Topic: CYOA Conclusion: Misstep

Lirssa Sarengrave

Date: 2009-08-09 21:48 EST
There was a struggle within herself between stepping out along that wide expanse of light and stepping back where she had been before. It was not as if she could command her feet in this alternate self to go one way or another. Around the thoughts went as the searching light widened and deepened. O'Malley's presence was there with her. It surrounded her in chilly wind, smelling of nothing in particular that she could place, but she knew it was him.

Just as she knew that someone else was there distant and fleeting. The presence danced on the edge, and Lirssa took a step forward. It was as though she stepped off the edge of a cliff. The pitching upward of her stomach, the sensation of nothing above and below but light. Light was everywhere and she could not close her eyes to it nor scream out. Her voice did not form in the howling chill wind.

The otherness was there. It was there as swift as a hawk stretching claws out in a dive to skewer its prey. A voice crossed the wind and subdued the light. "You must step back, little one. Step back." Molasses voice, warm and tender. It was Elliott.

Lirssa thought more than spoke. Thought in frantic patterns of fleeing. What carried upon those winds was her voice outside of physical pattern. "Get away, Elliott. Get away, they want to capture you."

"So they have, little one. Get free. Get out. Step back." His voice was fading. The warm honey in sunshine feel chilling in the harsh arctic blast. All light was blue now. Blue as an overripe moon.

With every ounce of her will, her stubbornness, Lirssa thought herself back. Thought to be back in the pattern where she had left. It all seemed so hard. A tide pulled at her, pressed her away from where she wanted to be. She clenched her fists and grit her teeth and twisted her body as if she were going over a beam and under a bar. It was a dance of her own, twisted into acrobatics to defeat the pressure of the icy wind.

She stepped back. And she stepped back again into the space she had been moved out of when O'Malley did his search. Tremors of light as if looking up through rippling water. She could not breath. A gaping open mouth drew in no air she could sense.

Her body tremored free of the seat she had taken. Unaware, her hands slipped into her pockets. Fingers curled around a warm key, and the key responded.