Zoe's only wish is to be able to run barefoot through grass, but she knows it'll never happen. Ever since she was born, she's been unable to touch anything living without it instantly dying. It's a curse she would do anything to get rid of, but that...
"How... How do you feel?" I asked. The panic settled in me by looking at her. She cried in silence, and her lower lip trembled slightly. What had I done? I shouldn't have listened to her. I shouldn't have made her into an experiment.
"I... What did you do? Why am I suddenly..." She broke off and looked down at her hands that still held mine. I was ready for her to pull away, but she just looked at our connected hands. That calmed my emotions slightly. At least she didn't seem afraid or angry with me.
"I found a memory. Of some girls being mean to you. I think you were suppressing parts of how you felt about it. So I... I unlocked the suppressed part. I think," I explained, unsure if it actually was the truth or just my own wishful thinking.
"I was so sad after that for a long time. But then I just decided to be angry instead." She went quiet for a moment before she started laughing. She pulled her hands from mine to cover her face as she continued to laugh.
"Alex?" I asked cautiously.
"I feel so much lighter," she said and though her eyes were glittering with tears, there was also a spark of happiness. "I never knew that being angry can take so much energy. Not that I'm not anymore. But it's just lighter."
I let out a sigh of relief. There didn't seem to be any harm done at least. If anything, everything was better, though I guessed the true effects would take some time to notice.
"My body!" Alex exclaimed suddenly. "What did you do to it?"
"What... What do you mean?" She didn't sound upset, but still happy. But since the nymph magic was so new to me, I wasn't sure exactly what I had done and I panicked.
"It feels so much better. I don't think I've felt this good... Well, ever! Like my back usually always hurt a little and one of my fingers is always a bit stiff. But it's all gone."
She jumped off the couch and started flexing and unflexing, moving around, testing all parts of her body as if looking for issues. Or rather, the lack of issues. She pulled up her pants suddenly and looked down at her leg.
"Damn. I liked that scar," she laughed. "It was pretty."
I looked down at her leg and there was no scar in sight. That made me sure exactly what had happened as I had worked my way through her life energy. All the points I had met that I hadn't been able to move through had been old or recent injuries of hers that hadn't completely healed, or healed in a faulty way. And as I had cleared the path, I had cleared all remaining scars.
I truly hadn't hurt her in any way. For once, I had managed to do something good.
"Hey, it's basically night still. What's the fuss all about?"
I turned and saw Felix rubbing his eyes as he walked towards us. He extended his arms to me and I obliged. I moved from the couch and as he sat down on one of the armchairs, I sat down on his laps. He put his arms around my waist and leaned his head against my back.
"Oh, nothing special," Alex said. "Just turns out that Zoe is freaking awesome."
"Tell me something I didn't know already," Felix yawned and lightly kissed my shoulder.
Alex rolled her eyes and I blushed.
"She can heal old scars and emotional issues," Alex explained better.
All the sleep disappeared in an instance from Felix as he straightened himself.
"What?" he exclaimed.
"She just healed me. My body has never felt this great before. And she also did something psychological. Repressed feelings and stuff, you know."
Felix lightly turned my head so our eyes met. He looked at me with extreme awe, and I looked away. I felt uncomfortable under both his and Alex's looks on me. I wasn't someone impressive, at least not in a good way. I didn't deserve any admiration.
"You're fucking incredible," Felix whispered to me and I felt his lips right under my ear.
"I'm not. I'm not even sure what I actually did. It isn't something special."
"Not something special? You could make psychologists obsolete!" Alex said.
"It's not like that. That's not true. I just... I just unlocked emotions you stopped yourself from feeling."
"You know you're not making it sound any less impressive," Alex laughed.
"But it isn't!" I exclaimed. "It's not special. I'm not impressive. So stop looking at me like that."
I pulled myself from Felix's lap and went back into the bedroom. I wasn't even sure what I was upset about. But I knew I was right. Because no matter what I could do now, that didn't mean that what I had done was erased. I was still a murderer. A monster.
The fact that Alex hadn't batted an eye to that part of what I had said yesterday was strange. It didn't even seem like that had been on her mind during the night. She seemed to only have focused on the parts that she found cool.
It was even stranger to me that Felix had gone from the extreme of only showing me hatred for the murders to admitting that he loved me without even asking anything about it. And after having heard it all from me, gotten a clear admission to what he had undoubtedly read about. He hadn't even been upset, but instead gone so far as to saying I wasn't a murderer. What potential repressed feelings was he harboring?
And if this Rheseis had been pulling strings all my life, then what was the purpose behind making me a monster? There had to be a reason. What had she gained from it? Would she one day come and force me to kill again?
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