A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 14 Touch Experiments 2

"Ok, you want to know what's going on? I'm warning you, you won't like it!"

Raina stopped pacing, staring at Carmen with such seething emotion that Carmen felt a trickle of worry tiptoe down her spine. What secrets had Raina been keeping from her?

Raina opened her mouth, then paused. Then she let out a huge sigh and sank down to sit on the forest floor. "Might as well sit. This could take a while."

Carmen sat down, now moving carefully, watching Raina with a burgeoning sense of dread. This was going to be about her, she understood. How fragile was she? Could she bear what Raina was about to tell her?

"My room is right down the hall from yours." Raina said, pausing until she saw Carmen nod. As if this obvious fact was so important, she simply wouldn't continue until it had been clearly acknowledged.

"We both know my empathy forces me to feel what others feel if they're near me. I can kinda feel what their emotions and physical sensations are. And you know your power somehow mostly blocks me from sensing much about you..." Raina trailed off, looking away and swallowing nervously.

Carmen leaned forward, her hands starting to clench in her lap as she began to suspect where this was going. Her stomach was beginning to flop about like a dying fish, splashing slimy ice around her insides. She found she was no longer curious. She was stricken with dreadful anticipation.

"Raina, if you don't get to the point in the next two seconds, I'm going to scream!"

Raina managed an impressive mixed expression of confusion, torment, and frustration.

"Lately, when you're sleeping, I...I connect with you. It's like at night, something about the shield of your power relaxes, and lets my power in." Raina's voice was very quiet now, and her eyes were filled with fear, and Carmen thought with a flash of dark anguish, maybe even pity.

"I try not to! I try so hard!" Raina choked out the words, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. "But I'm so helpless before the...the firestorm of your dreams and memories and wants and needs! I can't stop it and I can't ignore it and I...oh Carmen. How come you've never told me? How come?" Raina was shaking now, clutching her arms tight to her chest, rocking back and forth as she spoke. Her skin, normally a dusty tan, was pale, and her dark eyes stood out in stark contrast, suddenly reminding Carmen of a vampire.

Carmen felt like the woods were spinning slowly around her, accompanied by a dull rushing sound, and she felt like her blood was turning into slushy ice, pumping sluggishly through her body with each beat of her heart. Raina had seen parts of her she herself had hidden away and refused to acknowledge.

When Carmen sat very still, saying nothing, Raina clutched her arms tighter to her chest.

"You hate me now, don't you." She whispered, feeling like she was suffocating under an immense, invisible weight. At that moment, she wished her power worked on Carmen even during the day, so she could actually tell what she was really feeling. But it seemed to only fully connect her to Carmen at night, once Carmen was sleeping.

Carmen still said nothing. She still showed no expression on her face. Her thoughts were falling very deep inside. Her mind was pulling open old doors she hadn't used since childhood, darting into the dark, hollow space beyond them. And trying desperately to pull them shut behind her. Trying to shelter the Healer in her from the ugly, vicious part of her she had been trying to forget even existed for the last five years. The part of her that Raina had seen in her memories and nightmares.

"What do you see?" Carmen finally spoke. She knew her voice was wooden and without inflection, but she had already begun to wall herself off behind a terribly familiar tower of razor ice, and could no longer bring herself to care how she sounded.