Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 6 ~ Imogen's Song (IX)

Imogen was drowning in a sky of blue that stretched on in such a way that made her think it was the ocean she floundered in without aim instead of empty atmosphere. Her feet were firmly rooted to the ground, no doubt about that, but her hands constantly swung out from her own body, thwacking at giant leaves that threatened to smother her in welcoming, swatting at friendly flies that merely wished to take chunks out of her skin. But she never focused in on the leaves, never truly noticed the insects flitting around her. Her sights were locked on a perfect blue high up above, one that threatened to come dropping down and become a suffocating liquid. It took her breath away, and all she could think was: I'm drowning.

So she walked on in hopes that she'd come across an air pocket (maybe a canopy of leaves that blocked out the sky altogether). And it seemed, only in the situation of drowning the way she was, that dying put a spring in her step, a light bounce upon her toes as she sped her way through the jungle. Oversized flowers and miniature trees lined her path, along with bread butterflies and little birds with flutes as beaks. They whistled out the delicate mashing of fingers on piano keys, and to say Imogen was confused would've been an understatement. But did she really care? No, not if you were expelling every thought from her mind, which, again, dying tended to do time and time again.

So she walked.

After a time of silence, something broke it, and naturally it takes a while to realize the silence has been broken when you're not concerned with it, so when Imogen discovered this, she wondered exactly how long the soft hum of a horribly graceful voice had been filling the nothingness of sound. For once, she tore her gaze away from the bright blue of the sky and looked around, pausing to see herself in the center of a clearing, a small one at that. And fringing that clearing, only a few feet from her own, were giant flowers that flicked their petals like the blinking of eyelids, that spread their leaves to flaunt their skinny figures, that tossed their massive flowery heads to keep a few floppy petals out of their eyes.

They were all different shades of blue. Baby blue, navy blue, cyan blue, neon blue, every hue imaginable surrounded her. And although these flowers held torn - there were tears where the mouth should've been - expressions of confidence, there was something melancholic about them. Maybe it was the way those eyelid-petals were turned down, or maybe the way the shredded mouths parted in a frown whenever they went to sing a few notes, whether they be stunningly low or miraculously high.

"Hey, hey" - it was a repeating set of words Imogen finally managed to decipher. She rose a brow at the giant plants around her. Why am I not surprised? They've already dropped us from the sky, sent a boy from a mirror to talk to me, attacked me with tiny demon children, and given me a hand of cards to play with. Like, life-sized cards. She shook her head as she turned in a circle to stare at each flower. I hate Go-Fish.

Briefly she thought back to the boy from the mirror. Some part of her wants to speak to him again, to drink in the warmth he'd given off, both literal and metaphorical. She wanted to listen to what he had to say and not want to worry about whether he was deceiving her or not - she knew he wouldn't. He would spin a wild tale and leave her on the brink of death only to snap his fingers and make the illusion disappear.

He could've taken her to a whole different world, and maybe that's what Imogen wanted.

The tune of the flowers increased in volume, but all she could do was think of where she could possibly find a mirror to yell at until a soft face appeared in the surface. The words they sung meant nothing.

That is, until they sung her name. "Imogen Blue."

Naturally, she froze in her place, breath catching on the way up her windpipe. "Imogen Green."