New Beginnings

21. Laura

A woman was talking near her.

She couldn't quite make out the words so whoever they were, she hoped they weren't talking to her. She didn't want to be rude.

The words, though indistinct, were the only thing in her world right now. A something, however vague, leaking into the void of her current mental state.

She focused on them, trying to tune them in like a radio. Eventually they became clear.

"-regained control in the early morning hours and fire fighters were finally free to contain the blaze that almost completely consumed the building's smaller Third Corridor after a helicopter crashed into it earlier in the night. Bodies were found at the scene and two survivors emerged from the gallery around the time of its recapture."

A newscaster, she was near a television, or something similar. Focusing on the words opened the floodgates to further sensations.

She felt soft, which was nice. She must be lying on something, what things were soft? The first thing that came to mind was Carmilla but that wasn't right. A bed, she was on a bed, yeah that made more sense. She could feel something nice on her hand as well, she couldn't quite tell what but it felt familiar.

There were more sounds, a vague bustle of voices and footsteps in the background, some beeping sounds and something that sounded oddly like...

A purr.

Her eyes opened.

She was in a hospital room, lying on a bed with white sheets. The newscaster's voice was coming from a small television mounted in the top left corner of the room. The beeping from a heart rate monitor to her left.

To her right was Carmilla.

The purring had been coming from her. Carmilla had brought a chair right up next to the bed and had leant forward to place both her hands on one of Laura's. Now asleep, her head was down, hair fallen over her face. The purr sounded comfortable and content.

Not all that long ago if someone had told Laura she'd be in love with someone who literally purred sometimes she'd have thought them crazy. Now after being with Carmilla for as long as she had, the purring had normalized so much it would be weird not to hear it every once and awhile.

Right now, there wasn't another sound she'd find more comforting.

A memory of what Carmilla had told her before she blanked out come back to her.

We're fine, we made it.

She kept the words in her mind as she listened to the purrs. It was a good combination, so she shut everything else out. She rolled to over to her side facing Carmilla. There was a door half open to the rest of the hospital wing behind her, people would walk passed it occasionally. She ignored them and watched Carmilla for a while, before falling back to sleep.

The television woke her up again. The same newscaster was talking so she couldn't have been asleep for that long.

"In other news, a bizarre incident in Lavalleja, Uruguay where some kind of unidentified snakelike creature reportedly fell from the sky and landed on a cow grazing..."

She opened her eyes again. This time Carmilla was awake as well and her face lit up at seeing Laura stir. Carmilla took one hand away from Laura's used it to lower the volume on the television with a remote.

"Hey."

"Hey."

Such a simple interaction, one word each, but when combined with the looks on their faces and the way their hands began their customary intertwining, it communicated so much.