The world is liquid.
Light bends.
Currents bleed.
A heat – blinding – strong enough to melt stone.
Sudden light, not the yellow glow of the coals beneath, but a white brilliance.
A gloved hand pulls you from the enveloping heat. The sudden chill solidifies edges, unable to reach the core within.
Moving.
Darkness Descends.
Light breaks again, the world a haze. Lamps of gas floating high. Hands press into a solidified body, testing strength. A new table, sliced thin. More hands, more tools, and the taste of water.
A thick paste tears at your skin.
Deep gouges form, marring what once was smooth. The world gets sharper. Colors. Lights and shadows. Images that blur at the edges, the center a tunnel containing the hands that hold you.
The light of the sun, blinding at first, refracting and morphing before emerging from the other side. Blue fills the world around you, an iris…
The feel of velvet as you are placed within a container. An echo as the lid snaps shut.
Darkness Descends.
Voices.
Movement.
Light.
The box opens, hands grasping smoothed edges, lifting. Splotches of ink stain long fingers that maneuver you into place. Slotting into space between brow and cheek, chain falling to the side in a cascade of metal ringlets. Eye of brown.
His fingers move over grooved tiles spread on a table.
Slide.
Black ink rolls over bumps side by side.
White paper presses down.
Ink and paper…
A ringing, a clock, a velvet box.
Darkness Descends.
The ringing comes, but the box does not. The light of day shines through you once more before a door is opened. Sun across the wall, the hem of a blue dress, a child on the floor. Small hands, sticky hands. Smears across glass blur vision, but green remains.
Slide into a cotton embrace.
Darkness Descends.
Every day it rings, and every day her hands — larger now — tug on the chain.
Laughter.
Until today.
No hands smear your glass. No laughter fills the room. Up, up, up. A lilac door. A girl, on the floor. An open book.
Yelling.
Crack.
The world splits. Clear on one side. Clear on the other. But down the middle? Distortion where clarity once was.
A tight fist, a dangling chain, a velvet box.
Darkness Descends.
Shuffles. Murmurs. Velvet dissolves, clings, distorts. Nothing but a void, until…
The lid creaks open, metal hinges crying with disuse. Green eyes, not brown. Soft fingers wipe away the velvet that clings.
Cool ceramic surrounds, calloused hands laying you within. Heat licks at the edges, warping light and sound until smooth again.
Cooling.
Edges once warped in thickness now thin. Colors once blurred now vivid. And, as you are held in the sun, you see that you are not alone in your frame.
Green eyes. New frames. Walking through city streets. Vivid flowers line stalls. Children kick a scuffed ball. Carriages pass by. Steam rises from horse nostrils.
Laughter.
A green field, reflecting her color all around. Straight ahead. A tree. A bush. A lake in the distance. Kneeling before a stone, grooves familiar in its face. A hand, trembling slightly, opens — an old frame, chain still attached, laid upon the stone.
Voices echo, chattering noise. The sharp tap of a ruler against wood. Chalk dust hangs midair. A book, raised high, blocking faces that look ahead.
She reads.
Silence Descends.