5/24/2023 0 Comments Sailor barsoomThe same colour they had been for the whole of her short, sad life that they had been for years. The wisps of barely-there cloud drifting through it were the same boring colour. The sky above her home was the same boring colour. Everything – every rock, every mountain, every stone – was exactly the same familiar, boring, mind-numbingly dull shade and hue it had been when she went to bed. The world looked exactly the same as it had the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. Moments later a tsunami of colour exploded away from it, a wave of molten amber rolling, sweeping, breaking over everything, painting the world with daylight, revealing – The Sun burst over the horizon, a nuclear detonation of liquid gold flooding the world with light. Please… she whispered, please… be different – Through the window the world beyond was still dark, the far horizon black and featureless, the sky above it featureless and blank but for a lone bright blue star shining lantern-bright above the distant hills, the heavens behind it brightening with the familiar colours of the approaching dawn. Maybe this time, she thought, it’ll be different. It only took her a moment to cross the room from her bed to the window, the soles of her bare feet stinging as she padded across the cold, metal floor, and she knelt down in front of it with hope fluttering in her heart. “And so it begins…” she sighed melodramatically, looking at the bare ceiling. Stretching out to her full length, luxuriously, no longer a kitten but a beautiful cat, at least in her own mind, Shalena reluctantly opened her eyes, letting reality in. Just in case her wish, made so many times before, had come true. Once she was up, once she planted her feet on the cold floor, that was it, she belonged to the world, the world she hated and didn’t feel a part of and probably never would. But that would mean leaving the warmth, and quiet, and safety behind. If she was going to catch it she’d have to get up, she had no choice. Her room was silent but for the ticking of the clock on the small table beside her bed, the clock that she knew would tell her – if she opened her eyes, which she wasn’t going to, not yet – in its glowing green letters it was 07.01. Lying there, she imagined herself as a kitten in a basket, on a fleecy blanket, curled up in a ball, tiny chest rising and falling slowly as she breathed. That would come later, no doubt, but for now she was alone, warm, quiet and safe. This was her time, her precious time, the best part of the day, she had always thought when she was still half asleep, wrapped up in the cloud soft folds of the duvet. Shalena woke slowly but didn’t open her eyes right away.
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