The Fairy, The Witch and Lost Items

10. Shadows.

There was absolutely no clue how she managed to finish the spectacle; she was acting mechanically, and the only thing she could remember was that mysterious girl on the row number six, that girl from her dream. Each time she was looking into the auditorium, she was looking at her.

And Terry was pretty positive that it was mutual.

When everything finally ended, she returned to the anteroom, and she was so uplifted that she didn't even snap at Thomas, when he said a sharp something to her, as he was usually doing. They were on knives as long as she could remember, but today she just ignored everything and everyone.

Stepped out of the theater, Terry looked above; the weather seemed to be good today, and the dark gray sky was almost clean, just some white clouds were crawling across. She crossed the street and went down by the sidewalk with a pace of someone who doesn't have anything to keep oneself busy, and it was quite true. People in the city had only three ways to entertain: theater, bar or cemetery.

Terry didn't know another life, and all the years she was living in the City, she was doing the same: sleeping, acting in theater twice per week and every other day taking drinks in the bar until she will be good enough to forget where the hell she is living. But today she wasn't keen to drink, and she has just done with the theater.

A little something bothered her, though. A little something was buzzing in her head, somewhere back in the head, leaving her with the feeling of abnormality.

What was wrong? Come on, even your smoked brain could find it. It was something obvious. It was just before the eyes...

Terry tried to tense the brain, but just got a headache. Angry, she threw this out of her mind; whatever it was, she was incapable of picking it up. To the hell all of it. Change of plans, I need to wash it off.

She turned to the street, pathing to the bar. 

That was the fun. 

Then there was darkness.

"Terry, where the hell are you? You should be on stage in five minutes!"

Terry shuddered, and was about to growl into the open door of the dressing room, but instead of that, completely out of the blue, she thought: why can't I remember what I did yesterday?

It was strange, more so that she never ever thought about that before. "Yesterday" didn't exist. You only live today, everyone knew that. Yesterday you didn't exist and tomorrow you will be in a cemetery, in one of the gray coffins, looking out with cloudy eyes on a cloudy gray sky. Whoever invented the very concept of "yesterday", clearly wasn't living in the City.

To the hell, all this. Stupid thoughts.

She stood up and looked into the mirror, examining herself with a judicious gaze. Everything was ideal, from the bright makeup to the bottom of the petticoat. As always. As always. What the hell, what does it mean — "always"?

"Just imagine, I was a freaking fairy."

"With the other girl."

"Move your ass!"

She was there, again, in the row number six, tall, with a flaxen hair. Terry stood up still, looking at her, until she finally saw it — the discrepancy, the thing that was breaking the world apart.

Flaxen hair.

In the world made of all shades of gray, it was like a crack in the very fabric of the reality.

***

In an absolute silence — or it was just her concentration on Edith that removed all the sounds away out of her attention — Edith stood up and looked directly at her. Then she turned around, about to go to the exit.