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The woman's smile filled her with calm. When she saw it, she felt like she'd found the thing she'd been looking for all her life: Home. In this woman's smile, a woman she'd only just met, a woman who she'd only just deduced was what she'd been searching for, she found acceptance. The thing that had happened to her, terrigenesis they said, had changed her, forever. She'd had a complicated life before the mist, but that life was only going to get more complicated. Those she counted as friends, family, were afraid of her. She was afraid of herself. But this woman was not. This woman radiated understanding and, the more profound thing, love.
Around her was a place that was so secluded and peaceful she found herself wondering if she would ever actually try to find her way back to the others. It would be easy to stay, to remain. Without talking about it, she knew the people who walked the streets of this place were like her, or destined to be like her. There were jealousies, that she'd been changed out of turn and there were apprehensions as each person learned what she could do. The world around her was filled with vibrations, from the subtle to the obvious. Every plant, every rock, every person. As she learned and as she grew into the person she had become, she could differentiate those vibrations, feel them, use them, manipulate them. She could move mountains. Literally. She could kill a man. She could give life. She was powerful. Her change, however terrifying, was also beautiful. ----------------------------- Daisy had never had dreams so real. Except she knew that was a lie. She had dreamed of a man who held her like she was made of precious metal or stones, a dream that made her blush when she thought about it in her waking hours. For months, Daisy had had dreams that felt like memories, dreams that made her feel trapped in sleep, unable to wake or to differentiate herself from the woman in her dream. The things the other woman could do seemed impossible, even if, less than a month ago, Daisy had felt like she'd been able to feel what her dream self felt. But it had to have been a fluke. Residual dreaming. But that was all about to change. As the number of things on her phone that she couldn't explain, pictures and texts and emails, grew, as the number of memories she couldn't quite place grew, she knew something beyond her understanding was going on. And that night, the night that might change everything for good, she dreamed of moving mountains. And she woke to her bed trembling beneath her, the pictures on her walls were shaking, and the glass in the windows was rattling. Her pulse raced at a rate that should have been killing her, probably was killing her, and her body felt like it was on fire, burning up from the inside out. She panicked. But the panic made it worse. With every breath, things shook and the more they shook the more she panicked. Pictures rattled and shook and fell from where she'd hung them, smashing to the ground. Each sound sounded like it was happening inside her head, the shattering of glass physically painful. She looked around her, trying to find a safe space, but everything around her vibrated. So she ran. She ran into the street and as she ran, the street lights popped. She ran away from her home, away from the city, to a park that felt like a place she could take refuge. She remembered, as she ran, the strange words Lissa had told her, about it being her power and that she needed to stay calm, but how could she stay calm when everything was literally falling apart around her? |