Indigo (NaNoWriMo13)

Chapter 15 - Reaction - Part II

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Chapter 15 - Reaction - Part II

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However, no matter how hard she tried to quell it, something about the mantra’s rhythm was disturbed, the pattern in her mind uplifted as something shifted the balance between the syllables.

At about the seventy third second, Athira gave up trying to repair it and instead focused on finding the source that kept disrupting the flow. Her skin tingled, the torrent of colour beneath it responding to something in the room.

She lifted her eyes, finding her sight locked on Zoe’s figure.

Athira knew she was right the moment it clicked in her head. The nausea that rocked her body since Reader goaded her into letting go of any semblance of control dissolved into something calmer, purposeful almost. Zoe’s glow literally warmed the illness from her.

That makes no sense. Nothing like this has ever happened before and it’s had enough opportunity to do so.

Yet there was no denying it. She could feel Zoe’s colour as sure as she’d felt the orange running through the pole in the heart of the Elite HQ, only this was a hundred times stronger. The vibrant yellow aura that was Zoe called to Athira’s black as clearly as the girl was sitting next to her, singing in her ear.

Why?

Athira sat there, unable to return to her mantra, unable to settle her mind until Zoe’s voice broke the silence in the room.

“That’s time, with an extra fifteen seconds just to be sure,” said Zoe. She stood up, giving Shift a lopsided smile. “You’re up.”

“Again?”

“Again.”

Shift moved from his spot against the wall to the side of Will’s bed beside Zoe. He took the red colour’s hand and squeezed it, his own green flowing around the linked palms. The emerald glow was like the tide, the cycle of ebb and flow repeating every few seconds, occasionally punctuated by a flicker of red as it pushed back towards Shift.

“Anything?” asked Zoe.

“His colour’s there, but it’s weak,” said Shift, dropping Will’s hand. “It doesn’t want to shift with me at all. Sort of like something’s blocking it.”

Athira moved to stand next to Shift. Her eyes found Will’s face, studying it without realising she meant to. There was something there, something she couldn’t entirely be sure of... but it was there.

More curious than anything, she extended a hand, hovering it over Will’s blanket covered body. The something was around him like an aura, emanating from the other side of his body.

The other side. The contact point.

“It means the problem doesn’t lay in the physical,” she said, levitating herself over to the other side of the bed. “It lays in his mind.”

“You sound sure,” said Shift.

Athira was too distracted to respond to his sarcasm. “A person’s colour is linked to their mindscape. If the mindscape is altered, damaged in some way, it affects their colour.”

She heard Shift mumble something to Zoe as she placed her hands on Will, one across his chest, the other on his forehead. With the physical contact, the weak pulse of red colour fluttered under her touch.

Will’s colour wasn’t as easy to sense as Zoe’s was. It was like the orange colour in the silver pole. It was there, but she had to focus to be sure of what she was feeling. Her hand slid down to the right side of Will’s chest, beckoned by some unseen force.