Arashi

Prologue
Coming of a Storm

I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.

I leap out, and fall back,

and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone

in the great storm.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Sense of Something Coming"

I was dying

I fell spiraling through darkness, my name lost among the shattered fragments of my torn mind. I fell away from myself, pain lighting fire to every last nerve in my body as I was torn apart from the inside out. Somewhere beyond my failing vision, I knew my friends were staring in wide-eyed horror. I could hear their distraught cries and the haughty laughter of my foe; the one that had done this to me. Somehow, I managed to ignore this because a far greater pain had overtaken me: Failure. I had failed, and that to me was worse than any pain or fate anyone could possibly conceive. I had failed, so I had no right to cry out from the intense waves of pain wracking my disintegrating body.

I had failed, and I was dying.

Icy cold fingers gripped me, chilling me to the bone shortly before I began to grow as numb as my mind had. The only words my shattered thoughts could piece together were three that I despised more than anything: I have failed. The words echoed within my skull, bouncing with a painful thrum off of the sides of my head before zooming back into my thoughts. I have failed, and no greater pain existed for me than failure. Darkness prevailed over my vision, the cold had enveloped my like a blanket of ice, and I had failed. The words continued to torment me, screaming in my ears and embedding themselves into my very being at my last moments of life. It would not end like this.

I tore myself away from the icy claws that had ensnared me, pulled away from the abyss leading towards oblivion. I raced away from the encompassing darkness, fuelled by my rage and determination to somehow atone for my failure. A light abruptly shone forth from the black landscape, beckoning me to it and I left it all behind me. The distraught cries no longer invaded my hearing, the haughty laughter had ceased, and somewhere behind me someone was calling out to me as I drifted further and further away. It wasn’t until then that I realized I had left something of mine behind but I stopped caring once the last of my memories evaporated like a single cube of ice in a scorching desert.

I think it had been my identity.

Cold, agonizing pain was the first thing that I noticed when I slipped into consciousness and struggled to open my heavy eyelids. I quickly shut them again after they were assaulted by rainwater that my numbed limbs hadn't been able to register before. Against the wishes of my throbbing head, I slowly sat up and felt behind me for something to lean against. After pushing myself back a few inches, my fingertips met a grimy, slick wall. Knowing I was probably already covered in muck, I figured a little more wouldn't hurt and rested against it with little hesitance. It took a few minutes of painful squirming to get myself situated somewhat comfortably and brush sticky clumps of my hair off of my forehead. Once I had wiped the water out of my eyes with the back of my grimy hands I cautiously opened them once again to inspect my surroundings.

Garbage cans and bags littered the alleyway and a rather large pile had accumulated between me and the street. If I had been unconscious for a long time, the garbage was probably the reason why nobody had spotted me. Inhaling through my nose proved to be a mistake due to the horrid smell of rotting filth, but breathing through my mouth only caused my throat to hurt more. A few cars passed by me - something was off about them, though - as well as a mother and her child huddled together under the safety of their umbrella. I opened my mouth to call out to them for help, but all I could manage was a pitiful, inaudible squeak. I tried coughing to clear my throat as well as get their attention, but it was drowned out by the rumbling of thunder in the distance.

The sky glowed as lightning danced briefly amongst the clouds, only a few seconds before another low rumble reached my ears; a thunderstorm was quickly approaching. I ran my hands over my sore legs to check for the source of my pain and realized that they were practically frozen and winced when pinpricks of pain spread out under my fingertips. I also noticed that the skirt and blouse that I was wearing were awfully baggy, especially since they were sopping wet. They were obviously far too big to begin with, but the rain should've caused them to shrink at least a little. Why was I wearing such huge clothes?

After drawing my legs up to my chest in an attempt to bring my numb body back to life, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes in an attempt to collect my thoughts. Though the storm had irritated me only moments ago, I suddenly found it to be extremely soothing. I sat listening to the rumbling thunder and pattering of rain for a few minutes and I felt myself relax. Taking a deep breath, I tried to remember how it was that I had been knocked unconscious in the first place with no success. After turning a few more thoughts over in my head, I began panicking. Not only did I not have any clue as to how I got here, I also didn't know where I was, where I should have been, or who I was.

I wracked my throbbing brain for answers, but I couldn’t clearly remember anything before I had woken up. I could vaguely remember the blurred images in my dream, but none of them meant anything to me at the time. I began searching my long, navy blue skirt for pockets - and answers - but only found a fancy green pen with a golden symbol on it. Not much help, but something prevented me from throwing it on the ground in frustration. Instead, I pocketed the item and shook my head slightly as a dizzy spell caught hold of me. It was only brief, but it worried me.

