Worlds Colliding

recalibrating structures and single breaths

She feels deflated in a way, her head still slumped forward. But surprisingly, it isn't a feeling of weakness this time. No, it's more like drifting under the currents; you're safe, but everything is slightly distorted and unfocused. It's captivating and unmeasurably beautiful. She inhales deeper and pushes her body to move better, her arms feeling as if she has lost the strings that normally pulled her up into reality, into the physical part of all of it, almost like trying to wake up from being sedated. It feels both good and disorientating. She sits up more straight and lets the familiar energy in her support her efforts and guide the muscles, slowly filling the frail, clay-filled bones with blue light. In a way, creating a spine for her being. She inhales and looks at the room around her, noticing the bright mist still there, floating lightly around the room.

And then her stare slowly drifts back to her hands.

It's then when she notices it. The energy shifting like a live creature from the sapphire shades to softly flaming oranges. The surface of the sun, on her cobalt floors melting into a sunset, into the birth of first creation.

She closes her eyes for a moment and lets herself feel it even more. The energy shifting and changing from mesmerizing blue to a flickering orange-gold, crackling and snapping into the stillness of the air. Both swimming in hungry, lazy waves and threatening to expand the holes on its luminary form. And then her heartbeats rush without warning, fluttering like the wings of a million tiny anxious things, chest rising and falling as she manages to place her back firmly against the wall behind her. The energy floating and cascading from her until it once again reaches her fingertips in a never-ending flow, shifting from a simple, flickering light to nearly perfect golden-orange circles, opening like ripples against the smooth surface of the water.

She inhales in a strange way as if she no longer understood what air was for, her hair lifting, the curls moving around her face in soft waves. The peculiar energy moving past the structure of the floor and sinking under it, traveling down, one layer under the other. Moving past ceilings, furniture, and the living tissue of the people and any other creatures that it meets on its way. Touching them but not hurting them in any way; more as if leaving its subtle fingerprint against their tissue, a lingering trace of its own form of a watermark. It glides down slowly and without rush until it reaches the bottom of the building, moving past the concrete body of the basement until it descends into the earth as though finally reaching its natural destiny, its home. There is silence in the air, everywhere around her, not even a hush filling the time and space. And then it happens; the energy bounces off the ground and spreads in one soft but powerful wave. An automatic bomb without a trigger made only from the expanding form of the universe's lungs, its always present matter, Hiroshima constructed from the living breathing matter of the sun. It lifts back to her faster than light-years ever could and embraces each of her particles, causing her limbs to lift, body circulating and twirling softly in some abstract form of an underwater dance, the hair floating as though seaweed around her shape. You are the other piece to my fractured soul. The shoulder blades for my ink-filled wings.

The whispers inside of her break into a million and one pieces and turn to dust before she can fully register it. The entire moment lasting barely seconds. Before it all comes to an end. She falls to the ground with a low thud against the smooth, hard surface of the bathroom floor, coughing out strange, nearly invisible smoke as though faded out grey ash, and looks around dazed, trying to make sense of her surroundings. For a while not sure where or when she was.

W-what... what in all dear hell was that?

She asks faintly to no one in particular and swallows with a tight, strangled throat, feeling frightened by the sudden sound of her hoarse voice in the otherwise silent four walls. She lifts up slowly on her elbows with a pained groan and looks up at the cracked mirror above the white porcelain sink, cringing slightly at the shape now carved into the glass form. It speaks of lightning and the coming storm. She blinks a few times, not wanting to believe her own sight, but somehow, to her disbelief, the lines don't just magically disappear. Those memorable lines, those specific lines; lightning painted on skin that she touched before, stitched and embroidered skillfully into a familiar chest. She freezes as her mind erupts with sudden memories of a different, much darker, and less classy bathroom. God, it seemed like that night happened decades ago, and not just barely a couple of weeks.

I lift the shirt a little higher, my stare passing past a regular-looking, white sports bra, and stop abruptly. And what catches my stare isn't her full breasts slowly lifting and falling. No, it's something completely different. Between her chest is a mark that stops me from breathing. I gently touch the pale lines that start in the center and spread, as if I was staring at the roots of a tree growing deep under the earth. Or more like looking at someone that got - my pulse speeds up - struck by lightning.

She feels her chest tighten a bit as she forces the body to shift to a sitting position at first and then finally staggers up to her feet, holding on to the edge of the door frame, before passing the living room and stopping at the kitchen sink. She takes a few breaths as her hands rest on the metal rim of the sink, leaning her entire weight on it, and then she pours herself a tall glass of cold water from it, the cool liquid slowly soothing the fevered mind.

She remembers that day so well with the tiniest details. It was the real first time she noticed that the girl was in the possession of some abilities. The first time, she tasted the flavor and shadows of her energy as the lights in the restaurant flickered and buzzed with growing power, electricity surging through anything that it could, its life juices going wild. And most importantly, it was the day that she saw the mark on her chest, speaking of lightning and a possible threat, but that also spoke of something else. She inhales deeper and slams the empty now drink against the counter, somehow managing not to break it but hearing the glass crack slightly. The sound of falling snow and ice forming. Mmm, the tree-shaped sign spoke of familiar things that crept under her skin. She couldn't exactly pinpoint the reason for the strange familiarity but it was there. She looks out the window and shivers.

And now it was here as well.

In her home.

Imprinted on the surface of the mirror.

A clear sign that whatever was coming, was getting closer.