☀️ Sunshine (Pomni x Ragatha)

Chapter 2 - Lifeline

Pomni crinkled her nose. Somehow, the air in her room smelled even staler than yesterday.

Balancing on a wobbly pile of letter blocks, she stretched to reach the sole remaining object atop her cleaned-out dresser. Surely, at least one of the books up there had to be actually readable. Right?

Snatching it, she hopped to the floor and slid her hand across the smooth, untextured cover. She prayed that the pages wouldn't be blank, torn to shreds, or hollowed out and filled with eldritch sludge like the others. Swallowing, she turned the cover, and...

...wingdings. A complete novel written entirely in Wingdings.

Pomni's eye twitched. She'd turned her entire bedroom upside-down in search of something to occupy her unraveling mind — but the living space was, in practice, just a padded cell with a touch of extra flair. The books were only for show. The assortment of toddler toys scattered on the floor seemed to have been placed there just to mock her. The tacky chandelier hurt to look at, and window-bare walls were a silent reminder: No way out.

The sole object that had a practical use was the standing mirror by her bed — and Pomni much preferred that it didn't. Each day, the mirror confronted her with her obnoxious new body. She was a jester. A fool. An entertainer, devoid of wit or talent, whose inherent patheticness was considered a punchline in itself.

Pomni snarled at her reflection; her reflection snarled back. Was that what they thought of her? Pomni the jester: a sad, helpless idiot to be pointed and laughed at? Was that why it was so important for her to smile?

It didn't matter how she really felt, who she really was, or what she really wanted. Like it or not, Pomni was the Amazing Digital Circus' newest wacky character — she was expected to just forget her feelings and play her part, lest she rain on everyone else's parade.

She gripped the novel tightly.

All out of tears, Pomni screamed, hurling the useless book at the mirror with all the force she could muster. The mirror shattered with a tremendous crack, scattering countless shards of polished glass all across the room.

...And for what? She still felt just as terrible.

"I want to go home..." Pomni crumpled breathlessly to the floor, gripping the sides of her head. "Let me out of here! Let me OUT!"

This couldn't be forever. It just couldn't. The exit. She had to find it. The exit. She had to escape. She knew it existed. It had to. Caine was lying. Everyone was. Everyone. There had to be an exit. She saw it. The void. She did. What was on the other side? What was Caine trying to hide from her? He knew something. They all knew something, and she wasn't going to stop until she—"

A horrible, biting pain stabbed the tips of Pomni's fingers, breaking her out of her vicious thought loop. Her twitching gaze leapt to the source.

Black. Her fingers had turned completely black.

"What...?" Pomni whimpered, watching the darkness creep across her trembling palms. The pain was unbearable — but Pomni forgot all about it once a large eye sprouted in the center of her palm, its pupil twitching erratically against a flashing neon white.

"No..." Pomni recoiled. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes. "No, no, no!"

She swore to herself that this couldn't be happening, but even she didn't believe it. Kaufmo had been just like her — driven to madness by the same kafkaesque horror she now found herself trapped in. Just like her, he had holed himself up in his room for days on end. Just like her, he'd searched tirelessly for a way out of the circus.

And the reward for his efforts? He now languished with the other forsaken souls in the cellar, condemned for all time without even his own mind for comfort.