Slowly and painfully, I climbed to my feet and wrapped my arms around myself in a futile attempt to keep warm in the downpour. A small, headache inducing sneeze escaped my nose and I sniffled. After carefully stepping over the mound of garbage bags and onto the sidewalk, my hopes of someone finding and helping me were instantly dashed to pieces when I saw that the storm had chased everyone into their nice, warm homes while I was stuck out in the pouring rain with no shoes and clothes that barely fit me.

After wandering aimlessly for a few minutes, my vision gradually began to blur and another dizzy spell struck me with much more ferocity than the last. In spite of my unstable mind I continued stumbling down the sidewalk, shaking my head every so often in a futile attempt to shake off my dizziness. Eventually, I had to stop walking or risk end up falling flat on my face. Gently putting one of my hands to my head in a futile attempt to calm the severe headache that had flared up made me aware of an oozing, sticky liquid covering a large lump on my head. My hand came away bloody.

For what seemed like an eternity, I stood there staring blankly at the thick, red substance as the rain washed it from my hand and formed a red puddle on the sidewalk beneath me. My hand suddenly dropped by my side, the realization that I was severely injured hitting me full force. For some reason, my prominent emotion was confusion; I had no memory of being injured and the fact that I wasn’t in fear of my life puzzled me. It was obviously the reason for my lack of memories and my previous unconsciousness, but I wanted to know where the injury had come from. A wave of frustration hit me as I tried once again to throttle the answer from my mind, receiving nothing but a larger headache.

Suddenly, the world around me began to spin rapidly around me and my head swam with disoriented thoughts. I wondered if I was dying again – even though I had never died before – before a mound of other nonsensical thoughts stormed my mind. My numbed knees wobbled as I swayed drunkenly, vainly trying to prevent myself from collapsing. It was a battle I could not, and did not, win. My knees eventually buckled, dropping me painfully onto the slimy sidewalk, and my eyes slowly fluttered open and shut. No one would help me, because no one would find me until it was too late. I would die in this place.

A feeling of peace washed over me as sleep began creeping over my mind. I wanted nothing more in the world than to simply close my eyes and sleep forever. I didn’t want to know who I was or where I was and I certainly didn’t want to care about those things anymore. I wanted to slip into darkness and stay there. I suddenly shook my head violently – an action that I immediately regretted – and forced myself to wakefulness. I couldn’t die yet, because I had to atone for my failure. Another random thought that made no sense to my clouded brain had invaded, but I decided to listen this time. I didn’t want to die. I had no right to die…

Footsteps approached me from behind, but I lacked the energy to look. I wouldn’t have been able to recognize their face even if it was a familiar one. A quiet gasp reached my ears and echoed inside my head as my senses began to dull. I felt unusually large arms scoop me up off the ground and the resulting head rush left my mind spinning. Curiosity temporarily won out over the urge to sleep and I managed to keep my eyes focused long enough to get a good look at my rescuer. He was a bespectacled man that looked to be middle-aged and had dark hair, yellow-green eyes, and faint traces of a beard.

A warm, tingling feeling spread across my forehead as a comforting warmth spread through my chest and eased my pain. I felt as though this warmth was slowly healing me from the inside out and I briefly wondered if it was this man that was healing me. A look of extreme concern crossed the man’s face, slowly switching over to confusion when his eyes focused on a spot on my forehead. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t him that had caused my pain to ebb. After carefully running his thumb in a circle on the center of my forehead, he muttered something incoherent and I blinked sleepily.

Someone was calling out to me, but I did not recognize the name and every time it was called to me it became another unintelligible blur in my mind. Every time I blinked, a blurry image of a silhouetted figure filled my vision until I managed to push it away with a sudden surge of guilt. Her image reminded me of my failure; a failure that I could not remember even thought I knew had existed. The name being called must have been my name, and I really should've care; but I didn't. I no longer cared who the man was, where I was, or even who I was. All I care about, at the time, was that I wanted nothing more than to sleep and be freed from my pain.

The voice vanished, and I slept.

A/N: Yep, I finally got around to doing a rewrite of it. I would like to say that the chapters should come faster now, but I know they probably won’t simply because I have severe problems with liking what I write and changing stuff all around and whatnot. By the way, if you’re one of those people who has been reading this story from the very beginning of its existence, you are the awesomest person in the world!