The Princess Who Wasn't

Chapter Three: Starvation

Merilla woke up dazed. It took her a moment to realize that she was still behind the fence to the dumpster. Once she did realize it, the pain set it. Her stomach cramped and her muscles in her ribs, back, legs, and shoulders constricted. Merilla screamed from the pain, or tried to, but all that came out was a dull long groan. Her throat constricted and as she realized how dry her mouth was, she wandered how long she had been laying there.

The sun was burning her eyes are she struggled to look around to make sure no one could see her in this week of a position. Merilla was scared to think of what the town may do to her if they found her like this. Seeing that nobody was around Merilla rolled over to her stomach and pushed herself up onto her knees too fast and her head spun. The dizziness was so bad that she ended up back onto her face.

Moaning Merilla sat back up onto her knees, much slower that before and managed to stay there this time. Thinking back to how she had ended up there she remembered everything that had happened and the dread filled her once again. She no longer had a way to eat. The town had truly signed her death sentence and she had no idea how to fix it. Pulling one leg up so her foot was flat on the ground she sat back against the other and rested for a moment. Making sure she was steady and moving with excruciating slowness, Merilla put both of her palms, one on top of the other, down on her knee and pushed up with most of the strength that she had with her hands and her leg. This resulted in Merilla being bent over with her hand on her knees gasping for air as she begged her knees to keep her up.

Her knees were shaking so badly she felt like she could hear them like when someone shakes a morocco at full speed. Her stomach felt like she was being punched over and over again. As she slowly moved her hands up her legs, pushing herself up as she went, she couldn’t think about anything other than the next movement. Over and over again, Merilla slowly inched her way upwards until she was standing straight up. She knew she had to find food or she was going to die.