Subconscious - Awake

9

A faint globe of golden light encased the girl that was now sitting up once more. Her eyes were closed, as if still asleep, her skin flecked with gold. Strands of light were warped around her figure like strips of liquid glass. The rest of the room darkened as if the light was being sucked out, gradually dimming everything else into a void. In the sphere of light now spun ribbons of molten rays, gleaming with power and heat, leaving the rest of the room cold.

Ben blinked back the stinging in his eyes. Reese's face held nothing but a look of complete solace—utter peace, the face of rest.

Ben closed his eyes too, silently prayed, and opened them again.

Nope. Still there.

Did she know? Was she aware of the light coming from her? Was she even awake?

A dull thud sounded from across the room, now pitch black save for the ball of brilliance in the middle. Ben squinted—a wasted effort—and found that all he could seem to keep his eyes on was her. His eyes ached, similar to the pain after staring at the sun for too long. His sight kept blurring, losing focus. He couldn't think. The light was burning into his mind. He couldn't—

Someone bumped his arm dragging all of his sense back to him. He turned finally able to look somewhere else.

Adam mumbled an apology as Ben could finally make out his friend's eyes, glowing with the luminescence pouring out from Reese. His warm earthy brown eyes beheld her like a flame, curious yet infatuated—evidence that Ben was in fact still sane. Or both of them had lost their senses.

But just to be sure, "you are seeing this, correct?"

"Yes," Adam and Nurse Netty replied in unison. Ben had forgotten that she was there.

Another thud from somewhere in the room—a shuffle. The three of them scoured the quarters to find the source of the noise but it seemed to come from everywhere.

And that's when Ben saw the chair.

The thing was across the way, forcing him to look at it through the fluorescent bubble of light. Regular wood, probably pine, an odd addition to the plastic and metal theme of the rest of the room. But that wasn't what caught his eye. No, the odd thing was its position. Bennet, at a loss of words, came to the most unexplainable conclusion that this chair was in fact...floating.

Reese's hands were outstretched, strings of light protruded from her fingertips, striking the sphere's inner shell in the direction of the chair. Like the strings of a marionette doll, each twist of her fingers brought a new object to suspend in the air.

The solitude remained on her face as all of the furniture levitated higher.

Scrape after scrape every single inanimate object in the room lost contact with the ground save for the bed she still perched on. Ben glanced around in wonder and something else— something that coiled in his stomach and made him shiver a little—fear. This was new, unknown, and that fact alone was frightening.

No not this, Reese was something unknown. Inhuman. Unnatural—

She opened her eyes.

Her irises pooled with gold, two melted suns glowing with intensity as they slowly searched the room for something.

They stopped on Adam.

Ben felt his friend shift nervously, as any prey would whilst staring into the face of a new predator.

Long seconds ticked by before Reese moved. Ben almost missed it. Quick and sudden, her hand extended towards Adam, her translucent sphere expanding to compensate for the stretch and she curled her fingers as if grabbing something only she could see.