(Ophelia)
***
I thought I was fucking crazy when I woke up after blacking out. My head was practically splitting, and the illusions of black lines were wavy and unreliable. I wasn't sure what to hold onto to stand up as I could trust nothing surrounding me.
Gah, my skull should have just detached itself at that point! The dizzy feeling made me think I drank far too much alcohol the night before and experienced the delayed punishment of a hangover.
Massaging the center of my forehead, I groaned at the miscellaneous space around me.
*I didn't take any strange cups from anyone, did I?*
But then the memories hit me like a fucking train. (Could someone have taken the drill away from my brain?)
I couldn't fathom how long ago it was, but the faces of a girl with purple eyes and a fairy with pink hair came to the forefront of my mind. Time was some kind of construct by then. When someone didn't exist, time didn't either for them.
*But who the heck were those two?*
In my mind, I saw pairs of lips moving as they curved around soothing words, letting me hear the voices which said exactly who they were. My eyes became wider than the moat around the castle.
*Roslynn. Aries. Where the heck are they? Where the heck am *I*?*
I tried standing up, but the whirling motion around me made me crash back to the ground in a fatalistic dance. The floor was entirely ebony like the sky yet not nearly as dense as the brown stone I recalled. The chamber was equally cavern-like; however, the placement of peculiar clouds above me confused me even more. Without the semblance of a breeze, I could not discern whether I was indoors or outdoors. With the blurriness of my vision—heck—I couldn't even tell if I was living or dead, trapped in dreams or reality.
As I wished for my view to clear sooner, I remained still with the hope my bearings would return. If I shook, my mind's eye would not calibrate itself.
I waited. Inhaled. Reached out to the side of me.
Something soft became enveloped in my grasp, and the materializing of tan patches in my sight broke the repetitiveness of the sheer darkness. I felt at the object. It was vaguely squishy with a gentle slope—clearly attached to something. I extended my hand further to massage the core of it, which was rougher on my fingertips, and it was also wrapped in fluffy fabric. The curves were organic, not replicable by artificial means.
Once I grasped what was below my fingers and felt the warmth radiating from underneath the thin layers, I retracted my hand immediately with a jaunty enough motion to rival the high seas.
*Shit. That's a person.*
I rolled around in my position momentarily out of embarrassment, clutching my hands to my chest. I hoped that they didn't think I did that on purpose or—
"Lia?"
*Shit. Shit. Shit.*
My hands pressed against my face as my cheeks heated up. I didn't want Koharu to be angry about that, though I couldn't have blamed her if she was. My pupils moved erratically, which would have worsened my dizziness if it hadn't already faded away. It was a complete accident—
"Lia, what in the world are you doing?" Koharu's voice was slow and almost slurred.
The alcohol theory came back to me.
*But wait…*
The blanks in my recollections filled in as if they were the emerging petals of a rose.
The last thing I remembered, we were being returned to the jail. That would have explained the dreary color scheme, but there were still things that didn't make sense.
I had trouble speaking. My mouth felt heavy as I attempted to open it. The bottom lip seemed as if it was stung by a wasp, but it wasn't swollen at all.
"Mm… I'm sorry, Koko. I didn't mean to touch you. I can't make a single thing out. I—"
"Baby, straighten the fuck up. It's your dream come true."
Weakly raising an eyebrow, I protested, "I didn't have a dream last night. What the hell are you talking about?" I pulled the hairs on my scalp.
"You're really out of it," she said. "You were idly dragging your hand over my stomach a minute ago."
Something cold but hard hit my face before I had time to revel in the relief brought about by the fact I hadn't unintentionally groped her. I snapped up with a raging pain still lingering.
*What the fuck was that about?*
When my vision decided it wanted to cooperate with me enough to be usable, a hand in front of my face with pieces of sleet flowing out of it met my face. The light palm darkened around the rim of the hand as I followed it outward to see the cheeky expression on Koharu's face.
She chuckled, awfully giddy for what our current situation was. "That's pretty cool, right?"
I didn't give her a response as my brain tried piecing together all the clues around me. (Ignoring how corny the joke was.) Nothing made sense in bits like that! The place was black, there were clouds, there was no breeze, Koharu was beside me, I was dizzy, and…
*Ah. That was—*
"Magic? You have magic?" I sat up with the largest grin that I possibly could have had plastered on my face.
There was no way that could have been, right? We had to have had the best luck ever for something that unprecedented to have occurred.
"Yeah! It's all back! Lia, we're fucking home!" She grabbed my hands, and she showed me a smile so large that her gums were the size of her teeth. Then, she pulled me up to my feet, the room blurring before becoming clear enough for me to work with. "We're finally back! They did it. We did it!"
"Holy shit," I mumbled. I then yelled, "Holy shit! Everything's back to normal!"
I tackled her with a hug, and we almost became one with the ground again.
We had no more coherent words to describe to each other how we felt—only delirious laughter. That was the way things should have been this whole time. We belonged in each other's embraces, feeling each other's bodies and the sensations conducted between us.
I couldn't stop giggling in her ear, and the same held true for her. I had never experienced such unadulterated happiness before, not even when I was a child who couldn't imagine any other state of being. I wanted to shake—to let all the energy out of me in a final release.
It was so hard to believe, but my mind couldn't keep up its wall of doubt any longer. Success, at long last, washed the acrid taste from my mouth.
Our dance of joy dragged us across the room, and whatever we said must have been complete nonsense. I could no longer perceive my immediate surroundings—though this time, it was because I didn't care enough to. Having Koharu beside me was the only thing that concerned me, and we finally didn't have to argue anymore about precarious choices.
Across the room, a high voice shouted in complete disbelief, "Fifi? Koharu?"