Ravenna

2nd Copy and Paste

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Ravenna
"I was just leaving," the woman said, after a longer than necessary pause to find the English. Normally, switching from Cherokee to English was second nature, but for some reason, her tongue really wanted to speak Spanish.
She started rubbing the red mark on her arm, like one does when something is sore. Looking down, she expected to find a bruise forming, but instead found her mark, reddened like a sunburn.
So that's where she had gotten it from; her soul had branded itself when she accidentally created the paradox between herselves.
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(Professor)
The strange woman started to pull her cloak around her, and as she did, parts of her started disappearing. First, it was her head, then the left side. The professor just stared in amazement as the woman vanished from view in front of him, almost missing as she made a grab for Marina. Thunder roared and lightning struck illuminating the room as the storm outside broke, leaving the professor staring at empty space, scratching his beard.
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(Nurse's Cubicle)
"She's just . . .on the floor. Completely limp," the first girl recounted,
"Her eyes were open, but she didn't look like she was . . . .seeing anything, you know?" Girl #2
"How did she pass out this time?" Seriously, how many times was this girl going to pass out in the past month? Already she was up to five, seven if you counted her two episodes in gym last Tuesday.
"She just . . .fell out of her desk?"Girl # 1 took over, shooting a look to her companion for confirmation, "Like she was fine-"
"Well, as "fine" as she has been, "#2 clarified.
"- and then she started tipping . . .," # 1 miming the slow "tipping" Christina had done apparently, as she talked.
" . . . And her head hit the corner of the desk. Then Abbey tried to shake her shoulder-" girl #2
"After calling her name a couple times,"girl #1 inserted, apparently for clarification.
"- and she wouldn't wake up," Girl #2 finished.
Thunder rumbled outside, threatening rain.

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"-No, not that I know of, why do you ask?" The glass plate paused mid air as her arm stopped, her daughter didn't take any medications that she was aware of, except for the occasional shot of fermented corn, but she wasn't going to mention that. She put the glass plate where it belonged, watching the sunshine as it broke through the dark, threatening clouds for a few seconds before disappearing again, as it had all day.
"Because she's currently passed out in her English classroo- oh! What the Hell?"
What? Delilah heard the crash of a chair and what she assumed was the phone falling to the ground.
"Hello, hello, Mrs. -"
"WHAT THE HELL?!" Came a tinny voice through the landline, mingled with two high pitched screams.
"Christina? Christina!" A panicked tinny voice.
Oh dear Lord, what had that girl done now. Last week she'd given herself two concussions, one by falling down, the next by trying to get back up.
She picked up a wine glass. Oddly, there seemed to be a lot of those in the sink, and she knew only a limited number of people drank that in this household.

Delilah heard that distinct sound of someone who couldn't, trying to breath in the background.

The mother's heart stopped.

The telephone fell to the counter.
She heard, but she couldn't believe.
The wine glass shattered in her hand, not noticing the shards as they filletted her skin.
Not now. Nononononononono. Not her only girl. She'd just gotten her back.
"Ta-tsu-wa,"she was dying, her only daughter was dying and she was stuck here, in her kitchen.
A gurgling scream pierced her ears, from the second floor.

"Christina?!" She called, not really expecting an answer as she bolted for the back stairs, her heart in her throat.
"Christina!" Desperation laced her voice as she made it up to the second story of the house. Delilah felt as if she was in one of those bad dreams where the dreamer can only move in slow motion as she made her way to her daughter's door. She swung to a stop, leaving bloody smears on the door frame. The warm sunlight drifted through her daughter's floor to ceiling windows to bathe her in a golden glow as her body violently seized on the bed, pink foam flying from her mouth as she was flung all over. Her daughter's face was smeared in blood, but Delilah couldn't discern from where. She could only see that her daughter was struggling to get a breath. This was not a vision. This was her only daughter dying before her eyes.
"Christina!?" this time with a touch of hysteria and no hope of an answer, as she struggled through the dense cloud of confusion and desperation laced with fear.
She became dimly aware of footsteps behind her, one of her sons cursed, but she was too focused on her daughter to care who.
"-ass- torrr,"Her daughter croaked out, as she was dropped to the bed, immobile.
Before Delilah could get to the other side of the room, a cloud drifted and her daughter disappeared with the warm sunlight, leaving the room in stormy darkness. She lunged for the bed, but strong arms caught her around the waist.
"You can't follow her, you know that," Sam told her, but again, she barely heard him, focussing on the last spot her daughter had been, now bathed in shadows.
Thunder shook the house as agony tore its wordless cry from her lungs, breaking the storm.
Delilah collapsed in her son's arms, numb, as the rain drenched the house.
"Ta-tsu-wa," her baby girl.
Rose- er, Aimee- stuck her head around the door frame with a "hey" before waddling in, her big belly leading the way.
"Christina will be fine, she'll be back before you know it, she always is," Aimee assured her mother-in-law.
"That wasn't a vision, tsi-is." Delilah said, sans emotion, unable to lift her head.
"I know, Lily," her voice wasn't unkind, and Delilah looked up. Seeing Ro-Aimee's expression, it made her wonder again how exactly Rose and her daughter knew each other.
"What's an 'Ass-torr' ?" Sam asked, interrupting her musings.
Delilah had no clue, she glanced at her daughter-in-law, well more or less Rose's, no, Aimee's, silhouette cast by the hall light into the dark room.
She really needed to get this down, Sam wasn't supposed to know the girl's real name. Something about it endangering his life, which Delilah of course had thought was all bull-hockey, until Chrys had assured her it was better Sammy didn't know her name, though she never had explained why. . .
"Umm . . .That's a 'who', I heard her talking with him on the phone about Lawyer-y stuff once. Other than that, I don't know," Rose confessed, biting her bottom lip. "She really doesn't talk about that stuff much. Wait! He has an English accent and apparently, if he were thirty years younger, he'd be REALLY attractive-her words, not mine," Rose finished, smirking at what must have been an amusing memory of Chrys confiding this to her while holding her hands in an "I'm innocent" way towards her husband.
"What do you mean by 'that stuff'?" Sam asked, after rolling his eyes.
"Her never-ending job as a one-way tour guide for the dead," Nate appeared in the doorway, his hair in every which direction, still half asleep.