Pinfeathers

Chapter 7 - Taken

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Chapter 7 - Taken

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Though she was sometimes awake, the next four days saw Athira grounded.

Literally.

Her colour was there, lingering beneath the surface of her skin. The slight burning sensation she got when she used a large amount of colour told her that much. What she couldn't do was use it. She couldn't levitate. She couldn't summon the tendrils to engulf nearby objects, couldn't push her hands through solid objects. Her colour was glue, clinging to her insides. 

After yet another unsuccessful attempt at levitating a stuffed bear Zoe had given her, Athira flopped back on the pillows. 

I guess I can get sick. 

She'd tried to listen to Miela's advice, tried to eat whatever she gave her and relax when she did another colour cleansing, as she called it. It helped a little, and Athira tried to tell herself that her colour acting up was just a side effect of Grip, that it'd go away eventually. 

Yet as the days wore on, Athira knew she had to do something. 

She was restless and unable to sleep. Her colour writhed inside her, begging for her to reach a little deeper and pull it out to the surface where it could breathe. Athira tried to comply, but could never quite unstick that glue. 

That was when the furnace lit. 

Every breath fuelled it further as her colour demanded her to release it. Her lungs heated with every second she didn't, sending up the exhaled air at a temperature that scalded her throat. She awoke with her nails scraping against the bedsheets, flecks of hardened crystal peeling off her skin and she knew she couldn't hold it in any longer. 

Something, thought Athira. Anything. I just need to use it. 

She sat up, eyes raking the room for the first thing she could see--the teddy at the foot of her bed. Athira flung a hand out towards it and reached for the colour, really reached for it, giving it an outlet to flow into reality that it didn't hestitate in taking. 

Black colour flooded her arm and coated her fingers, shooting off their outstretched tips to engulf the teddy but it didn't stop there. Smaller tendrils branched off the original and snaked through the air, seeking additional targets and try as she might, Athira couldn't rein them in. They had a mind of their own, attracted to anything, she quickly realised, that was powered by colour. 

A thin tendril raced to the ceiling and engulfed the lightbulb, shattering it upon touch. Held by the colour, the fragments of glass floated like a puzzle yet to be put together as Athira's colour continued to search and roam. 

The lamp was its next target. 

Athira's heart nearly stopped. 

Zoe loves that lamp. 

The steady yellow light never faltered as Athira's darkness closed in. It glowed even as it was surrounded, consumed, the patterned shade around it turning dark grey as the black colour lifted its base off the desk by the bulb. 

Athira dragged her arms back to her chest and crossed them, desperately trying to pull her colour back before it destroyed the lamp. Her colour was magnetised to the colour that powered it. It didn't want to let go, but Athira wasn't about to let it win. 

She squeezed her eyes shut. Let go! 

With a final mental tug, the black colour released the lamp and crystallised, pattering to the floor like rain.