one: awakening

Click.

That calculated sound of metal brushing against metal was enough to rouse her from sleep. There was a distinct lack of noise here; save for her breathing and an ever-present, strange metallic clinking, there were no sounds, even filtering through the walls.

‘Dreams. Odd dreams.’ Her cloudy mind plodded the path of her dreams again, wondering over the vague images of gold globes wrapped lovingly in black. It was a strange enough dream, and she would have thought so, had she anything to compare it to.

Her brain hurt. Thinking was a chore, and the thoughts that did manage to filter through her grogginess were muddled and incomplete.

She waited. Waited her brain to wake, waited for her thoughts to sort themselves out into an organized fashion. Waited for the dull, throbbing headache to subside.

She lay, rather comfortably, in an oversized bed, the sheets and comforter radiating her warmth back to her. Shifting, stretching lazily, she glanced at the curve of the ceiling, an unbroken pool of concave eggshell-white. When she turned her head slowly to the left, ever careful of her throbbing skull, her eyes met with nothing but more blank wall, spanning the length of bed with no artistic interruption. She glanced down, then up, seeing nothing of interest. To the right there was a tiny bed stand, painted predictably in white, and resting within easy reach. A strange machine rested there, alternately clicking and purring, a short length of tube running from its innards and connected to a needle protruding from the smooth, olive skin of her shoulder.

She blinked at it for a moment, her dull mind unable to comprehend, numb from her slumber. She stared at the pink liquid as it slithered along the tubing in time with her breathing, disappearing as it squirmed through the needle and into her veins.

With fingers that trembled, she grasped the silvery contraption wrapped around her arm, yanking the needle from her flesh. Her mind registered pain, briefly, blood bubbling to the surface.

Slowly, but as quickly as she could manage, she sat up, closing her eyes against the pain. ‘Where is this place? How did I get here?’ She pondered over the idea, fingers pressed into the ache at her temples. ‘Who am I?’

A low rumble of uncertainty began to shake her body. Tears streamed down her face, burning hot lines down the stiff skin of her cheeks as she tried to remember. Anything: her age, her birthday, her likes, her dislikes, for goodness sake, even her name.

A rush of panic accompanied her realization that she had nothing, remembered nothing. This new-found terror pushed her to her feet, and she stood there swaying, wiping tears away with an impatient hand. Any coherence she may have gained since waking shattered under the strain of this discovery, and she lost all desire but to get out.

She needed air, to leave the sudden oppressive claustrophobia of this colorless room.

The sheets and comforter slithered off of her skin, leaving her standing naked on a cold, plastic floor. ‘Clothes. I wish I had clothes.’ She felt vulnerable, pressing her arms across her chest in a vain attempt to steal back some of the heat she’d lost the moment she stepped out of the coma of linens.

She glanced down at the bed, looking for storage underneath, but finding nothing. Frustrated, she nibbled absently at the thin line of her thumbnail, searching the remainder of her room. The very act of moving, searching, calmed her nerves, albeit slightly; she settled carefully on her knees to look under the raised platform of the bed, but found nothing.

She stood slowly, blinking black spots from her vision. ‘Where else to look?’ She turned away from the bed, scanning the remaining space in the room.

‘Was that there before?’ Her mind demanded, shocked, as her eyes settled on a small box on the floor next to the nightstand. She leaned down, wary and slow, to shift through the contents of the box. The lid slid open without a fight and settled on the ground soundlessly. ‘Cloth; that looks like cloth. Clothing.’ She garments were strange looking, but suitable for her purposes. She pulled them out, one by one, pulling on each layer with a bit of difficultly and a lot of adjusting.

She had to sit down once dressed, on the edge of the bed to catch her breath.

The moments ticked by as her lungs resettled into a more manageable pattern, and she watched the door, studying its handle with curious eyes. She stood with heavy effort, shuffling carefully to the door in the new, protective plastic soles of her shoes. Reaching for the handle, she rested shivering fingers on the cold screen of the door panel, pressing her ear against the icy metal of the door; she heard no noise from the other side. She studied the door handle, before pressing her fingers into the slot and whispering “open.” The door slid open as she choked on the word, coughing out into the silence.

Nothing stirred on the other side of the panel as it slid open, and she slid forward, her feet trepid and unsure. The thick plastic flooring bled out into this second room, muffling her footsteps; she made little noise as she stepped into the room enough to glance around. The room was decorated, or lacked decoration, much like the first, save for a long, low white couch instead of a bed, and a wide picture window that displayed a thick pane of blackness. There was another door across the room, and she shuffled past the couch toward it.

A man lay across the white fabric of the couch, and her breath hissed through her teeth as she saw the wide gold iris of his eyes. Wavy, platinum hair tumbled across his vision. Before her body even had time to react, she was blinded.

Gold, ribbons of gold, silvering and slicing through a thick blanket of ebony.

She had to blink to shake off the vision that clouded her eyes. ‘What the hell was that?’ It reminded her distantly of her dreams, the ones with the glided spheres and the black ribbons. She wondered vaguely is they had anything in common as her sight cleared.

The man lay across the couch, still and silent, as he had before. She could see now that his hair was far longer than she’d originally thought; it fell to his ears in thick, white curls, but halfway down to his shoulders, the color shifted to a glossy black, disappearing against the rough ebon of his jacket. ‘His eyes,’ she realized, belatedly. ‘His eyes were open.’ Now the jagged line of his lashes rested on the cool white of his cheek; he lay there, relaxed and obviously asleep.

She shuffled past him, some inborn response forcing her to get away from him. With one last glance at the sleeping figure, she pressed her fingers against the door panel and slid out of the door, into the unfamiliar.

The world outside was black. Black, punctuated with yellowy stars. Several moons hung in the skies, multi-hued and shifting in the airy midnight. The cloudless view of the sky filled her with an overwhelming sense of awe, and she pressed her fingers against the porch railing as the wind curled over her body. The cold air cleared her mind, amped her consciousness.

She wondered vaguely where she was.

She hummed, happily breaking the windy silence with the tuneless sound of her own voice.

The low horizon was littered with wild silhouettes, some reaching blindly high into the sky. Lights flickered over the buildings, and she watched, stunned by beauty, her sluggish mind unable to form thoughts below the stunning beauty of the sky.

Perhaps she should have been trying to escape, but all thoughts of the strange white room and the long black figure with gold eyes had abandoned her, leaving nothing in its place but awed exhaustion.

She shuffled forward again, her feet running over the strange, poreless concrete that covered the porch. Wrapping her cloak a little closer around her, she plodded onward, into the great darkness and the unknown.