Excerpt: Ackei alone - growing up shipwrecked.

Alta started to sit up, then laid perfectly still. Her head was throbbing so bad even that slight motion had driven spikes of shooting pain behind her eyes. She almost passed out again. Owww. She squeezed her eyes tight shut again and waited for the shooting streaks of yellow and black to stop crashing across her vision. Finally, after what felt like it must have been hours, the wild kaleidoscope of colors stopped whirling around and she dared to roll over onto her side. Her left side.

Where exactly was she? And why did her head hurt so bad? This wasn’t making any sense… where was Mamat? Something was very, very wrong, and Alta waited, trying to will the panic away. She was sub-adult after all. Only children panicked. A sub-adult was half way to being completely responsible for her own honor. Only a little kid would start crying for mamat just because she was confused and hurt.

How was it she got hurt? Alta reached her right hand around the back of her head, feeling gingerly for any sign of blood or injury. She knew something was wrong, she had to figure out just how bad it was. When she brought her hand back around in front of her eyes so she could look, she was glad to see it was not drenched in blood, but there was some really dark flaky crud. She must have been bleeding and maybe it had stopped? Yeah, it must have stopped. Slowly, methodically, she pressed her fingertips against her temples, along the ridge of her head, around the top, in the back, at the base of her neck, stopping when it hurt too much, trying to make note of where it was most sore.

She tried to sit up again, then braced her hands against the rough ground as her head suddenly felt like it was on the end of a sling shot. Gheesh, was her brain going to shoot right out of her skull? Alta waited a moment for the extremely dizzy sensation to stop.

But it wasn’t stopping. Every time she even thought about moving, it was like her brain was sloshing around inside her skull, disconnected. Why was she having so much trouble with her balance? And what was the word they used to describe this anyway? Alta tried to remember, and finally dredged up the word. Vertigo. Well, if this was vertigo, it was a horrible, wretched, nasty, bad thing. She’s rather have a broken arm or something.

And then came a wave of nausea that was so powerful she felt like she was going to just heave up everything she’d ever eaten in her whole life. Alta was miserable. Why? What was wrong? Why was this happening?