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TRAPPED, WAS HER BREATH within the columns of her throat, skin torn from the grating shrills and screams of the prior night. Even now, the sun & her body are a never-ending love story; through the floor to ceiling windows and upon the rippled bedsheets where Jun lays looking ever so fragile ( how rare ) as delicate as wet dragonfly wings.
She longed to sink deeper into her bed, to be swallowed, to drown. But confusion halts her thoughts, how she got here and when drives her into sitting up right. She knows where she is: in her bed, in her room, at her Aunt Jaqueline's apartment, recognizes it instantly yet unable to comprehend how she arrived. An ache panged at her temples, her head a murky landscape of fragmented memories as though they were puzzle pieces that didn't join to form the complete picture. She recalls the previous night, the hung girl with gouged out eyes, the sight stains behind her eyelids like black coffee spills on pristine cotton collars.
Jun gets up out of her bed, still dressed in the same dark wash jeans and black t-shirt, her feet make ripples within the sun pools upon the wooden floorboards as she makes her way towards the door.
She stops halfway.
Instead deciding to head to her bedroom table, cultured and disorganized with notebooks that have pages ripped out of them, colored pens strewn about & empty pads of sticky notes. Amid the clutter was a baby angel cradling a harp and as Jun's fingers curved around the smooth edges of the cream stone, she found it to be fairly heavy, albeit small considering it was the length of her hand; inscribed in small characters along the length of its foot was 'AND THE ANGELS, THEY SING'.
Jun recognized it as her own hand writing.
A shuffle beyond her bedroom door interrupted her inquiring gaze, she left her room and descended the two steps where the sunlight bled in wisps of gold across the white walls of the apartment— into the living room first and then the kitchen that was to her left. Aunt Jaqueline moved with haste behind the marble island, so distracted in fact that it took her a couple minutes to notice Jun's presence ( then again, that was the norm ).
A smile starts upon the teen's lips, there's a subtle relief in her chest at laying her eyes upon a familiar face after a horrific night and her lips part to speak, but she's swiftly interrupted.
"Good, you're awake." Her aunt doesn't maintain eye contact for long, "The Institute called and I had to somewhat explain to them why their second-year representative was unable to attend the welcoming ceremony, all the while sweet talking the Chief of Police into keeping this whole thing out of the public's eye." Everything is followed by an exasperated sigh, as if all that her Aunt had gone through was physically draining and burdening.
