“ No doubt about it. That freakish presence, it came from here. From you. Who’re you ?”
Inquired the halfn a k e d man, to the considerably younger female.
—— { ♢♢♢♦♦ } She sits amidst an entire crowd;
but she is
transparent to all.
Plaid skirts and knee-high socks.
Hands waving, fingers grasping against the golden darkness. Dusk is approaching, but one small group refuse to scatter.
A chorus of delighted voices ring and float past her ears as she watches them dispassionately, unblinkingly. The thin, incurved rim of her porcelain cup is pressed between her teeth. Footsteps pound against the sidewalk, and for a moment, her lips turn a wicked smirk as she entertains how one straggling, azure-haired girl bouncing along to catch up with her friends will come crashing into her fantasized seating area…
Lavender eyes snap shut as a leaping shadow passes through table without so much as a sound.
“Hey! Hey, wait for me!”
Homura peeks beneath her lashes at the group trailing ahead as they slow at the call of their last member. Pink pigtails bobbing and one familiar yellow ribbon command her attention, but she is rooted to this spot, never to move.
The conversation that beings shortly after that melts into a garble of words that are swallowed by the streets ahead as the magical girl tilts back her head. The parasol that looms above her is a nice touch, she thinks absently, placing her fingertips against her chin. It should protect her from the sun. Her skin has always been quite fair…
Smiling, she muses on , praising herself as she watches the sunk sink behind the city. Somewhere in the back of her mind it occurs to her that she has no real desire to acknowledge any of this.
None of this is real.
It’s simply a design of her imagination. Like a sweltering wind, the atmosphere around her begins to warp.
In the distance, familiar voices can be heard screaming as the sky turns grey. The very scenery before her is being torn asunder.
Sharp cracking sounds begin; the cement is breaking up beneath her feet, but she doesn’t move. She doesn’t gasp in fear or even lift her gaze, because this is her
p e r f e c t world,
her i n d e s t r u c t i b l e snow globe,
and
Why don’t–
I stand up?
Why can’t I
…move, wake up–wake up!
Wake up.
Shaking, Homura threw back the covers and slapped the light switch on the wall near her bed with a sweaty hand. Her eyes flitted around the lit room critically, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
“….”
Feeling somewhat satisfied when she found nothing wrong, the puella shuffled out of the room and downstairs, purposely turning on all the lights as she went.
It was never the dark that anyone feared–Homura wondered where this term even originated.
It was what one knew could lurk within it.
In the kitchen, Homura opened the fridge door and squinted as the light hit her eyes. A deep breath of the cold air made her chest constrict and her lungs expand in that strange way that told her she had slept very deeply. She grabbed an apple sitting near the front of a mostly empty shelf and closed the door, sweeping her damp hair away from her neck.
The fan in her spacious living room was doing nothing to alleviate the phantom sticky warmth on her skin. Opening the windows didn’t seem to be any more effective. And while she was complaining, since she moved into this area on her last jump, those strange nightmares had begun…
Perhaps it was time to leave this place…after taking a shower.
.
.
.
The streets were still quite dark and vacant; it was barely dawn, Homura noted. Her long hair, still damp, was pulled into a high tail. She could feel the cool droplets of moisture that still clung to the dark strands roll down the back of her neck.
Anywhere would have been fine, she supposed. She had not interacted with any of the residents here and nobody knew her. Leaving would have been just as easy as it was entering. There was also no reason to contact ‘him’ as she knew he would likely find her no matter where she went.
Just gather her things and open a rift.
Instead, she found herself on a calming stroll. Homura appreciated the layout of the large city. While the cluttered arrangement of buildings made it appear easy for one to get lost, there was a cozy, mystical sort of air to it. Easily, thousands of people called this place home.
Homura was not quite sure she could say she had such a place anymore.
Stopping at what appeared to be the mouth of an alley, the puella magi withdrew her shield. The round device made a series of clicks and whirrs as she began to estimate just how far she would need to jump this time in order to put some distance between herself and this place called Magnolia.
Her hand had nearly touched the switch when she heard a voice interrupted her.
Homura calmly placed her shield against her hip and turned toward the owner; a young male who, for whatever reason she chose not to dwell on, was not wearing a shirt.
She eyed him steadily, displaying no outer discomfort in response to his slightly alarming accusation. It became clear to Homura initially upon entering this town that a number of people here were capable of wielding some sort of supernatural power. To what extent, she wasn’t sure, but she certainly had not planned to stick around long enough to find out.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Homura’s ponytail whipped behind her as she turned her head, dismissing the local with a cold remark. “You’re delusional. I suggest, before you become truly ill…” a cursory glance in his direction, “you put some clothes on.”
