MONDAY || AUGUST 2nd || 2021
[Present time]
Elsie De Angelis' POV ~
Visions of blurry leaves and swaying trees floated at the edge of Elsie's subconscious.
She reached out, desperate for the safe embrace of the enchanting landscape, but she couldn't quite get there.
Instead, she floated in the darkness of her own mind, black spots swam around her, flashes of colour coming in and out of focus.
She could almost smell the fresh outdoor air, its scent teasing her confused senses.
Something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
Her mind felt like putty, being pulled and twisted. Not solid enough to form a coherent explanation.
She had been here before.
Or had she?
She couldn't quite remember.
But the garden was sickeningly familiar, like the memory of a dream that fades when you wake.
She tried to step forward, but her body disobeyed, as if she were merely a passenger within herself.
She wasn't in control. Not of this place. Not of anything.
A creeping numbness wrapped around her, dulling the world to a blur of colour and shadow.
Where was the sun? The golden heat against her skin? The soft, cool earth beneath her toes?
She knew they belonged here. She felt it deep in her bones.
But they were missing.
Why couldn't she feel them?
Something unseen stirred in the spaces between thought and silence. A presence, shifting, flickering, brushing against her consciousness like static. It was trying to pull her away.
She resisted.
The effort sent a sharp ringing through her skull, thin and piercing. It stretched, wavered—then fractured into something rougher. A distant caw. One, then another. Croaking. Grating. Endless. The sound curled through the silence, revealing itself in an eerie, discordant chorus.
It didn't seem like it belonged here. Not in this place of quiet beauty.
Blots of pink, yellow, and white blurred against green foliage, coming into focus for only short sharp moments of recognition.
'Flowers,' she realized belatedly. But she could not concentrate, not when the continuous cawing was demanding her attention.
Its source—a great black crow—sat perched on the rim of a fountain, watching. Thick tendrils of moss coiled around its feet, creeping up its slick feathers, as if the earth itself refused to let it leave.
Caw. Caw. Caw.
It's even, repetitive cry rang out over and over, like an omen.
But an omen of what?
She should turn away. She should run. Yet she remained rooted in place, ensnared by the creature's gaze. Its onyx eyes cut into her own—dark and knowing. Unlike the rest of her surroundings—distorted, spinning, incomprehensible—they remained sharp. Unwavering. Fixed on her, as if it understood something she did not.
As if it had been waiting for her.
The thought settled deep into her chest, as cold as it was certain. And the longer they stared at one another—the two lonesome creatures, bound by something she could not name—the more the bird felt like an old friend rather than a foe.
YOU ARE READING
When the Camera's Aren't Rolling || Elizabeth Olsen x Child Star
Fanfiction[Elizabeth Olsen & Robbie Arnett adoption story] There's a common misconception that each of the seven billion people on this earth have seven doppelgängers. Seven separate people with no biological relation, who all look more-or-less the same, but...
