Divided Attention

Chapter 4: Black Eyes, Black Orbs

                I woke up with a single sensation: hot.

                I was still drowsy to the point of passing back out, and my eyes didn’t want to open. It took effort to try and bring up my head off of the pillow, and even that I could barely do. Everything was hard to move and my brain wasn’t comprehending the intense amount of heat that I was feeling. That was until I saw the flames.

                When my eyes finally opened, I saw red, orange and yellow flames licking all around the room. I could barely breathe, and I immediately coughed violently. Maki was pushing me around, trying to wake me up. Then, he went over to Kitty to try and do the same thing. As I tried to sit up through my lack of being able to breathe and coughing, Kitty started to stir.

                My chest felt like it was going to explode. How long had we been in this fire? Were we really about to sleep through it? My limps still felt like they weren’t even there, so as I got up off of the bed, I stumbled and almost fell on a patch of wood that looked like it was about to cave in. Clicks and cracks came from the flickering flames, making me think that it wasn’t exactly safe being on the second floor.

                “Mi… Mizu!” I looked back at her, and she had gotten to a window and opened it. How she had moved so quickly, I didn’t know, but I stumbled around, trying to follow her. Smoke filled the air, making me lose track of where I was going at some points in time.

                Kitty was halfway out the window trying to get away from the smoke, and when I got there, she was actually starting to fall. She didn’t seem to realize it until the last minute until she screamed loudly. I found that very impressive, taken that there was so much smoke in the air, but I didn’t think that it was very impressive when she took hold of my shirt and pulled me down with her.

                I landed with a thud on the ground. My vision was spotty, and I was looking up at stars when it came back to normal. It was still dark out and I couldn’t see any lights around my vision other than the burning down building. It took my mind a little bit to realize that the building was also falling.

                “Oh sh—!”

                I grabbed Kitty, who was still coughing up a storm on the ground and was not paying attention to the complex and bolted with her in my arms. I didn’t realize it, but Maki somehow appeared by my side at the cliff. We kept our back to it as I set her down to look at it. I suddenly didn’t feel as tired as I did previously.

                “What happened?” she asked, obviously shaken.

                “I have no clue,” I replied honestly. What had happened? I didn’t understand it in the slightest. What happened to the the people inside? Did they get hurt? Did they even get out? I had no clue, especially since we were under some kind of sleep spell when we were in the beds. I had no dought in my mind that we would have been easily killed if we had stayed there any longer.

                I was wheezing heavily, trying to regain the air that my lungs lost. It was hard, and I wished that there was some way that I could at least breathe easier. Even with my hands on my knees and looking down at the grass, I was able to hear steps coming towards us. I looked up, and gave a gasp that almost gave me a heart attack.

                Gelly was walking towards us, a sword in her hand. I wasn’t able to see into her eyes that were once a bright green, mostly because of the fact that her eyes were completely black. There were smudge stains on her dress and black marks on her face and blonde hair. It was almost hard to see, but she didn’t seem to care. She just seemed intent on us.