[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/VaKdwK5.png[/img][/center] 

Leila tried remaining calm and not let her thoughts show as she regretted not thinking things through before acting. She mentally braced herself for whatever unexpected course this chain of events she shouldn’t have started would then take a turn into. She almost exclaimed something when an elbow bumped into her, having expecting it to be no less than a punch from Harper when something suddenly touched her. She resisted the reaction, and because of that didn’t do anything in reply of Songbird’s hasty apology except allowing her eyes to flicker in the direction of the guide for some seconds.

She looked at the ground as Harper looked up. Their lines of sight didn’t cross.

[b]”I…just forget it.”[/b]

Leila froze as Harper replied, and remained still long after the boy slowly walked away. His voice was coarse and sounded like it was on the verge of breaking. She wondered if Harper was close to breaking too, of if she was herself. She still glanced at where the sword wound would have been on Harper’s body from time to time.

The apology that took her so much effort preparing for did not escape her mouth.

The festivity continued around them. Leila kept her eyes to the ground, looking at the colours and shadows that fluctuated on the floor.

“Just forget it”, he said. The longer you stay…

 ...why were they there? What were they looking for? A train brought them there. A train filled with sparkles and stars and bunnies with laptops transported them to a realm where everything was pastel and the laws of physics as she knew them obviously didn’t apply. Where they put themselves in great danger collecting things like fragments of dying stars and voices of mythical beings - all of which apparently very well existed despite all reasoning suggesting otherwise; and then they return to the hall and beings from this nonsense world toasting over whatever they thought was worthy of celebrating in this scheme of neverending struggling and confusion.

The threads of thought started flowing her mind again, something that she hadn’t had time to do for such a long time when she was just struggling to stay alive. Finally now she had the time to think - but the thoughts tangled themselves into a chaotic mess as they accelerated. Anything that seemed like it was starting to flow smoothly would then run into a pile of unresolvable contradictions that triggered what could only be analogized to mental screams of “does not compute”. Above that noise, then, was the yells that couldn’t be silenced, the pledges for them to complete the list, to go back home. And those voices didn’t follow from anything else, and nothing could be said reliably that it followed from there.

Stay alive. Get home. Why? She had no idea.

She flinched. So that’s what they had to do? Scramble to ensure the achieving of a goal whose meaning they’ll eventually come to entirely forget.

Leila realized their interaction had ended only long after. In a scenario no worse than all those she had anticipated, but one that she hadn’t expected either. She sighed - still couldn’t rationalize these things, could she? She wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to feel relieved that it ended like that and she didn’t have to put up with a conversation. She didn’t.

She then looked again at Harper and Songbird and tried her hardest to persuade herself that she didn’t need to care for them, didn’t need to pay that thought. She succeeded, not because she convinced herself that Harper would be okay, but because of the realization that there was nothing she could do to help.

Leila sighed. Flowers and rainbows...

She raised the tall glass and gulped down the rest of the strawberry soda all at once. The surge of sparkles felt like they burnt as she pushed the liquid down her throat, but she ignored that and continued, only stopping on the exhaustion of the bright pink beverage. A few droplets escaped and fell into her airway instead, triggering reflexive convulsions in her chest, bones and muscles now healed and coping alright with the conflicting orders given by her conscious mind to suppress the coughs and sputters.

She stood there, eyes in a blank gaze into the crowd. The background noises persisted, and the jellyfish still sailed idly through the indoor air. The nauseating sweetness of the syrup persisted in her mouth.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuNnWeGoQhg]music.[/url]