Bubble

Chapter Seven

A warm summer breeze welcomed me as I pulled open the door and stepped outside, hurrying down the grass in bare feet, the twigs digging at my feet as I moved so the sun was in my views past the trees. I was pretty sure it was summer, by the way everything bloomed and it was heat, true heat. We had seasons back home, but they were only barely felt by the temperature changes.

The sun was a beacon of golden rays, glittering and contorting in my view as it passed the trees and became harder to look at straight at it rose, spreading light over everything. Golden and orange retreated away from the bright yellow ball, glowing and shimmering until it hung in the sky and began to rose where I couldn't see it move, setting light into the valley. I gazed at the dew drops sizzling away by the sun's heat, the valley casting it's shadow across the other side as sunlight gathered in, spilling into small cracks and warming everything.

I felt full.

I must've been squinting, because when I heard Lilac's voice behind me, she sounded amused. "Hard to look at, isn't it?" When I turned to her, she was smirking and holding out a pare of sandle in my direction, plain back but looked comfortable. I dusted off my feet and slid them on, before allowing her to bring me back into the house. The grin on my face made my cheeks heart and felt real.

"So she really hasn't seen the sun?" blondie, the guy, asked. He was sitting on the couch beside Emily, his arm around her shoulder with an easy grin on his cute face.

"Jake, what do you think?" Emily retorted, rolling her eyes but smiling brightly at me. "How was it?"

"Dazzling." I replied softly, feeling suddenly shy for no reason. Strangers. No one had ever been strangers to me, and this new experience was kind of humbling. I didn't know what they thought of me. I wasn't perfect like they all were, but then again I was human. I looked at my feet.

"No doubt. Others always say that." Randall said, sitting on a stool in the kitchen, eating a chocolate bar. I was confused, but then I remembered what Mom had told me in one of her stories. They eat human food, too, sometimes. If they're not hungry they can actually be normal, so they look so normal to people.

"Others?" I asked.

"Yeah, we-"

Lilac glared at him, sharing some secret that I didn't understand. He froze, then changed his words. "Yeah, the ones that came to be changed, y'know." He sounded a little nervous.

"Is he afraid of you?" I asked Lilac, serious, but Emily and Jake started laughing, bursting with it as Randall's face flared with anger. He flung the chocolate bar at them, but Jake caught it and his fingers dug into it, and he shoved the whole thing in his mouth with a childish grin like he was a cookie monster, devouring it. I would've thought he would choke, but he chewed and chewed until he just swallowed.

"Yeah, Terrin, he is. I'm scary." Lilac grinned at me. "So today.. We're taking you to do stuff. You might know stuff from your books, but you gotta live. Wanna listen to some music?" She asked.

"Music?" I had heard people play guitar and sing, but never the music that used to play in radios. I nodded wildly, and she chuckled, walking to a black round stereo and turning the dial up on the side. Smooth, clear music came through. "What is this?" I asked as she sort of dance-skipped her way back to me.

"Smooth Jazz. That's the clarinet.. All kinds of saxophones and instruments." I heard the instrument blare of a horn, but softer than people had played down in the tunnels. I found myself swaying as if in a trance, and almost broke out of it as I saw the brown-headed boy enter the room again. His eyes seemed to swallow me in one second, and I swallowed. Must be Luke. The one that I hadn't been introduced to. He looked from me to Lilac, both of us swaying about in a weird way to the music, and then looked away. I turned away, too, feeling weird about the way I felt like his eyes could absorb me into them, and I might never look away again. It was scary.