❛ 𝔦 𝔡𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔰𝔴𝔦𝔪 𝔣𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯, 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔦𝔱'𝔰 𝔠𝔬𝔩𝔡 𝔦'𝔡 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔱𝔬 𝔡𝔦𝔢. ❜
→ * . & ━━ a girl by the name
of sar, who can walk through dreams, finds
herself drawn to her hometown and into a
bigger m...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE NEXT MORNING SAR WOKE UNDER RAYS OF SUNLIGHT. They lit her eyelashes silver. She groaned in pain, lifting an aching hand to her face. Her head was pounding. Small bruises were spattered over the back of her hands, coating her thin fingers. She could feel them rising on her face. When she pressed a hand to the edge of her nose she grimaced. That one hurt.
It happened whenever she used too much energy. Blood vessels burst beneath the skin, leaving painful bruises in the aftermath. She reached up another hand to touch them.
They'd made it back home safely after that. She'd been fine enough to walk inside, stumbling up the stairs with only the slightest bit of help from Steve. She hadn't even bothered to take off her clothes — simply just tumbling into bed. She'd been asleep by the time she hit the pillow.
Steve entered as Sar was forcing herself up slowly. She'd made herself much more comfortable in his house. The books he was lending her were making a little pile beside her mattress, and she had her things neatly arranged around the mess of his room. They'd even dug out a place for her to place her growing mass of clothes in his closet.
He was wearing a concerned expression on his face, holding a steaming cup of what seemed to be hot chocolate. Her eyes were slitted as she looked up at him, narrowed from the sunlight. Her lips were twisted into a downturned grimace. Steve leant down, passing her the warm mug. She smiled at it, "Thank you."
"What happened back there, Sar?" his voice was soft as he sat on the edge of her mattress. She cupped the hot chocolate in her sore hands. Her eyes focused on it for a moment. So it was time to talk about it.
He'd seen what had happened. There was no doubt about that. He knew, that somehow, she had made those men collapse. She could lie to him about it... come up with something, anything. But she didn't feel up to doing that. It would just trap her in another web of lies.
Sar could feel how good his intentions were. He wanted to find out what this monster was; what was going on in this town; what had happened to those kids. But she wasn't a fortune-teller. And she couldn't tell how he'd react to her truth.
Sar placed the hot chocolate down beside her mattress. Steve was looking at her with even more concerned now. Sar crossed her legs and straightened herself. "This... this, number." She extended her wrist out. She felt his eyes on it. "It's a brand. I was— I'm... I was an experiment in the lab." Her voice was very quiet in the silence that was enveloping Steve's room. If anything went wrong, she could always make him forget — right? "It's not like I was created there or anything," she added quickly. "I was stolen as a child, they got rid of my memories... I don't remember anything really from before then. I know I used to live here. Sometimes I get flashbacks." She shrugged her shoulders, as if the fact she couldn't remember her childhood was nothing at all. "The number... it's the number experiment I am. It's true, there are 12 of us... was, at one point. And they are my siblings. Perhaps not biologically, but they've always been there for me." There was a vulnerability in her voice that Steve had never heard before.
