Music, and a song: "Once in a Lifetime" by Stick Figure
——
The only thing David could hear was his own breathing.
He still understood that he was sitting on the couch in the basement of the house he shared with his loving Mom, but in these moments he felt like his breathing had switched from automatic to manual.
David looked down at his bracelet-covered wrists.
On the right hand: his Blue ring, his Fury Road inspired gunmetal paracord bracelet, his self-made "Incredible" and "King of the Stars" beaded bracelets, and his "Worthy of Love" and "Among the Stars" wristbands. All Narnia fanfic related. All himself. All related to she.
On the left hand: jade beaded bracelets, a red-gold-green braided bracelet, and green self-made beaded bracelets with "Chill" and leaf iconography. All related to that which David was currently soothing his anxieties with.
Around his neck: his Narnia lanyard with a runic keychain gifted from she.
David didn't feel more comfortable, in fact he was beginning to feel the opposite. He wanted to let her go, but how could he let her go and still keep all the positives and good that she imbued into him and made him realize?
Even while here, riding the cloud, could his anxieties not be diminished for once?!
"I'm thinking we need to bring the Christmas tree back!" a pretty voice said.
"Still in this basement, though," another pretty voice replied. "Do you remember how precarious it was just moving it in here from the other room, the ornaments barely not slipping off its branches?"
"Still only in this basement," the first pretty voice replied, "I agree, th-"
Who was saying all this?
David reached into his pocket, inhaled, and began to slowly float his gaze around as he exhaled. There were two girls in the open-floor-plan room, one on each side of him, sitting on the same couch construction he was, in the same basement he was.
They were very pretty girls.
David heard his breathing again as he focused his gaze, and almost cursed inwardly. His brain sometimes liked to torment him by involuntarily face-swapping girls in front of him with girls from his past, or that he knew of and considered attractive. More than once during his previous job at the local mall had he stopped a complete stranger only to realize his brain had played its face-swapping trick and the stranger was not, in fact, a former crush manifesting in front of him.
David had suspected his brain was playing this trick on him because, as he focused his vision on the right-side girl, the first pretty voice, David saw who looked to be Georgie Henley.
David knew it was "looked to be" Georgie Henley, because that was all he'd ever known. Never "was" Georgie Henley.
Except it really, really looked like it was her.
David turned his slow surprise to the left-side girl, the second pretty voice, who looked to be Lily James.
David felt his heartbeat quicken, due to both the substance pumping through his body and the quite fantastic situation he suddenly found himself in.
Lily James?! What was happening?? What would he even say? What should he even think?
As those thoughts passed through David's head, suddenly his blue ring glowed. He didn't just see it glowing- he felt it glowing.
And then, in that moment, David relaxed completely as Lily James' voice came back into focus.
"David? Are you alright? You still with us?"
