with choking.
A cough.
One two,
One two,
Breathe in,
Hack.
Her face felt like it was on fire. Her hands fumbled with the rope around her neck. Legs swung for the promise of ground, only to be teased as the tip of her shoe scraped against the soft dirt below the tree. Grab the rope. Tug. Choke. Grab the knot. Tug. Crack.
Swing, swing, swing, thwak. She fell. She stumbled, her breath making a rattling in her lungs. Broken neck, shattered knees, dislocations clicking back as they fixed themselves into place. Her nerves were burning her alive and freezing her veins. Blood scattered across her chipped lips in points-
Plop.
Plop.
Plop.
Every push of air into her chest forced a lump of black and red and brown out onto the mud before her.
One two,
One two,
In, out,
Just breathe, Tisiphone. Just breathe, Tisiphone. Take a second, take a second.
One two,
One two,
In and out.
Every crunch of bone moving into place felt like death. She shivered, goosebumps raised upon her arms as a chill ran down her spine.
Her ribs ached. They throbbed. They felt like they'd burst from her skin and torn her apart and put her back together again.
Her head tilted up, and before her she saw a figure she couldn't focus on. Short, childlike, standing and watching. It was dark, and Tisiphone felt faint.
Everything was blurred- or perhaps it was simply foggy. She couldn't tell. She couldn't see. At this point she realised she couldn't even hear or smell.
All that filled her senses was the bleeding, the metallic sting that crawled down her throat.
One two.
One two.
Hurck.
Hands and mind scrambled. She shifted her weight from one hand to the other, coughing, hacking, coughing, hacking, there's a pile of something spraying over her hands. Is she being sick? She can't feel it. The tearing sharpness of her throat still felt like rope was tangled around it.
Maybe it was, maybe she was still hanging. Her hands were covered in the stuff that she was spewing at inhuman rates. Black and lumpy with bile and mucus. Perhaps it wasn't black but green, or yellow, or orange, but honestly she was hardly paying it any mind.
A voice filtered in.
Small, and warm, monotonous.
"-ou down. Are you okay, miss?" It said. It repeated in many tones, many voices, all whispering quietly, all chattering too loud to focus on.
Tisiphone couldn't respond.
She could only wretch and shake, could only claw at her neck to get the rope off. The world faded in and out of vision. Her palms prickled with energy. The need to tear, to move, to rip, to grab.
Tisiphone managed out a soft, hoarse, "Who...?"
The child helped her to her unsteady feet. Rugged clothes, tattered shoes, a short buzzcut head. Deep brown in colour, with eyes so dark that Tisiphone couldn't see any light refracting into them from the moonlight above.
"My name is Alcmene."