"Hey, kid. Slept well?" came Ashlynn's voice, and Mable felt her mind explode with the infinite possibilities of how terrible this conversation will eventually go. On the outside, though, Mable just stared up at Ashlynn blankly for a few moments, and with a but of a puzzled look. She wasn't used to people opening the conversation. Or talking to her.
"Oh, I-..uh, I slept well. Well, not well, else I'd still be asleep now but yes I did sleep well-..." started Mable, cutting herself off before she said too much, and mumbling a meagre apology. She looked away again, feeling her cheeks burning, and gripped her folded arms even tighter. Just to make matters worse, her mind cheerily reminded her that she was having a conversation with a woman who nearly died last night and she didn't even ask her if she was feeling any better herself. "Are you...feeling better?" offered Mable, willing herself to look Ashlynn in the eyes. Or, well, the visor.
Before she could receive a reply, Caroyln had reached for the door and managed to somehow get it in her face. Another woman, who had so clearly done the task on purpose, apologised and said it was an accident without the slightest hint of apology in her voice. There was a pause, and then-...
Mable yelped in surprise as Ivy went soaring above her head and she ducked to avoid her. She watched on in terror as she heard the dull thud and the slap of flesh on stone as Ivy collided with the marble wall, knowing that must hurt. Some instinct in her wanted to kick in but she was still weak, so she could do nothing as she watched the bruises form and watched Ivy crunch into the ceiling and floor respectively, and then came the dark magic.
It was little-known that nothing unnerved Mable more than dark magic. The idea of something so incomprehensible - it didn't make sense at all, it couldn't, it was just an absence of light - could be manipulated into physical form freaked her out. But it wasn't just that; it was a little childish of her, but she was just afraid of this particular kind of dark. She couldn't comprehend it and since she could comprehend a lot of things, it worried her. It was unpredictable. And it didn't help her growing panic.
She took a sharp intake of breath as an orb of this darkness skimmed past her and blasted into the marble wall, making a crater issuing forth grey smoke into the rock. She felt her pulse quicken, her breath sharpen and sounds become very clear to her. She could hear every drop of blood pattering onto the floor from Carloyn's nose and felt the tension suffocating her, sitting in her lungs, forcing her to breathe faster.
In fact, it was a glance at Caroyln's bloodied nose that broke the flood gates and last night's events - despite Mable's adamant attempts at trying to believe that she was panicked most of the time and couldn't remember the details - flashed in front of Mable's eyes in horrific, nauseating detail. Everything. Right down to that woman being impaled in the neck, and the warehouse threatening to buckle in and swallow her whole.
And on four and a half hours of sleep, Mable was already mentally strained as it is. This, it seems, was one of the last few straws she had left to give.
"STOP!" she shrieked, her voice cutting through the tension and the early dawn silence like a razor. "Just...stop!" repeated Mable. She was unsure what it was she was yelling at - the fight, or her own mind. Whichever one was troubling her more. Both hands unclenched the other's forearm to run both hands through her hair, hunched over, staring at the floor in fear as her breath came out in ragged gasps.
After another pause in which Mable took the time to calm down and not break into terrified sobs, Mable spoke much more quietly, addressing her feet. Her voice quavered with the convulsing shudders that her body was issuing forth in waves, trying to shake off the echoes of the disturbing flashbacks. "Can we start Kitchen d-duty now?"
