A Demystification: Eve

Day 4: Word Focus

Word Study: Blue
Count: 259

Lyn loves a blue sky. And blue water. It's calming, she thinks, and it helps her realize that there's a world out there to connect to. A whole spiritual world that has something to do with the spinning maelstrom inside of her; something that she desperately wants to understand and recognize.

She feels it most when she walks outside, when she is able to get out of the city and into something resembling real earth and real openness. It's a feeling inside of herself like some unknowable song, yearning to burst out of her soul and dance with nature's never-ending score. But every time she looks up and closes her eyes, reaching toward that sense of everything, something pushes her out of the dance and she is forced back into the prison of her squishy human body.

There is a sense for her that everything is connected; every time, every person, every place. She can feel every member of the dance, and they are dancing for her. But they cannot see her or know her, and no matter how hard she tries, Lyn cannot herself join in on their celebration. There is something there that she doesn't know, some password that she doesn't or cannot speak, that is keeping her out.

It saddens her, but it does not stop her from trying. It does not stop her from reaching deep inside and then out of herself, hoping one day to understand both herself and her part in the never ending dance of the universe.

Lyn loves a blue sky.

Word Study: Fight
Count: 309

"Fight!"

The figures danced up and down, arms held defensively in front of identical bodies in near-identical outfits, different only in color. Then, as if at a random signal, the blue figure danced forward and swept a sideways kick, coming up and around the defense of the other. Above their heads, a horizontal green bar got just slightly shorter.

"Lucky shot! Lucky shot!" A boy, twelve-years-old and gangly with it, pounded at the controller in his hands. On the screen in front of him, his character blocked and dodged before shooting out in a series of punches and flying kicks at his blue counterpart. Laughing, he leaned forward, fingers flying faster and hitting harder as the bar above his avatar's head got shorter and shorter.

"No it isn't!" The girl next to him was eleven and already showing signs of being quite the beauty. Fiery ringlets bounced in time to her movements as little girl fingers flew across buttons and her character flew across the screen. "I'm winning, see?"

Evelyn Sinclair might not have liked to play-fight with her brothers out in the backyard, but she surely loved beating her brothers at every video game they put in front of her. Especially Mortal Kombat. And boy did she beat her brothers. Neither of them had ever been able to beat her at it. She understood video games. It's not like they were difficult, or anything, and it usually only took a few hours to figure out what was going on and how to beat it.

The Fatalities, especially, entertained her, though Sub Zero's was a little too graphic for her tastes. "Get over here!" He screamed before pulling out Scorpion's spine and tossing it everywhere. It didn't stop her from using it, though, and laughing as her brother grumbled at losing, yet again, to a girl.

"Wanna play again?"

Word Study: Logic
Count: 325

"I hate these fucking logic puzzles! They confuse me!" Lara tossed the book of mind puzzles across the room and watched it land in a display of bent pages and rage in the corner beside the fireplace. "Damn, it missed."

Lyn raised an eyebrow. "You'd burn a book? Even if you hated it? Sounds a little Fahrenheit 451 to me, sis."

"You'd burn it too and you know it. You hate those things almost as much as I do!" Lara gestured in disgust toward the book and crossed her arms. "Don't tell me any different."

"It'd definitely be my choice for burning materials should we ever be in desperate need for a fire and only have books to burn, but I'd never voluntarily burn a book and you know it." Lyn turned her gaze toward the offending piece of literature. "I do hate those puzzles, though. How is it that tricking people is supposed to constitute testing their logic? Asking someone how they would handle decision-making while their house is burning down...now that would be a proper test of logic."

"I'm pretty sure those are just a test of decision-making skills, sis." Lara poured herself and Lyn a glass of orange juice. "We're just not logical people, I guess."

Lyn had been staying with Lara for a week. She'd needed a change of scenery and her Super had kicked her out so he could do some refurbishments on the building she lived in, so to Lara's apartment she'd gone. Better than staying with her parents, which inevitably ended in a fight over Lyn's life choices, or lack thereof. "I came to see you instead of staying with Mom and Dad, didn't I? If that's not logical, I don't know what is."

Lara laughed. "I guess you're right. So...shopping? I'm sure you could use some new clothes. It's probably been over a year since you replaced anything in your wardrobe."

"And you said you weren't logical."

Word Study: Eye
Count: 310

"Use your inner eye!"

"Shut up, Bryce!" Lyn brushed her brother's hand away. "I'm trying to decide what to do, OK?" Lyn stared at the three coconut halves in front of her, mind racing through the sequence of movements she'd witnessed only moments earlier. Bryce was practicing on her. He was studying magic on the weekends, poring through book after book on slight-of-hand and bunny rabbit recovery. It was his way of blowing steam after long days in front of a computer screen. He was an engineer every other day of the week.

"Did I fool you, Lyn? Did I?" Bryce grinned. He'd never liked losing to his little sister, not after years of having his butt kicked at whatever little boy games he and Brynden had included her in. She'd completely ruined video games for him, though he'd ended up going into platform development for Nintendo and she'd stopped playing a long time ago.

Eventually, Lyn looked up and pointed at the coconut on the left. "It's there."

Bryce's smile disappeared. "How'd you get that? That's the hardest sequence in the book to follow!"

Lyn shrugged. "I thought about it. Slow it down and it's not so hard in the end."

"You're a fricken genius, sis. Why on earth are you wasting your time at that bookstore? You should be earning billions as the eight wonder of the world, or something." Bryce laughed and picked up his magic book. "I could set up some tour dates for you. Oh! You could be my assistant!" Bryce struck a showstopping Fosse pose. "I know! Brilliant Bryce and the Eighth Wonder, live on tour!"

"Shut up, dumbass," Lyn replied, laughing. "Why on earth would someone want to watch me foil all of your magic tricks?"

Bryce shrugged. "We'd be a comedy magic duo. It could be fun, yeah?"

"I'll think about it."

Word Study: Dream
Count: 229

It's the dream again. The one she can't understand. The one she can't even remember when she wakes up, but sinks into every time it happens, as if it's a movie that she can only watch in her sleep. In it she is everywhere all at once, and living at every time. She is there for it all because she is the reason for it all.

She hears a voice and it is unknowable, but it is one that she has heard many times before. And she feels the words. They become chains and gouge their way into her flesh, binding her to their will. Then all is black. And the world begins anew, this time in earnest.

There is darkness in this dream, all the more noticeable for all the light that shines everywhere. And she only notices the difference after she is chained and transformed, after the words dig into her and change everything. What, then, was before?

She can never remember, and the dream never returns to that time. It keeps moving forward. And the darkness grows, but every glob of darkness makes the color that much brighter and that much more beautiful.

And when she wakes, there is nothing there, not even the vaguest sense of a nightmare, or of a strange place in her subconscious where every one of her questions are finally answered.