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Ilya's Tale, Part 1
Ilya jerked awake in panic.
No, no, no, he thought frantically, struggling upright. His leg shifted on the blood-damp moss and he moaned in pain, almost blacking out again. No… He could not fall asleep again. The bandage was soaked through already; if not for his nightmare he might have been already dead.
Death would be easier, certainly—easier than the three miles he had run on a broken leg towards the thin hope of help. But his life had been dearly paid for. To give up now would dishonor the dead…
The forest seemed to lean in around him, dusk casting long shadows that blurred the air. Panting, Ilya lunged for a fallen branch just out of his reach. He grabbed it and dragged into his lap, stripping off twigs and leaves. That done, he tried to snap the branch but, weakened by blood loss, failed. The branch rolled from his hands and he had to sit back against the bole of the tree, closing his eyes as he recovered his strength. Stubbornly, he opened them again and drew his dagger.
The blade sliced skin as often as wood, but Ilya finally had the branch cut into three sections. These he positioned around his broken leg. Next, he pulled off his overshirt and, starting the first cut with the dagger, tore it into strips. He swallowed—now came the difficult part. Carefully, Ilya unwrapped the hasty bandage from his broken leg, plucking out stray threads left behind in his flesh. A glisten of white bone showed through, and he had to fight down nausea. Steeling himself, he lifted his leg and laid the strips of cloth under the three pieces of wood, then lowered his leg on top, trying to be gentle with his shaking hands. He tightened the first cord of the splint with a whimper.
When the rough splint was finished, Ilya fell back against the tree, sweating and shuddering with pain. His breath came in ragged spurts. Had the night grown darker, or was that his failing sight? With a monumental effort, he dragged himself back from the edge of unconsciousness, forcing into his mind the memory of the carnage and the sacrifice. Was he really going to lie down and die, after everything that had happened? He had survived this far, hadn’t he?
Ilya focused his eyes on a leaf, its green spoiled by a smear of his own blood. He let that leaf become the center of his world, a lodestone to steady his drifting mind and lend him strength. The leaf let him ignore the pain. It let him know what he had to do, hard as it would be. After gazing at the leaf until dusk was almost done, Ilya was ready.
He took a deep breath and cast his gaze around, looking for a branch to serve as a staff. The only likely specimen lay several feet away. Gritting his teeth, Ilya rolled over and crawled towards it, splinted leg slowing him as it scraped across the ground. With this staff clutched in both hands, Ilya levered himself to his feet. He waited a moment, swaying on his feet, knuckles white and face bloodless.
And then he smothered the voice inside that cried out I can’t do this! and took the first step.
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This article has 103 comments.
AJF: Bahaha. I have never read Of Mice and Men and it sounds like I don't want to. As for this, I never affected to writing literature. It's an action-adventure story posted on a teen writing site, for crying out loud. I made it up b/c I didn't want to submit anything I already had. Oh yeah, and the comparison to Inception was pretty good for where this story finds Ilya....basically, dying in the middle of nowhere til some nice person decides to help him.
Ari_lol: I'm sorry I made your leg hurt, lol. :P I'll admit to some cliche-ish-ness, but the fun of fantasy/action-adventure writing is making a cliche plotline, well, fun. :)
lovely.
Mentalist no wonder you hated this. If you liked Of Mice and Men I'm afraid you will enjoy next to nothing that poeple on this website, or in today's world will ever post. No I didn't cry at the end of that book, nor did I enjoy a single part of it. It was probably the most boring and depressing thing I had ever read--been forced to read mind you.
Where do you expect a story to start? Where did Of Mice and Men start? While Lenny and George were in the middle of their journey to the farm. Where does this story start? Possibly in the middle of this dude's journey to godknowswhere. It doesn't go anywhere YET because it's not supposed to yet.
Unless you're Romeo, nobody expects you to fall in love with their characters at first sight. When you see Leonardo DiCaprio lying on the beach in the film Inception you don't care about him any more than you care about Ilya, but you wonder what's going on right?
Ok so it still failed to grab your attention because you like stories about retards killing puppies. Nobody's forcing you to read more but you're just another country heard from.
-J7X team
it was pretty good up till the end. At the end, it seemed as though someone was like, "Hey bradbury, I need this book done pronto" as he pointed to his watch. And bradbury was all like "Okay, I'll just nuke civilization"
The end
I like the ending a lot. the writing is pretty good, I liked the details which seemed pretty savvy and realistic. McGeigering it up...
All I can say is, this guy is really fit.
I met two russian kids at a tennis camp once. Ilya and Vadim. Nice kids. Didn't speak a word of english, save for a few cuss words. Aw... now youve gone and got me all nostalgic.
j7x