5 - Old Site
Prompt: Bend
When Madeline opened up her eyes she knew something was off. She could not pin point what it was. It was something else other than the usual weariness when she woke up every day. As if her mind had not quietened all night long and left it numb for Madeline to nothing but endure. She had only begun to feel this burden when she slept in the mountain bounds. Madeline could only pray it didn't become a habit.
She felt like those days where she slept twelve hours and still woke up tired with every part of her body heavier.
But if she so slept twelve hours, why it was still night?
She glanced up at the sky and saw it was replete with a meteor shower. Each star slowly falling like she herself fell when she arrived at the mountain. But those stars never stopped appearing and falling all the same. Madeline couldn't tell if that was good or bad.
She packed her things and went to continue.
Much like the forsaken city, the old site somehow left all to imagination and nothing to it at the same time.
It was…a site and it was old. Pretty old. So old indeed more than a few walls crumbled before her footsteps, opening Madeline new paths when she circled around.
Her walking felt funny, to say the least. As her head bobbed and she strayed, her eyes saw everything double from time to time. She could notice this vision effect became stronger the deeper she walked into the site.
Many of those halls were stretchy and long. The same ease to get herself lost like in the city with a lot more claustrophobia. She would feel that trapped if it wasn't for all that double seeing and that pertinacious daunting dizziness.
Why that sounded so familiar?
The gaps she found were not large as the ones in the city. But her blurry vision difficulted crossing spaces where her dash was not even necessary. Her every step was slow and clumsy. Overall, When she climbed the stone walls she felt her fingers sleeping at every ledge that sticked out from the walls.
The silence accumulated in her ears to the point it was a buzzing sound, only occasionally interrupted by her footsteps bouncing and echoing in the gray stone slabs.
Narrow rooms and passages led Madeline to a big room, though as empty as nearly the rest of them. The only exception being a large mirror framed into one of the walls. Madeline looked around to distract herself and to see if there was something else around but she found nothing.
Madeline caught something moving in the corner of her eye. The buzzing sound in her ears ceased to exist. She turned so hard and fast she almost tripped over herself.
Her kaleidoscope of a mind turned out to think too fast and found out it was just a reflection in the mirror. A familiar ache of shame and embarrassment resting on a well-known spot in her shoulders.
She rubbed her eyes a bit too hard in hopes of removing that doubleness out of her eyes. Like when she overslept and her eyes took too long to get used again to the sunlight, or any light at all. To the point tears had every intention of falling from her eyes.
Madeline blinked too many times too fast as she looked in the mirror.
Once she stopped, she realized her reflection changed. It was still herself, but with her eyes turned fully white with no pupil, nothing at all. Her hair was blue as ice like her winter jacket and like whenever Madeline used her dash.
She felt allured to her reflection to walk closer into the mirror until she was in front of it. Her reflection of course mimicked her every action. But it was because it was nothing but her reflection? Madeline could swear its movements fell a tad behind.
Her hand reached for the mirror and it reciprocated until Madeline touched the glass. Both of their fingers touched across the mirror. For a moment Madeline believed she actually touched its fingers' reflection. She pressed her hand a tad harder and the mirror broke into hundreds of sharp glass shards.
The sound of glass breaking startled Madeline and she tripped over herself, falling to the floor. Once she looked to what was left of the mirror, she realized her reflection was still in the same place as moments before.
Then it started to trespass the broken mirror like it walked through nothing but mist. As it did, her colors all changed into different shades of lilac. Jacket, hair, her skin being a grayish violet. Its pupil and iris turned back to black alike. Her complete sclera turned to a strong red.
They two stared at each other. No words said, muttered or even shouted. Her reflection only smirked at Madeline, like it laughed at her.
In that silence her reflection ran off to where Madeline came from and she followed it right after.