Was she dying or was she living?

The Devil's screams stopped me in my tracks. The last picture I took was now just a blur as I turned around to see what was happening.

"You know her...go!" Someone grabbed my arm and hurried me to the kitchen, but by the time I had gotten there, everyone had scattered and she was gone. There was a sense of silenced panic in the air.

I was led to a room with double doors, but was scurried out by the maharajah. As I looked in, there she lay on the white bed, a knight and a king hovering over her. They turned to me as the doors closed; the elephant leading me out.

Outside the doors where I stood the room hummed with cats and birds fluttering around, trying to find where to go to after they too were hurried out of the room. I stood by the doors, dazed, before they slowly opened again, the elephant still holding on to me as the maharajah came out.

"Come" he said, the elephant pushed me through the doors and closed them as she stood on the other side shooing the birds and cats that eagerly tried to follow.

As I walked up slowly, the room was quiet. An eerie quiet. The knight held her and was asking questions in a gentle voice. The king was pacing; nervous energy as he looked around for something that I am not sure he even knew what it was he was looking for. The maharajah stood back, his powerful presence added to the tension. I walked up to her and as the knight lifted her from the bed, we all, at the same moment, saw the pool of blood on the pillow. I gasped and we all froze for a moment. We didn't know how bad it was.

"Call an ambulance", the words seemed strange as they were spoken in a calm tone. It seemed like something you would scream in a moment of panic, but here there was a quiet understanding that help was needed.

The maharajah grabbed a towel and brought it to them while I hovered by the bed, unable to move. The knight pulled her closer to her chest as the king wiped her brow, both looking for the gash.

She laid there, eyes closed and beautiful. Was she dying or was she living? Existential questions raced through my mind as the room became still and deafening with the heavy presence of the unknown. The knight talked sweetly; the king wiped the bloody, matted hair from her face. I began to undress the bed and walked to the sink and washed her blood from the sheets. Even the blood that ran down the sink was beautiful.

In a daze, I kept washing until the water ran clear. The maharajah paced, silently; slowly.

Back in the room, I watched as they kept her awake. Soon the ambulance arrived to take her away.

All of a sudden the peacock came stumbling in, looking around, not seeing the scene of the others stabilizing her. The room bustled and their presence made us all feel uneasy. We knew it looked much worse than it was, but that didn't qualm the uneasy feeling their presence had in the room. The peace was gone and the peacock seemed out of place now.

"I"ll go with her" the peacock said as she went to the back room, emerging as just a person minutes later.

As they wheeled her out the back and up the walk, I watched as they tried to keep her awake and the cloud of chaos slowly slipped away. Soon the silence of the night was all around me and I walked back to the room, the smell of blood lingering on my hands.

Through the double doors I walked, greeted by excited cats, curious to know all the details, but the reality was, nothing really happened...or so I couldn't really say what happened, because I didn't know. As they questioned me while we walked to the car, the whole night hummed in my ears.
 

And the question that plagued me the rest of the night since the moment I saw her looking both beautiful and tragic in the arms of the knight; the king wiping her bloody brow...was this living, or was this dying...?