Strong Currents (lesbian)

Chapter 7 ~ Showing Me

Chapter 7

“Cool.” Nixie smiled brightly, up at Alona and Shade. She smiled; they stared. She lifted her left eyebrow; they stared. “What?”

“What ‘what’?” Alona stared.

“What ‘what what’?” Nixie frowned.

“Nix, could you like, maybe, explain your reaction?” Shade was talking to Nixie as if she was some kind of mental patient.

“I’m special.” Nixie beamed up at them.

“That you are.” Alona smiled kindly down at her.

“Not that we had any doubt.” Shade rolled her eyes.

“Whatever.” Nixie rolled her eyes as well. “So,” she wiggled her eyebrows, “what am I?”

Shade and Alona looked at each other with equal looks of ‘huh?’ on their faces.

“You’re not freaked out about this?” Alona seemed concerned. Shade was grinning and frowning at the same time.

“Alona, I was attacked by some kind of weird, but eerily hot, creatures last night. Don’t you think that’s a little creepier – and to be honest a lot less scary – than being told there are a couple different dimensions to the universe?”

“I suppose.” Alona looked thoughtfully at Nixie and then turned on her heel and headed towards the door. She turned back to give them one more cursory glance before she slipped out.

“Shade.” Nixie stared wide-eyed at Shade. Her heart had started to beat so fast in her ears that it seemed as if her brain were on a runaway train. Shaky, sweaty hands gripped the bed sheets until their knuckles were white. Hot, searing drops of sweat wound their way down her face, while cold ones slipped down her spine like snakes would slide down a wilting vine.

“Nix, Nix what’s wrong? You’re pale as a sheet.” Shade moved to hold both of Nix’s hands in her own but decided against it when she noticed the death grip they had on the sheets.

“I had this horrible nightmare.” Nixie paused and stared down at the bump her knees made in the otherwise perfectly made bed. Everything was so perfectly done in this place. So clean; so full of the anti-septic smell so common to ‘normal’ hospitals. How was this possible? When she woke up in the place that she recognized from a part of her dream she almost fainted, but then she noticed the familiar smells. It was scary to think of being on a different plain, and yet she was even more afraid of the fact that she had known where she was before they’d told her.

“I’ve been here before Shade.” Nixie whispered urgently.

“In your dreams?” Shade looked horrified. She thought she knew what had happened, but she couldn’t be sure. Etching was a familiar term, but very, very few people knew more than a couple details which had been passed down over the centuries. Night-flyers kept their secrets well hidden.

“I wouldn’t really call it a dream.” Nixie’s gaze wondered towards the window for a time. She remembered every single bit of it. “It started out really good. It was actually kind of awesome; as if I had shrunk and was looking up at everyone. And then as my line of sight drew more closely to theirs… the images grew darker. In one part of my dream I was lying in this very bed, and it looked exactly like this except the machines were a lot weirder looking and it smelt so different. It couldn’t have been my life because everything that came before this hospital was not my childhood – assuming that was what I was seeing. Do you think I was looking through someone else’s eyes?”

Shade paced the room; going from door to window to Nixie’s bedside and back to the door. A quick turn of the door handle and Shade stuck her head just a few inches outside of the door for no longer than a second.

“You’ve been etched.” Nixie frowned but looked down in concentration, as if she were trying to remember something. “Do any of your dreams explain what that means?”

“Yes.” Shade’s eyes bugged-out at Nixie’s answer. “I remember an old lady from them; she explained it to, well, to whoever’s life I was seeing.” Nixie sighed and moved herself to the edge of the bed. Shade moved to push her back but Nixie gave her a warning glance.

“I need some fresh air. I know the way, and I can take care of myself.” Shade just raised her eyebrow and averted her gaze.

“Mother, please, I’ve had enough for one night. I told you, I know exactly what I’m doing.” Alona sighed and dropped her face into her hands.

“Alona, you have a job to do; you shouldn’t be babysitting some little teenager from Blue Plain Two. Your father went absolutely crazy earlier – not that I expected any less from the old buzzard.”

“Mother.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Anyway, you’ll still need to explain yourself to him. He doesn’t seem all that too forgiving at this point.”

“That’s probably because you tried to poke him with an icicle.”

“I didn’t try to poke hi with an icicle.”

“No wonder you two are forcing me to take on all the responsibility. I guess if you can’t have a majority of the power and neither can he, I’m the only choice.” Alona scowled down at her shoes.

“My child, you have no idea how sorry I am that this has happened to you. However, like you have so bluntly put it, your father cannot be allowed to have a majority control over the kingdom; and he refuses to let me have it either, so you’re our only option. You’re probably the only thing we have ever agreed on in the entire three hundred and something years we’ve been married.”

“I’m sorry mother.” Alona smiled sympathetically towards her mother. In all of her thirty odd years she’d never seen so stormy a relationship as that of her parents. It was a wonder they’d managed to conceive her at all; they should both be dead by now with the way they fight.

Alona was still considering the likelihood of hers being an immaculate conception when her mother tapped her shoulder quite painfully.

“What?” Queen Raya lifted one delicate eyebrow at her daughter. “Oh; sorry mother.”

“Do not fret. I was just trying to capture your attention and direct it to that young lady over there.” Queen Raya pointed towards a hunched-over figure at the end of the passage which led from the right side of the room. “Is that not this Nixie you’ve been tailing after like a lost squirrel?”

“Lost squirrel?”

“Yes, I decided that was a more appropriate term considering the girl comes from Blue Plain Two, the plain which produced that film involving some kind of ancient ice age.”

“Oh, oh yes, that one… No! Mother, I’m not some devoted nut-stalker!” Alona huffed and loped off towards the girl with long dark hair. Queen Raya just stared after her daughter.

“Squirrel.”