Alexandria Rose Nash | Urðr (urdr) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2010-08-31 20:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | jormungandr, urdr |
Reflections
Who: Adam and Alex
What: Discovering some strangeness in reflections.
Where: Adam's apartment.
When: Around 9:00 AM Monday.
Warnings: GIANT REPTILIAN PANIC. In mirrors!
Notes: NOW COMPLETE YAAAAY
Alex had already been awake for a few hours, but that didn't necessarily translate to her having realized anything was off. She was half asleep when she got into the shower, and the glass had been blurred from the steam when she got out. She was working from home today, so there was no need to check her appearance after she'd put on her yoga pants and UPenn t-shirt. Her computer monitor was a flat screen laptop, the surface of which didn't reflect anything at all. And she liked to operate with the curtains pulled until a more reasonable hour; the morning light tended to be a bit too bright for her tastes.
Adam's text was unusual; there was an urgent undertone to it that had her making her way over to his apartment without delay. She even padded over barefoot; the hallways were kept fairly pristine around here. Going across the hall, she let herself in, calling for him.
"Adam?" she said, moving into the living room. "I'm here. Where are you?"
"Bathroom."
It had taken a significant amount of effort for Adam to pry himself away from the mirror that morning. Only Alex's imminent arrival had managed to coax him away from the still-fogged surface, and even that distraction had lasted only so long as it had taken to send a text message and locate a pair of pyjama pants. He stood now so attired, glancing down from the mirror at random intervals. His tattoos were intact; he could touch his numerous piercings and feel that they remained. But in the mirror all that stared back at him was a creature of leafy scales and slitted green eyes, sentient and curious and decidedly not him.
He shifted away from the mirror as he heard her footfalls, his now unpainted fingernails scratching self-consciously at one unkempt sideburn.
The floor plans of their apartments were mirrors of each other, so even if she hadn't been there before - though she had - it would have been easy enough to find him. Normally, she might have taken the time to smile at the slow build of Adam's living space - his "settling in" period. But the word "need" in his text said a great deal more than it would for most other people, and so she didn't dally in his apartment. Her steps were quick and light; not quite a run, but more than a walk, certainly. When she found him shirtless, looking in the mirror, her brow furrowed. Adam wasn't one for unwarranted dramatic displays, but he definitely didn't look like he was bleeding from the eyes.
"What's up?" she asked.
"I can't shave." Alexandria raised her eyebrows at his proclamation. He raked a hand through his wet hair, realizing how meaningless the non sequitur must sound. The faint growth of beard shadowing his pale, sharp cheeks made the observation entirely unnecessary, as much so as his continued pawing at the abnormally untended lines of his facial hair; regardless, it was a far better opening to a conversation than the truth of what he'd seen, which now seemed increasingly insane the longer he thought upon it. He bit idly at his tongue, bereft of any satisfying explanation. "I'd say it's the mirror," he said, every word dragged from him with obvious inward struggle. "But it's all my mirrors. Even my damn toaster." He shrugged, wishing they could cut to the chase and spare him this clumsy attempt at conversation.
"I hate to ask, but I really need you to do this for me." Then, frowning softly, he added, "Just shave the sideburns if you can't get them close enough."
"It's no big deal," she told him, still standing in the doorway, not sure what he was talking about. It was weird that he was unkempt - she'd think somebody had slipped something into his drink on Saturday, and that he was having a delayed reaction, but she'd never seen a chemical or medicine that worked on Adam. So she walked into the bathroom, then stopped - out of the corner of her eye, she could see what ought to have been her profile in the mirror. But it was taller - much taller. Almost as tall as Adam, except -
"What the fu-" she turned to face the mirror, and there she was, easily five inches taller than she should have been, looking as though she'd been stretched out in a fun house mirror. Except her eyes seemed darker, more shadowed, her hair was longer, and seemed to move on its own, and she was wearing - what was she wearing? This white robe looking -
Her own appearance didn't keep her attention for long, however, because looking just to her right showed her exactly what Adam had been talking about. Her eyes widened to saucers and she clapped a hand over her mouth, silencing the tiny shriek that had threatened to escape.
"What the fuck!"
"I don't know," he said, uncertainty so evident in his voice it came out as almost a groan. In the mirror his reflection moved accordingly, its forked tongue slipping past its mouth as he spoke. The sight made his stomach lurch. "You know I'm not drunk, or anything else." He shifted on his feet, risking a prolonged glance back to the mirror now that she stood before it. The crease in his brow deepened as he saw her in that surface, looking as unlike herself as his own image. "I don't understand."
He reached out to her, touching her arm; he felt her there, solidly beside him, the same girl he had known for decades, had grown up beside. He felt his own hand where it curved around her, his short nails scratching over her skin. But in the mirror he saw a serpent sliding over unfamiliar limbs, its scales caressing the smooth flesh it slowly moved to coil around. He loosed his fingers, relaxing, then letting go of her altogether. "This has to be a prank. A very lucid dream. Something."
