The ground came. Not hard. Not stone. Not the bone-shattering impact she had braced for. Soft. Green. Wet.
The grass, thick and tall and wild, received her body like a cushion. The impact drove the air from her lungs in a 'whump' but nothing broke. Nothing cracked. She bounced. Once. Settled.
She lay there. Face up. Staring at the sky. The blue, cloudless, uncaring sky. Her chest heaved. Her heart hammered. Her body, the chubby, soft, priestess body, was sprawled across the grass like a discarded doll.
'Alive,' she thought. The word was simple. Insufficient. 'I am alive. He threw me and I am alive.'
She turned her head. The pond, the small natural body of water fed by a underground spring, glittered twenty feet away. The trees, old and broad, formed a canopy that filtered the sunlight into dappled gold. The grass, wild and untended, grew waist-high. The area was secluded. Private. The kind of place that a priestess came to be alone with her prayers.
