One night the hotel kept her awake. She doesn’t really need to sleep. In fact, her body is designed to go weeks without sleep, so this is not unusual. The more worrying thing is, one morning she tried to wash her hands and the smell of soap made her mind unfocus, and the next thing she knew she was back in bed gasping for air, and then she was either sleeping or wishing to be asleep, alternating, for the rest of the day.
Her projections are at the most unhealthy they’ve ever been. An idea that calms her is the beauty of God’s creation destroyed. She imagines a lighter in her hands, a nuclear flame. The trees have rotted already, one by one around her. On Pegasus, she used to sleep on the fallen branches as they died. A pile of red-brown foliage crinkled underneath her like a makeshift bed, and she crushed a handful of papery leaves in her hand, and they whispered, “thank you, thank you for letting us go.”
A small fire endures pleasantly in the center of her mind. This is her choice: when does the fire grow, and how far, and will there be anything left?- Glass Slipper by nicoleanell
(Source: velificantes, via nicoleanell)
