"I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere."
She was dying. That was the only explanation.
The world was spinning around her, and her heart was hammering harder than it had ever bothered to before. She felt like she was going to throw up, her fingers felt numb, and although she was acutely aware of the sensation of falling to her knees, she felt as if she were floating. She was detached, loosed from the earth beneath her clasping fingers, and drowning in a wave of terror.
She was going to die. Either that, or she was going insane. Either way, she couldn’t breathe. No matter how she gasped, she didn’t seem able to catch enough oxygen, as if someone had punctured her lungs and let the air seep out as it trickled in. The lack of air didn’t help the panic that was slowly overwhelming her, her elbows locking and refusing to collapse as her eyes spun wildly. Perhaps this was a hex, or a curse, or maybe even poison. She didn’t see anything, though.
Only the general, his words reaching her through the fog that seemed to surround her. She wasn’t sure why she did it, but with one shaking hand, she reached out, clasping his shoulder and squeezing. The feeling of something solid, something warm, something with a heartbeat that wasn’t slamming into her chest a mile a minute - it seemed to help. Feeling his shoulder shift with his breath, she struggled to control her own wild gasps, slowly and shakily reining them in until they, to an extent, behaved. She matched her breathing with his, and soon the panic began to ebb. It was far from gone, but.. at the very least, there was a light at the end of this tunnel.
