Introspection
Chapter Three: A Time to Talk
Her eyes couldn't open; the layers of built-up salt had crusted her eyes shut. She tried to crack her eyes open, but a few grains feel into her eyes. Lily tightened them again and rubbed the crusty tear residue off with her fingertips after taking a glove off. As soon as she finished, she opened her eyes –
– and froze.
In front of her was a huge, angry-looking unicorn. His long horn was brandished like a spear, pearly red in the reflected light of the mirror-like snow in the dawn. A vaporous puff of crystalline mist rose from his equine nostrils as they flared open enough to reveal the red mucous tissue. His cloven hooves left deep imprints into the snow as he stalked away madly, glistening white sides shining in the brilliance of the snow and its own silver luster, sleek and glossy.
The unicorn was gone and Lily let out a bated breath of relief, the fog dissipating in the crisp winter air. Her Gryffindor scarf was wound about her neck again. She frowned; she hadn't done that, and yet there it was, tangled around her throat. A sad smile graced her mouth when her romantic mind contemplated some divine meaning behind the incident. The wistful smile turned sarcastic when her belly gave a haughty grumble.
"Shut up," she snapped playfully. "If I had the food to feed you, I swear I would've by now."
It growled its displeasure again so strongly she felt her intestines squelch.
Lily ignored it valiantly, until at last it silenced sullenly, still giving the odd twinge. Then she gave herself a weird face she couldn't see.
"Great, I'm talking to my stomach. That has got to be a sign of insanity," she told herself laughingly. "I'm sure Mr. Sigmund Freud would have something to say about that." Lily adopted a mockery of a deep baritone that sounded apish. "Talking to body parts is a sign of loneliness. You feel that you have no one to talk to, so you personify objects and speak to them, even imagine responses and dialogue."
Her voice stopped suddenly. She just realized how true that was. There was no one to talk to, though she did speak to herself a lot.
"Melodramatic much?" she scolded herself. "You're being uptight and psychoanalyzing every little thing you do."
She sighed, and then brought her knees up to her chest.
"If I make it out of this alive, I swear I'll…" She trailed off, trying to think of what'd she would have never done before. "…go out with Potter," Lily finished. "If I survive, I'll go out with Potter. And since the chances are slim to none – oh, God!"
She whirled around, heart accelerating. Her eyes immediately found the source of the sound of snow crunching underfoot.
Or, underhoof, as it were. A centaur, probably younger than her, with whitish blonde hair and melancholy sapphire eyes, came up behind her. His horse body was a palomino.
"Are you one of the Hogwarts students?" he asked her.
"Yes – I'm lost. My name is Lily Evans," she replied, too startled to think of anything.
"Get on my back; I'll get you to Hogwarts." He handed her the wand she'd been missing. "Is this yours? I found it on the ground."
"I guess the odds are in Potter's favor," she murmured to herself.