Marionette

Skies, Chapter Twenty Four - Kage [影]

Every time she took one step forward, it always felt like she was pushed two steps back.

Every single time she tried to reach out for an answer, she was always knocked so far back she couldn't climb back up again.

Dancing in the darkness of dreamless slumber, it was all chaos inside of her.

It was easy when she was the one getting hurt, because she never felt like she was all that important.

She never felt like her own feelings mattered - If it was between herself and those she cared about, she rathered take all harm and heartache just so they wouldn't feel the pain.

But now that everything was ripped out of her control, she found she couldn't take it anymore.

Dreamless slumber yielded her no answers to the questions that plagued her, though it did do something else.

When she awoke sometime Friday morning lying beneath the covers of her own bed, she felt her heart crack yet again as everything came flooding back to her.

It was some time in the obscenely early hours of the morning, and she found she couldn't fall back to sleep again.

Her emotions drowned all sleep out of her, to the point where she had no recourse but to lift herself out of bed and disappear into the empty living quarters of the apartment.

It left her a lot of time to dwell within her own thoughts without Reiko being awake to see it, alone in the dark of the apartment where she didn't have to pull a smile or a brooding frown across her face just to look remotely normal.

She could sit there alone and let the brunt of her emotions show for once across her face.

The thoughts inside her head that gave form to words dancing on the tip of her tongue were evident, churning around with the incessant questions everything kept throwing at her.

They burned her tongue and her throat, much like they were made of acid.

Almost in torture, as punishment for her lack of understanding, they prodded and burned, and there was nothing she could do.

The only relief was the lapping tides of her inner world, if only for a moment.

Letting the waters overflow only served as a temporary relief - The burning hurt even more once she'd let the tides do their will.

Somewhere around sunrise, movement came to Amaya's ears, though she didn't flinch or react to it.

Light, familiar footsteps she could recognise without truly trying came to her notice, and a pair of small, thin arms wrapped around Amaya's neck from behind.

'Amay?' Reiko mumbled sleepily, nuzzling her head against Amaya's shoulder lightly.

'Mmm?'

'We still have some bleach ... so can I make your hair white again?' She questioned.

She was silent at first, almost as if she was contemplating her sisters words.

'... Sure.' She eventually responded.

She vaguely registered that Reiko had dragged her into the bathroom sometime after her agreement, though like the night before, very little actually stood out enough for her to recall.

Not even the noxious scent of hair-bleach really made that much of an impact on Amaya's memory, even though she felt rather faint and nauseas for the whole time.

It was by the time that Amaya had managed to free herself of the noxious-smelling substance that she recalled just why she'd never bothered to get the purple colour out of her hair.