She turned to him, her brow furrowed in thought, and reached for his face, cupping it in her hands. When she cast a sidelong glance at the mirror, the reflection was of thin fingers - longer, paler than her own - framing leafy, scaly green. The deep, dark eyes that looked back at her were hers, but not hers, and the dream lips parted when hers did. Her gaze shifted to Adam's true face, away from the mirror, and there he was - taller than she, rather than of a height, and definitively human, rather than serpentine. Her thumbs traced over his cheekbones, as though confirming the shape, and she shook her head, exhaling audibly as she turned away from the mirror, giving her back to it as she leaned against the counter.
"If it's a dream, I don't know who's having it." She shook her head, then jumped up and down, checking if it might jolt her awake. Then, she walked out of the bathroom, looking for another reflective surface. He followed close behind, glancing into each surface as it caught her eye. "This is -" she shook her head. "Jesus, you're immune to everything, it can't be that we've both been dosed." She looked around - in the windows, on metal, on every reflective surface, that tall, eerie woman. "What the hell," she murmured.
Adam shook his head. His tongue flicked over his teeth, toying with his labret. He was grateful not to be alone to deal with this, grateful he had someone to whom he could turn in such a strange time, but now he could not fall back on the morbidly comforting - if exceedingly unlikely - possibility that the problem was in his own head. His hand brushed hers again, his eyes passing over the fair lines of their flesh, reminding himself of what they truly were. "We saw the same thing, right?" It seemed a foolish question; her reaction had been so strong, and he had given her no hint of what had looked back at him from the mirror. A smirk curved the corner of his mouth. "How did you get to be taller, and I get to be... that."
Alexandria looked up at him sidelong, from his hand up his arm to his shoulder to his face, then looked at another mirror, shaking her head. It looked, in the mirror, as though her wraith-like hand was stroking his verdant scales, but it felt like his arm, and when she looked at him, it was. "For the record," she said, looking at his image in the mirror, "You do see a giant snake and a ring-wraith without a hood, right?" she asked, looking up at his face. "I just want to be clear about what's going on here, because otherwise, I really need to get a blood screen to see what that guy dosed me with on Saturday."
He nodded his agreement and understanding, swallowing hard against the stubborn lump in his throat. His dark eyes were drawn to the mirror in spite of his every effort to look elsewhere; dimly he registered the soothing calm of her touch, but the burgeoning, visceral panic underlying it all rendered him incapable of a proper response. He merely stepped closer, studying them both again, then forced himself to look away from their inexplicable reflections. "I'm sorry I left you," he said, biting idly at his tongue. "I should have stayed. But I don't think this is because of that." He shook his head, one hand coming to rest at the nape of his neck. He tried to work out the deep knot forming there, but the tension now shaping his limbs seemed unwilling to dissipate. "What are we going to do? I can't go to work if this is what everyone will see. I can't go anywhere." He laughed, smirking sharply. "And what doctor's going to see us and not have us committed?"
Alexandria gave a little smirk of her own, shaking her head. "None. Even if we are both seeing this," she allowed. She gave his arm a tight squeeze, then stepped away from him for a minute to reach up, unhook the mirror from the wall, then set it down on the ground, facing backward. "For now, we know what it looks like - we don't have to keep staring at it while we figure this out." Then she took him by the arm, giving another squeeze, and led him to the couch. "And don't apologize about leaving. It was a social event. Socializing is a part of it. It was nobody's fault but that asshole's. And maybe mine, for not keeping a closer eye on my drink," she shook her head. "I'm just glad I didn't have an allergic reaction or anything." Once they were sitting, she took a breath and looked at her hands - they looked their usual selves. Small, pale, but with a golden tint - not like the parchment-white, spidery hands in the mirror. She took another breath. "I think... I guess... we just... maybe you should take the week off?" she laughed. "I think I'll probably be working from home," she said.
Adam nodded once more, a quiet chuckle falling from his lips. He shifted on the couch, unconsciously seeking further proximity, some reassuring touch to bring him back into the present. She was unharmed, and with him; he could deal with this strangeness so long as she was at his side, sharing these strange times with him. Her plan aligned quite well with what he himself had considered, and he found he felt better now that it had been decided. "I'll call in sick," he agreed. "You can't tell anyone, Alex. Please. Not even Tyler." His dark eyes turned heavenward as he settled back against the cushions, his bare arm still brushing hers. "Especially not him."
Reaching out to him, she gave his hand a little squeeze and nodded. "Don't worry. I'll keep it to myself." She shook her head. "Ty probably wouldn't believe me anyway," she said. "It's not like I want to go around advertising this." She gave a little laugh, and his thin smile signaled his agreement.
"In the meantime," she continued, "I guess we can just hang inside, huh? Watch some TV or some movies, and avoid reflective surfaces?" She gave him a little grin.
"As much as we can," he said, forcing the note of overserious contemplation from his voice. He leaned up, returning the soft squeeze of her hand as he reached for the remote. "I know you should get back to work, but we can chill out for a while, right? Then you can tend to this..." His faint frown returned as he gestured to his shadowed beard. "And we'll try to act as normal as we can until this gets sorted out." And so they tried, flipping through channels until they decided on something appealing to them both, and settled in for the uncomfortably long wait.