Y is for Yarn
Yarn: thread made of natural or synthetic fibers and used for knitting and weaving.
It fills the room, so many colors crammed into one space, a display of fireworks all going off at once.
There's so much, too much. It twists and turns and there's no end and no beginning, nothing but snakes that writhe on the ground and spit a rainbow of poison.
Rainbow poison, rainbow snakes.
It's everywhere, covering the floor, draping over her bed. Piles shoved into corners and under her bunk, swallowing her clothes and pencils and papers.
It's out of control and she can't contain it. She thought she could, but she can't. It rolled away from her, unraveling to become thousands of loops and curls and spirals.
It surrounds her, leaving her stranded, crouched in the middle of her bed. If she tries to get up it will grab her and pull her down. It's carnivorous, and she should never have trusted it.
She can't escape, and she can't wait for it to coil itself back up, snakes retreating to find better prey than the little mouse with big eyes. It will always be there, watching her. Waiting. Like the hair, but not like the hair. The hair can be contained. The snakes cannot.
She does the only thing she can think of. She screams for Simon.
He comes running, all loud footsteps and shouting mind. Opens the door and trips and falls headlong into the snake pit.
They cover him, filling his mouth and crawling over his face. He sputters and sits up, dislodging multi-colored snakes. They don't bite him, of course they don't. Traitors.
"River?" he asks, bewildered. He doesn't understand how the snakes crawled onboard, how they survived the coldness of space.
He comes to her and sits next to her, shoving away the snakes. Puts his arm around her and lets her bury her face in his neck.
"Simon, there's so. Much. Yarn."