text: SENSELESS It was dark. Not just an ordinary dark, but a total absence of light. It was an inky blackness that seeped from the walls - if walls there were - and made those walls cease to exist. It was a blackness that was all encompassing, smothering in it's totality. It muffled sounds - it muted other senses that struggled to compensate for the lack of light, striving to facilitate some sense of...something. This dark was a black blanket that spread over everything - absorbing everything and giving nothing in return. Something. Then, within the all encompassing blackness, there was a stirring. A movement that tickled the air from somewhere within the dark depths. It was so slight, but it elicited soft sounds, almost muffled by the black darkness. Soft sounds that whispered sibilantly like small breaths. Breathing. The soft breaths became stronger and more defined. Something was definitely breathing, and nearby. Slow, steady breaths now whispered in the dark, and the stirring within the blackness became stronger, more noticeable, more insistent. Now there were the soft sounds of rustling. Movement. A hand reached out, slowly, feeling, questing. More rustling. Was that straw rustling? Was there straw on the floor? Fingers explored: touching, feeling, tracing the lengths of the strands they discovered. Each of the touches translating into sensory images within the mind behind the questing fingers. Yes straw. A single confirmation of sense in an otherwise chaotic swirl of nothing. Questing. The mind behind the questing fingers began to quicken - it's responses still yet slow to comprehend. Even thought here seemed to be muffed by the stifling blackness all around. It was like something trying to stir, yet smothered in black treacle. It was a molasses, softly giving and yet seeping back as soon as a space was cleared. Within the mind, a consciousness began to gather. Thoughts began to coalesce, slowly, one by one in the deep blackness within and without. Consciousness. The hands reached up and felt the body they belonged to - arms, shoulders, neck then face...and hair. Long tangled hair it seemed. Then down the torso, feeling a curvy shape and on down to legs... and feet. At the joint of leg and foot the fingers encountered a hard cold surface encircling that space and the mind reacted in shocked surprise with a single tangible thought...."prisoner". Questions. Where? What? Why? Who? When? Where was she? And yes... suddenly she was assuredly aware of herself as a "she", but other details still remained elusive and barely recognised as being absent from her cognisance. Befuddled and bemuse, she struggled to make sense of the limited clues she had as to her whereabouts. What was she doing here? Now there was a question that stirred deep feelings inside her...feelings of apprehension and fear. She knew from the manacle on her ankle (there!! words were coming back to her to describe and identify things) she knew she was a prisoner. Why was she a captive? A swirl of flashing images swept across her muddled consciousness, too fast to register properly, but enough to give her a fuzzy memory of a succession of events that had lead up to this predicament. They immediately left her with a sickly feeling in the pit of her stomach. Who had captured her? And even more important...who was SHE? Two words popped into her mind as she thought of these two questions. Two words that were...names. Areassa. Maleku. She savoured the names as she silently rolled them around her tongue, trying them out for taste and size. Areassa, she found, gave her a warm feeling of belonging. This is me, she thought to herself, and smiled in the darkness. Then her mind turned to the thought of the second name, Maleku, and this name made her shiver with a feeling of cold dread. Her smile at once transformed into the grimace of a snarl as her heart began to instantly thump hard and loud like a drum within the cage of her chest. This name was bad. Finally, the last question - when? When did she arrive here? When would something happen...and would that something be the arrival of someone? She was alone in the darkness, she was certain of that, because there were no other sounds but those she herself made. Time stood still in the utter emptiness of the blackness in which she found herself. The air smelt old and musty, the sweet scent of the straw the only thing that seemed fresh in that dead seeming place. Her nostrils flared as she scented the air for more clues, but deeper breaths just lead to a bout of coughing and sneezing that left her panting breathlessly. Eventually calm again, she licked her lips. Her tongue discovered that they were dry and cracked and painful as she licked. Swallowing the scant saliva that her tongue's activity had triggered, she tasted the dust coating them. It was the dust she had raised with her own movements, and it's taste was unpleasant. She needed water. Water! The mere thought of it caused her to realise she was thirsty, a deep thirst that furred her tongue and left her throat feeling raw after all the coughing. Swallowing now seemed suddenly far more difficult. Blinking her eyes as she struggled to come to terms with her situation, they stung and brimmed with moisture that her mouth craved. Tears trickled down her cheeks in warm, wet trails that she brushed away with the back of a hand. Were they tears caused by the dust? Or were they due to an upsurge of emotion? She shook her head disdainfully, chiding herself that this was no time for tears of any kind. A rumbling gurgle from her stomach gave a sharp reminder that she was also hungry. When had she last eaten? She didn't know, but the immediate vision of hot venison stew filled her imagination with such a temptingly insubstantial remembrance of the flavoursome feast that her stomach cramped on it's emptiness. Thoughts of her stomach lead her to the next realisation of her other bodily needs. She squirmed where she was, half sitting, half lying in the skimpy bed of straw she had first woken up on. Whether there was an amenity within her reach she did not know, and as yet she desisted the urge to discover. Her mind drifted in on itself....drifted inwards to the growing maelstrom of images and emotions created by her recent recollections. Her mind observed the spinning chaos and she felt herself being pulled ever deeper into the well.