Run!
‘Run!’

That was the one word that reverberated in her head and that was what she did. Lia ran as fast as she could, never looking back. She did not care about everything else as long as she could put a great distance between her and her pursuer. Nothing else would matter.

She was gasping for air, her throat felt like there was something scraping inside whenever she swallowed yet she never slowed down. She never let herself drop her pace. She did not suffer for more than a week living in the middle of nowhere, casting her future, her life, her friends aside just to get killed like this.

In her heart, she vowed never to make the same mistake again of letting her guard done and to be extra, extra careful next time. Never again. She would never be caught off guard for the second time.

If there would ever be a next time.

“You!” she heard her pursuer say.

That probably meant for her to stop. But who in their right mind would stop? Instead, it only made her ran faster.

Yet, despite her will to stay upright and ran far far away, her body was not accommodating her request. Her steps faltered, her breath came out as a wheeze. The result of not enough rest and food in the past week started to take a toll on her. Right when she needed it the most!

She drew in a breath. It was like a knife slicing through her throat. Every intake of breath was hard labor.

A surge of panic ran through her. ‘I’m not going to last. I’m going to be captured!’

The last thought brought horror, so much that she found a last spurt of energy. She used this to push herself to the limit. She could do this.

Her hopes were dashed as quick as her energy came. She felt something heavy lunged at her back as she dropped to the ground. She squirmed and resisted but the weight over her did not budge. Firm hands twisted her arms behind her.

“Who are you?” the man growled.

Lia whined. She would not say a thing. Even if she tried there were grasses in her mouth so she could not open them to utter a single word.

The man seemed to have noticed it and turned her around but she remained pined on the ground with the man straddling on top of her.

The hopeless scenario did not deter her to succumb to this kind of fate. She focused all of her attention in wiggling away from the man’s grasp but against that herculean strength, she could not go any farther.

The moon was high above them. The light was sharp in her eyes as she scrunched up her face and waited for the inevitable.

“Lia? You can’t be— Lia?” the man said.

The man’s hold on her slackened as Lia opened her eyes, surprised to hear her name from a stranger. It was dark especially when his face was turned away from the moonlight. As she strained her eyes to see the outline of the face, she put a name to the voice she heard. That voice!

Lia stared dumbly at the man on top, relief washing over her. “Eldric.”