Baileigh Solis

[companion piece to this]

Part of her--and it is, perhaps, a very large part--wants nothing more than to run screaming from the house.

It's one thing to hear that she's special. To see awful things in her dreams. To be told that those awful things are, in fact, memories--not hers, but memories of people like her.

It's one thing to be told that the monsters in her dreams are real. It's quite another to have a group of people...her friends...carry a decapitated head into the kitchen and toss it into a bowl. And while everyone else is far from calm, no one's freaking out quite as much as she wants to. It's too much. It's too damn much. This is the thing she went looking for. This is the thing that did this to her.

This is the life she's been trying so hard to remember.

Her teeth cut hard into her knuckle as she fights off the urge to...something. Scream. Cry. Run. Throw up. Curl up in the corner and cover her head and with her hands and wait until it all goes away.

Instead she watches Tatiana pick up a heavy leather book and cradle it in one arm while picking up some sort of crystal in the other hand. She begins speaking in a fluid language that Baileigh doesn't recognize. It's beautiful but also frightening. She can feel something moving through the air, and it's terrifying.

The head in the bowl begins to smoke. She bites her lower lip to keep from whimpering. She wonders if she's the only one in the room having trouble breathing.

Tatiana stops speaking, and nothing happens.

( Oh God. It didn't work. )