A buzz hides under the tangled cobalt blue sheets of a bed without any weight for it to hold. The vents of the small room are the only things that bounce noises across the walls, briskly rolling a chilled breeze into the atmosphere. Azura stares at herself in the mirror with tears running down her cheeks, her lips quivering, and her eyes without the light they always carried. A bag stuffed full of clothes and small decorations sit on the edge of the bed behind her. She wipes the tears from her cheeks and exhales heavily to regain mental stability. Turning to the bag, she looks to the bright gleam of her phone as a new notification appears. She picks the phone up and traces each word carefully.
"I don't love you anymore."
She throws the phone back on the bed in defeat as her tears shed once more. She rests her palms on her forehead, kneeling to the edge of the bed as if someone were there to comfort her. She fills the silent air with a roaring scream, her rage choking her pleas for change, and she slams her head onto the wood of the bed frame in agony.
Her tears rain down to the carpet, her sobs the thunder of her storm. Her winds are hollow and numb, and the destruction of the incoming downpour is destined to bring the standing architecture of cities down to their demise. Azura crawls back up the bed, grabs her phone weakly, and slides it into the pocket of her jeans. She grips the handles of her backpack and throws it over her shoulder. She wipes her tears, the rain of the storm slowing down, and she sniffles herself into silence.
She looks to the mirror again. She watches her eyes as they dilate to her own stare, the black of her pupils carrying her rage out for an audience to see. Her face is frozen in a state of distress, her smile lost in the storm she reigns. Her emotion drains from her body, her posture weakening, her breathing scattered, and her mind spiraling. She turns to the door, her hand as cold as the metal as she reaches for the knob, and pulls it open slowly to reveal a dim hallway. She steps slowly, her movements like a living corpse treading through a narrow path, and she hopes her grave isn't far from her reach.
She finds herself in the living room. The walls carry the weight of a fallen, faded kingdom on worn nails, the rulers who once held it up clashing peace into oblivion, and sending terror to swallow the memories of a gorgeous relationship. Every step that Azura takes to the front door is one she took many times before as she swirled around the arms of her lover in a dance to glory. As she reaches for the second handle that bleeds its cold temperature into the pale of her skin, she turns back to the room to bathe in the last of the beauty it once held and opens the front door with a wince as if she were stabbed a moment later.
She walks out into the sunlight and her skin nearly glows from the rays that reach down to hold her. She slams the door behind her, her backpack bouncing to her body, and she grips the other handle to wrap it over her other shoulder. She wanders further away from the house she once lived within, deciding her life would be better off away from it, and keeps her eyes on the asphalt beneath her feet. She ignores the whistles of the wind as it speaks to her, the birds chirping their songs to cheer her up, and carelessly dazes to the falling leaves that crunch beneath her steps.
She sluggishly drags her feet across the street, searching for her future deep within the cracks of a fractured stone, and her tears soak her cheeks again as the weight of her euphoria tries to pull her back home. She looks up to the clouds that fade her shadow away, the sun cowering to her glare, and she rests her head to focus ahead. As her eyes finally look out to the horizon for the first time, a glint of a metal melts into her eyes as her tears obscure her vision. She wipes her tears the best she can to make out the object.
Azura raises her head again and squints to the shining edge of a katana. She blinks heavily in shock, following the weapon's thin metal up to its handle as it is grasped lightly by a woman in the middle of the street. She wears black, loose attire, and several webbing straps wrap around her chest and waist. She wears boots as if she were to journey deep into a battlefield, and her wrists are covered in sable bandages to ease the use of her blade. The woman narrows her thin eyes to her target.
Azura stares back at the woman, watching her black, half-tied hair curl into a loop on the back of her head. The threat standing before Azura turns her narrow eyes to a compact vehicle behind her. The windows of the car are shaded, the interior of the vehicle unable to be seen from outside, and the armed woman reaches for the back door handle. She tugs it open, two pairs of seats facing each other within, and walks a few feet away from the door to insist Azura joins her.
"I swear, I didn't say anything about what happened," Azura begs, raises her hands out.
The woman stares, and Azura bites a mental bullet as she looks into the dark of those menacing pupils.
"Get in the vehicle," the woman calls. Her voice is low, her tone sharper than the blade she holds, and her accent foreign. Azura freezes with the winds, her thoughts scattered as her limbs may be if she doesn't listen to her demands. Azura grips the edges of her bag tightly, slowly walking toward the open door of the vehicle, and turns away from the woman strapped to her own shadow. As Azura lowers her head to enter the vehicle, the woman behind her grips her shoulders and slides the backpack off of her with a few sly movements. Azura turns to her in agony.
"Don't touch that! That's the last of what I have!" Azura calls, reaching out to the backpack that has been lowered to the ground. The woman zips it open, looks to Azura with a finger to her mouth, and searches the contents within. She ruffles through the clothes and toiletries without an interest, clearly searching for something lethal, and finds nothing that concerns her. She zips it back up and throws it into the open window of the front passenger seat.
"Sit down," the woman bites, guiding Azura into a seat. She whips her katana up to her shoulder, sliding it within its holster that hangs from one of the straps wrapping over her shoulders. She climbs inside, finding a seat across from Azura, and shuts the door. In an instant, the engine revs, and the driver quickly races out of the neighborhood. The car swerves around the edge of a street and rolls its way closer to the traffic ahead. The woman is taking Azura further into the city.
Azura stares at the woman and her body shivers in fear. She grips the edges of the leather seat firmly to keep gravity from letting her go. Her mind aches with a desire to sleep, the warning signs of a nauseous liquid rising in her throat, and she closes her eyes to fight against her lucid nightmares. She shivers, panicking as her weight sinks into the seat, and rolls to her side while she sits. The woman watches her movements restlessly, waiting for any moment of rebellion to arise within Azura, yet that moment never comes. Azura never opens her eyes again, her body slipping out of the chair as it rolls to the cold carpet floor.
She drifts off into a void of her own head, her eyelids glued in a hollow pain deep within her chest, and the last moment of her internal pain mimics the same numb, crushing pain of a soul leaving from the cage of bone that it had been trapped within. The sounds of the vehicle moving into the city fade off with the light calls of the woman trying to wake her. Azura drowns herself in the ink of her own fantasies, waking in a new haven of her own creation.