Everything is dark.
Cold.
I'm kind of terrified. I don't know where I am or how I got here. The walls of the alley are covered in mirrors, and the face that looks back from where I am meant to be is completely alien.
Not because it looks wrong, just because it doesn't look familiar.
I don't know my own name, I realise, terror coursing through me. A mirror to my right shatters, and glass shards cascade onto the cobbled road. I jump to avoid being cut, and pick one of them up.
It is like a knife in shape, and I peer at myself in it.
I have green, almond-shaped eyes, and dark hair, cut short with a ragged... knife, or something, it looks like. My skin is caramel-coloured, and there is a vaguely exotic slant to my eyebrows that gives the impression of haughtiness. Safety... self-assuredness.
It's odd, to analyse my own appearance this way. Surely this isn't... how it's meant to be. But memories, they should follow me like a shadow.
(Darkness. Somehow I'm certain that there's darkness, and lots of it.)
But they don't. My mind is blank. I have no idea how I got here, or why, or what for.
Terror surges through me again, like goosebumps down my spine, and I force it back. I have to stay calm. Closing my fist around the shard of glass – after all, it's where I first saw my own appearance – blood springs from the several cuts it slices into my palm. I ignore them.
An inhuman shriek.
Coming from behind me.
I run.
Adrenaline pulses through my palms, and my movements are jerky. Insufficient for the speed I know is necessary to escape this creature. (I don't know how I know it, either.) It's like... I've seen it before. But then how would I know what... if I can't remember anything?
Sevelyn.
It's a sevelyn.
They can't be outrun. They are the fastest thing on this Earth. I hear it crashing through the glass behind me, shrieking again, and stop.
Freeze
utterly
in
place.
I don't know what I'm doing. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. But the world – it chagnes colour. Everything takes on a violet tint to the right, and a golden tint to the left. In the centre it is black-and-white. Pale, anaemic.
Everything slows, and I don't know what's happening. But I've lost my lead. I have to trust this impulse.
I turn. Face the sevelyn. Its head is tall and graceful on its snaky neck, and its legs are tall and scaled. It looks like a dragon. Dragons are slow.
I call to it, and there is a sudden register of shock in its eyes. I don't know what colour they are. It is in the centre. The white zone. There, it is in my zone of power.
I point one hand, and move it in a dreamy circle. Closer, I beckon, and it obeys.
How am I controlling it?
I point down. It bows its head. Then I point away from me. In the other direction.
It runs, I shiver, the world darkens. I hear music.
My vision has returned to normal, everything whole and properly coloured. But I ache, almost, for the violet, the amber, the white. I felt so... certain then, and at the moment that's as close as I am to a memory.
