To say that she had never felt like this before...would be tragically accurate. Her sleep was especially deep, so it took her long moments to even want to try to consider reaching out for awareness.
She figured she could happily float in this new sensation for days. Maybe ever. Slowly savoring it in pieces, taking it in and wanting only to make it a permanent part of her soul.
Did she ever feel this slow-moved?
Did she ever feel this warm and unhurried?
She sighed, and shifted her leg, sliding it sensually up, only to vaguely realize she was drawing skin over rough denim. This registered as somewhat odd, because the coarse texture was a direct contradiction to the strange...softness she felt in all her muscles.
Hazily her eyes slitted open, and it took her a moment to process the under-curve of her brother's chin. Okay, so she was sprawled across Aki again, and the denim was his jeans. Mystery solved, she closed her eyes once more and slid her hand up under her cheek.
Slid her hand over hot skin, the edges of her fingers brushing over what was clearly a nipple.
She went slowly still, her eyes opening groggily. She stared at her own fingers, kissing-distance, and poised limply over his right pectoral. Her middle finger moved, tracing slowly over the erect nub seemingly on its own. She heard his breath hitch slightly, just a short catch, and her fingers seemed to twitch, seemed to curve instinctively.
She froze, and her eyes snapped open wide.
What?
How?
For one split-second she was swamped in curious confusion. Then she realized she was completely naked, and confusion shoved into shock.
She shoved up, her hands snapping up over her bare breasts and her knees drawing tight. She stared down at herself wildly, her heartbeat echoing so loud in her head that she couldn't think beyond it.
Okay, what? What?
There was an explanation for this, right? There was a perfectly logical reason as to why she was waking up naked in a bed with her brother.
Who thankfully wasn't naked.
She glanced at him at that, a reflexive action to her thought, and started once more.
'Clothed' didn't quite cover it. Or him, to be precise. His shirt was gone, and yes, he still wore those sand-washed jeans that were clearly a favourite of his...Maybe 'wore' was too strong a word? The button and zipper were undone, and the faded blue denim was pushed low on his hips.
Very low.
Low as in barely catching, and more underlining his nudity rather than hiding it. She stared, wondering yet again if she was having some strange twist of a dream about that night again.
A moment passed, stretching so long and thin that she wondered if it was going to snap. Her mind buzzed with nothing, to be honest, she wasn't trying too hard to poke at her memory anymore. She knew instinctively that poking at it now would be like poking at a sleeping snake.
Slowly she slid out of the bed, her body protesting the chill in the room in only physical ways. She took stock of the physical only, not attaching any mental or emotional connections to it.
She was naked. She lifted her nearby shirt from the floor and pulled it on. She was cold. She slid her feet into her slippers and hugged her arms across her breasts.
There were other things. Tender places on her body, like invisible bruises, only they tingled and ached rather than hurt. There were flaky places of dried...something. And sticky places still slightly damp with her body heat. And there was a strange dampness between her legs...
Cataloguing all these physical truths, and trying not to explain them, she went to the bathroom and closed the door quietly behind her.
She hesitated at shedding her shirt again, her eyes staring blankly at the floor. Not understanding her own hesitation, she stepped out of her slippers and removed her shirt, folding it pristinely on the edge of the sink.
Out of the corner of her eye, the mirror was a quicksilver line of light. Her head turned mechanically, and she stared with incomprehension at the woman trapped within it.
She had wide, empty blue eyes. Blonde hair that fell in snarls to the small of her back. And pale skin brushed with rose.
Tiny flushed marks spotted the base of her throat, looking oddly enough like a thumbprint. She stated at one blankly a long moment, then silently moved onto the next.
On the inner-curve of her left breast there was another, a faint fingerprint of coral and cinnamon.
She slowly brushed her fingers over it and watched the mirror do the same. Nothing within her eyes moved.
Thought was beyond her at the moment, so something must have weighed her eyes down. Part of her didn't believe in anything outside of the mirror, so there was subtle confusion hovering over her face as she stared down at her own thighs.
Something was spilled there. Something had dried and tightened the skin. And another fingerprint marked the flesh, fainter, but still there. Just a subtle darkening of skin, a small space where the blood was closer to the surface.
It didn't make sense. And it didn't even feel like her. But she didn't push. If there had been enough within her at the moment to feel, she would have been afraid.
Instead she glanced back up and tilted her head, regarding her reflection as if she were looking through a window. There was a girl here, but she wasn't Aya.
She shuddered, then started, having not been prepared for the sudden sensation. It was sharp and too close, and she didn't like it.
She wanted everything to happen to that other girl, while she remained safe in this cocoon of numbness.
If she could just hold onto this ignorance, everything would be okay.
There was a twinge inside her, like a hand pushing at her from the inside out. Rather than pushing back, she swayed slightly. At least, she felt as if she swayed. The girl in the mirror didn't sway, she didn't move or react.
She wondered if she were even real...
Was she real?
Maybe the girl was real, with all the thought and emotion, and she was the reflection.
Her hand lifted on its own, and passed over that mark again. These weren't her fingerprints...There was a question to that, but that was fluttering somewhere outside of her awareness.
Her...
She twitched again, and again she started. Nothing came to tell her why, no feeling or thought or sensation.
She had come into the bathroom for a reason, right? What did one do in a bathroom?
She turned without difficulty and stepped into the shower. It was like the mirror again, she saw steady, slow hands reach out and turn the spicket.
Ice cold water slapped her hard in the face, and she jerked back, knocking her elbow suddenly into the wall. Seconds later the water began to warm, but she hardly noticed. There was clarity in that first shock of water, she leaned against the far wall and shivered, slid down the wall and wiped the warming droplets from her cheeks.
The water was hot now, a strange contrast between the veritable pool of ice she was sitting in. She found her shivering increasing, rather than abating, and it felt like it was stretching from deep, deep inside her. The water wasn't warming her, the heat wasn't touching her. Her skin prickled and stung, like feeling returning to limbs that had been too long asleep.
Water trickled down the curve of her spine, teasing touches that seemed strangely familiar, and she shifted in her huddle, wanting to curl up tighter, but feeling every move like a twinge deep inside her. Like an echo of some feeling that she had experienced, but couldn't process before enough to understand.
I am hiding.
It was the first thought she could remember having, as if she had just been body since the beginning, or maybe even just born when her eyes opened this morning.
This morning...
Her whole body cringed, drawing in tighter, as if dealt a blow. Her mind was backing desperately away from that thought for some reason.
I am hiding. Why...?
There was world outside of this cocoon of hot water and icy numbness, and if she thought hard enough, maybe she could break through to it. But the idea was foreign to her. 'Thought' was as unattainable as 'understanding' at the moment.
And as desperately unappealing.
Not that she felt enough to recognize desperation. But the word fit somehow. In the abstract.
She was hiding, yes. She accepted that thought as truth, despite not really feeling it. She stared at the steam rising from the water and waited for whatever would come next.
TBC...