Bleeding Feet
A glimpse of The Traveler
It was his first night on duty with his Mentor. He didn’t know his exact age or exactly who his parents were. But what mattered is that he knew he had a mission to achieve, but how he was going to get it done, and why he had to do it was still a mystery to him. In reality, he couldn’t have been much younger than twelve years of age on this cold and bitter night.
The wind whipped around the trees, shaking snow down onto the ground. The trees’ needles fluttered about and the loose ones became pulled out from their branches. About a day’s hike away from the Stronghold where had grown up in, Baasim and his Mentor rested inside of a tent that was much like a teepee. There was a hole in the very center of the top of the tent, where the peak of it would be, allowing smoke to escape from the contained fire at the bottom of the tent. The warm glow illuminated the inside of the walls of the tent and kept the two from freezing to death. Some sort of meat was skewered on a spit and was cooking slowly over the fire. The Mentor did a simple weapons check, cartridges clicking in and out of guns as they were inspected for anything out of the ordinary in the mechanical and routine check.
Baasim sat cross legged across from his Mentor and held one booted foot in his hand, tenderly feeling it. With each prodding of his fingers, a sore shot of pain came as a consequence. The boots were old rubber snow boots that were patched and modified several times over from several owners, and the sole of the shoe was a hard substance, taken from another boot and now stained a deep burgundy colour from something leaking inside the boot.
“My feet hurt,” said the young Baasim to his Mentor without looking up.
“What happened?” asked the Mentor in a tone reserved for a concerned parent, looking up from their weapons check into Baasim’s direction, over their cooking dinner.
“I don’t know,” Baasim said. “Walking I guess.”
“Walking?”
“Yeah. Walking.”
“Can I see?” asked the Mentor.
“Yes,” Baasim said, taking off the boot on his right leg slowly and tenderly, as if he didn’t want to upset some sort of equilibrium in the process. Once the boot itself was off, a wool sock was pulled over his foot and up his leg, the lower half of it stained more thickly now with the deep burgundy colour, small droplets of it dripped down from the padded heel and onto the tent floor, making a little puddle of it there.
Baasim’s Mentor didn’t seem particularly repulsed by the small amount of blood in the sock, and as they shifted his hands around from inside their bag they asked the young Baasim “can you take off your sock, too? I think it’s best if we attend it now, before it gets infected.”
Baasim complied and took off the sock, draping it over his boot. The entire lower half of his foot was incredibly scraped, and blood flowed from it almost nonchalantly. His toenails were showing signs of being ready to crack after so much strain and the top of his feet were beginning to blister from the wear and tear they had been receiving for the past day or so.
“It hurts,” Baasim said, almost mechanically as if he didn’t actually feel any pain.
“I’m sure it does. Is the other foot bleeding too?” asked the Mentor.
“Yes.”
“Can you take off your other boot and sock then?”
“Yes.”
Baasim took off his boot and sock, awkwardly balancing himself on his rear to keep his bare and bleeding feet off the ground but away from the fire. His Mentor stood up, holding a small suitcase-like box, with a red plus sign inside of a white circle, the entire box all worn down and stained, strands from the sides where it had been rubbed up against many times were loosely poking out, like young hairs on someone’s face. The Mentor went over to Baasim around the fire, idly turning the spit so that one side wouldn’t be too burnt as they knelt next to Baasim. They opened the case and pulled out a small semi transparent plastic bottle and a rolled up collection of bandages that had been cleaned many times before, all wrapped up in a rubber band that looked mere moments away from snapping apart. The Mentor unscrewed the cap of the bottle and held it to their nose and sniffed it briefly before pulling their head back away from the sharp smell. They pulled off the rubber band and drizzled the rubbing alcohol from the bottle onto the bandages’ inside.
“This will sting,” they said, wrapping Baasim’s feet individually with the clean fabric.
Baasim yelped with a slight surprise from the stinging from the alcohol. After his feet were wrapped, he pulled on his socks and boots back on. After the food was done cooking, the Mentor had Baasim pull the meat off the spit and cut out proportions using a hunting knife. In the teepee, they ate the meat and drank water in silence before Baasim fell asleep while his Mentor spent the night watching him like a parent worried about sudden infant death, before they grew weary as the fire faded and in turn, they too did fall asleep.
Author’s note
This piece was originally written for a flashback in my upcoming and debut novel The Traveler. While the book is still in an inprogress state. The novel combines the fantasy elements with a unique and gritty surrounding, filled with mystery Magic. It follows Baasim Qadir Asghar, a man born fifty years after a cataclysmic event known as The Great Merging, where Earth in the year 2035 became a part of the heavens, and has never been the same.
The photo I used here is of an old and beat up pair of my old boots.
Good use of imagery. it felt like I was right in the scene. I could actually use my senses to move my way through it