In the semi-darkness, the pebbles looked like coffee beans.

I don't know why I'd never noticed that before, but right now, with my head throbbing and my face scraping over the forest floor, it just seemed so obvious.

How long had he been dragging me along this rocky road? No idea.

Did he notice that I wasn't dead yet? Not sure if he would have cared.

Would he be a little gentler with me if he did know? Honestly, I wouldn't bet on it.

CLONK.

A particularly large pebble had smashed right against my forehead, and before I could force it back down, a weak groan of pain bubbled out between my bloodied lips.

He stopped, my face coming to rest on the coffee-pebbled ground.

Heh. Coffee grounds. I chuckled like an idiot.

I don't know why, it wasn't even really a joke at all, but at the moment, I felt like a comedic genius for thinking of it.

His voice startled me out of my giggle, cursing in some language I couldn't understand.

Okay, to be fair, my head felt like a fishbowl full of mashed potatoes, so he might as well have been speaking perfect English, slowly, with no accent and perfect enunciation, like at a spelling bee or something.

A rough hand gripped my shoulder, and suddenly I was lying face up on the ground.

The coffee pebbles dug into my back, and the moon shone straight into my eyes, shiny like a silver dollar.

Except for the fact that, with all the blood on my face, it looked more like a copper dollar.

Was that even a thing? A copper dollar?

If not, why not? Copper is cheaper than silver, so it'd be way cheaper than a dollar.

Was I a genius? Definitely.

Did I have a concussion? That would explain a lot.

Then, the moon and stars and forest vanished, and two more moons, brown like espresso, appeared in the sky.

No, wait, that was a face hovering over mine, blotting out everything else.

His face, checking my pupils, my breathing, then muttering another curse under his breath.

"How the fuck are you alive?" the man hissed, spittle flying all over my face and mixing with the blood that was already there.

I would have shrugged, had it not been for the excruciating pain pulsing through every fiber of my body, so instead, I gave the best explanation I could at the moment.

"Wrgblf?"

Right. The blood.

He cursed, again. Quite a rough vocabulary, this one.

"I don't know how the hell you're breathing right now, but if you think that means you're lucky, forget it. Now get up. We'll have to move fast if you want to live, so either pull your weight or I leave you behind."

As a pair of rough, calloused and decidedly not gentle hands yanked me to my feet and the mashed potatoes in my brain turned into a swarm of screaming cicadas, I couldn't help but wish that the pebbles really were coffee beans.

God knows I could use an espresso right now.