{"id":4083,"date":"2019-09-11T00:00:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T04:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=4083"},"modified":"2019-09-10T23:12:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T03:12:40","slug":"twenty-two-05-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=4083","title":{"rendered":"Twenty-two &#8211; 05"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>[This post is from Kira&#8217;s point of view.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Kira took one breath, then another, staring down at the sudsy water for a few seconds as she tried to collect her thoughts. <em>When the fever had him.<\/em> That, too, had been forever ago\u2014or felt like it. She only thought about it rarely now, in snatches and fragments, barely remembered bits and pieces that bubbled up from somewhere buried deep inside.<\/p>\n<p>It had come on more suddenly than she\u2019d expected, though in hindsight its appearance shouldn\u2019t have surprised her, though the length and duration likely should have and did at the time. Even now the severity of it surprised her when she thought back on it, leaving her feeling a little hollow inside, as if there was nothing in the cave of her ribs but her heart. She\u2019d thought it mostly the product of poison and overexertion\u2014which was exactly what Phelan had made it sound like, too. Teague had never offered a different explanation for it.<\/p>\n<p>Now, it seemed that perhaps there <em>was<\/em> more to it, more than she\u2019d ever realized or suspected.<\/p>\n<p>That time had been the most terrifying of her life. She couldn\u2019t imagine anything else that could make her feel heart-rending, bone deep fear and pain like that. Every moment had gotten worse until the moment he\u2019d finally seemed to recover, after the world had come crashing down around them with meteorfall.<\/p>\n<p>Weeks before that day, Phelan had told her to load Teague in her car and drive. She hadn\u2019t been certain he\u2019d survive the trip, but Phelan had been so insistent, so certain. She couldn\u2019t say no, didn\u2019t say no.<\/p>\n<p>The drive had seemed to go on forever, with Teague drifting in and out of consciousness the whole way from Chicago up through forests and hills, across bridges over lakes and rivers. Somehow, she\u2019d known where to stop.<\/p>\n<p>She looked up from the water and watched him. \u201cDid it make it worse?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he whispered. \u201cIt might have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou never told me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know. I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[This post is from Kira&#8217;s point of view.] Kira took one breath, then another, staring down at the sudsy water for a few seconds as she tried to collect her thoughts. When the fever had him. That, too, had been &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=4083\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[299,327,14],"tags":[150,171,170,302,149,148,168,147,165,301,146],"class_list":["post-4083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-7","category-chapter-22-book-7","category-story","tag-awakenings","tag-fantasy","tag-fiction","tag-kira-thomlin","tag-original-fiction","tag-post-apocalyptic","tag-serial","tag-serial-fiction","tag-story","tag-teague-vaughan","tag-web-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EBlN-13R","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4084,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4083\/revisions\/4084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}