08-08-2013, 01:59 PM
Finally, Nadia had a day to herself. She was off of work for the day while her office was being sprayed for pests, Zoe was off to school, and the little apartment in Bazhenov Square was all hers. She stood at the kitchen sink, washing dishes, peaking out the 4th story window to see the young children, too young for school, playing in the park. Filevskiy, she had been told it was called. She wondered if her parents had taken her to the park before they moved off... maybe even the same one.
An errant thought, and one not worth troubling herself over. Dishes now complete, she set about the work of trying to make their little house a home. Curtains were raised over the window behind the couch, a painting hung near the TV. Boxes containing books were broken down and discarded as their contents were loaded onto a shelf. The desk, Nadia's tablet laying across it as it charged, received a gift of a small plant in a decorative pot.
In the bedroom she shared with Zoe, a painting someone had done of the two of them hung. It was interpretive and didn't resemble them perfectly, but the way in which the artist had captured the love between mother and daughter had always stood out to them both.
Soon, though, she found that 500 sq feet of space didn't require much decorating and, finished, she dropped onto the couch to contemplate her afternoon. She thought maybe she would go down to the park and watch the children play while catching up on the news on her tablet. That led her to thoughts of how Zoe's day was going...
Her conscious mind drifted away, following the thoughts of the dark headed girl now cloistered safely in a class room. Again, she felt as if the world around her grew a little more clear, a little sharper, and she let herself be led as she reached for something... almost a light, but not quite. What was this? Suddenly, she felt like the strength of a mighty river was flowing through her veins. She gasped, but held onto this feeling of new power, not trying to subdue it, just trying to ride on the current...
She remembered feeling this a time or two before. She had heard whispers, read conspiracy theorist reports, even one that suggested that the Ascendancy himself had some special power, but she had always brushed it off as falsehoods. Power was what power was, whether political or electrical, and it wasn't something that came from within, like this seemed to be.
Hesitantly, she fumbled around with thoughts. What could she do with this? Well, some tea would be nice. Without knowing how she did it, she directed a cup to visit the faucet and water poured down into it. She pushed down her fear and confusion, allowing a tea bag to join the saucer and slowly, wobblingly, the whole contraption moved towards her before dropping indelicately upon the coffee table before her. She could almost feel tendrils or something reaching out around her, manipulating the cup, the spoon, the tea bag. The tendrils felt like the wind, gentle enough to guide something delicately, but strong enough to blow down the apartment complex were she to let it loose.
The water, she felt like she could almost command herself. It was its own mighty force, sitting delicately in the cup now, but she could sense the potential energy within it, enough to drive currents thousands of miles over the ocean's surface or sweep over continents in a tsunami, all contained within her tea cup.
It's cold. How do you fix cold? Moving the water fast enough may do it on its own, but she would have needed a bigger container. Perhaps... she stopped thinking about it so much and just let her mind go, and suddenly as though the power burned, a new feeling erupted from her, a tendril more lively even than the wind, and coming with a sense of destruction she hardly sensed before. In moments, the water was boiling in the tiny cup and she quickly worked to quell that before she accidentally set the building alight. Why am I so calm about all of this?
She shook her head violently and the world returned to normal. She sat on her sofa, dipped the tea bag into her cup, and contemplated the reality of a world she had denied for too long... and wondered what other things she had denied that might be true.
An errant thought, and one not worth troubling herself over. Dishes now complete, she set about the work of trying to make their little house a home. Curtains were raised over the window behind the couch, a painting hung near the TV. Boxes containing books were broken down and discarded as their contents were loaded onto a shelf. The desk, Nadia's tablet laying across it as it charged, received a gift of a small plant in a decorative pot.
In the bedroom she shared with Zoe, a painting someone had done of the two of them hung. It was interpretive and didn't resemble them perfectly, but the way in which the artist had captured the love between mother and daughter had always stood out to them both.
Soon, though, she found that 500 sq feet of space didn't require much decorating and, finished, she dropped onto the couch to contemplate her afternoon. She thought maybe she would go down to the park and watch the children play while catching up on the news on her tablet. That led her to thoughts of how Zoe's day was going...
Her conscious mind drifted away, following the thoughts of the dark headed girl now cloistered safely in a class room. Again, she felt as if the world around her grew a little more clear, a little sharper, and she let herself be led as she reached for something... almost a light, but not quite. What was this? Suddenly, she felt like the strength of a mighty river was flowing through her veins. She gasped, but held onto this feeling of new power, not trying to subdue it, just trying to ride on the current...
She remembered feeling this a time or two before. She had heard whispers, read conspiracy theorist reports, even one that suggested that the Ascendancy himself had some special power, but she had always brushed it off as falsehoods. Power was what power was, whether political or electrical, and it wasn't something that came from within, like this seemed to be.
Hesitantly, she fumbled around with thoughts. What could she do with this? Well, some tea would be nice. Without knowing how she did it, she directed a cup to visit the faucet and water poured down into it. She pushed down her fear and confusion, allowing a tea bag to join the saucer and slowly, wobblingly, the whole contraption moved towards her before dropping indelicately upon the coffee table before her. She could almost feel tendrils or something reaching out around her, manipulating the cup, the spoon, the tea bag. The tendrils felt like the wind, gentle enough to guide something delicately, but strong enough to blow down the apartment complex were she to let it loose.
The water, she felt like she could almost command herself. It was its own mighty force, sitting delicately in the cup now, but she could sense the potential energy within it, enough to drive currents thousands of miles over the ocean's surface or sweep over continents in a tsunami, all contained within her tea cup.
It's cold. How do you fix cold? Moving the water fast enough may do it on its own, but she would have needed a bigger container. Perhaps... she stopped thinking about it so much and just let her mind go, and suddenly as though the power burned, a new feeling erupted from her, a tendril more lively even than the wind, and coming with a sense of destruction she hardly sensed before. In moments, the water was boiling in the tiny cup and she quickly worked to quell that before she accidentally set the building alight. Why am I so calm about all of this?
She shook her head violently and the world returned to normal. She sat on her sofa, dipped the tea bag into her cup, and contemplated the reality of a world she had denied for too long... and wondered what other things she had denied that might be true.