Lotus

Chapter 19

Silence. Not a sound was made. I watched different faces swim in and out of view, each with a different emotion. Fear. Concern. Anger.

There was a twitch in one of the pastel ones, and then it's on the ground. An explosion of noise followed it, slamming into my head. Colors spun around me like a cyclone. Focus.

The colors turned into dragons, which were in chaos. The noise burrowed itself deeper into my head, and I started to see little white stars. I blinked hard, wiping them away. Quiet! I think I can fix this.

The noise dissolved, and with it out of my head, a list came forward. I made myself concentrate on the words instead of letting them turn to gibberish. I'm then at the shelves again, digging around for what the list said.

Time seemed to slow with the speed of my heartbeat, and I could feel my muscles start to weaken. I picked up a bottle with pale green contents, but it slipped out of my talons. A dark red flash grabbed it before it hit the floor.

I did the same thing with the next few bottles, and the dark red one took them out of my talons before I had the chance to drop them again. I moved over to a small counter. Focus. 

I let the instructions materialize in my mind, then took the stoppers out of the bottles. With a bit more help from the dark red one again, I got them out. I delicately placed one of the leaves on the flat stone in front of me, and I could see that my talons were shaking. I forced them to still.

It was then as if my mind had detached from my body. I watched as my limbs moved automatically without me, adding small seeds and crushing them to a paste. Sprinkling something purple over the top. Mixing in something orange.

My talons started shaking again, so I tapped a bottle with blue sloshing around inside. Three drops. The soft plinks echoed through my ears as the dark red one picked it up and poured out three drops. I mixed everything again.

White stars began popping up in my vision again. I blinked once. Still there. Twice. Focus. I took a deep breath in, and let it shakily out.

"Keep going."

I didn't know who said that, but it jolted me back to the work I hadn't realized I had stopped. My limbs were moving without me, faster than before. Somehow, they knew that there wasn't much time left. 

There was soon a loud pounding on my head, scattering my thoughts as I tried to keep a grip on everything. Focus. Except it didn't work. I had no sense of my limbs anymore.

I then was suddenly on the ground. I watched as the blurry colors floated around me, shifting slowly with each painful pulse of my heart. Dark red flitted on the outskirts of my vision, barely moving. I saw flickers of white stars again, so I tried to take a breath. It was thin, so much so that I almost choked on it.

The stars then began to multiply, almost vibrating as they started to get brighter and brighter. Something white with pale green appeared behind them, but then it was gone. The stars grew in size, increasing in brightness until all I could see was a white that seared into my eyes, into my head, into everything.

Then, a thick, inky black started pooling in from every side, covering all of the white until there was nothing left.