Pauline hears his voice. He sees the black eyes.
He stretches out to the thin hands covered with freckles. Crying when he can't touch them. This guy looks at her with a blank look, shrieking his lips like a smile, saying something, but Pauline can't make out her words. She only knows that he is her salvation. The one in whose arms she stops feeling pain. But he's still too far away. So inaccessible, so unreal and so dear to her heart.
She's sure they don't know each other. Pauline didn't talk to him, didn't touch him, didn't feel the breath on her neck. So why does he seem so real now? It's like a memory tossing away memories she's forgotten about. But nothing like this happened. She doesn't know his name, doesn't know who he is or why he comes to her.
Pauline whines, shrinking on the cold floor and trembling. She wants to think it's not a hallucination, it's not a delusion of her "broken" brain, but it is, isn't it? She understands perfectly where she is. To be more precise, everything was explained to her very clearly a few years ago. And even though she didn't give them what they wanted, she had no reason not to believe them. Magic exists. Wizards exist. Pauline is one of them. And her body is sleeping with the power that everyone had been hunting for so long. Water magic.
Pauline saw sorcerers trying to get into her head, falling with screams, losing all their strength. Some of them even cried, thinking it was forever. Pauline felt neither pity nor compassion for them. She only watched carefully, amazed that others' pain did not cause emotion. Sometimes, however, Pauline did feel angry and triumphant. At such moments, she couldn't contain the wheezing laughter and smile that must have looked insane. And also, when these emotions overwhelmed her, she heard another laugh - quiet but beautiful. And when she turned around or looked around, she saw a stranger next to her.
She's sure no one but her sees him. At least they don't look. They want her to go completely insane, so they're mocking her?
This guy isn't that handsome. Skinny. It's all incoherent, wrong, and alien to this place. Pauline presents him behind the books somewhere, surrounded by friends, but not in the basement, which is constantly called a room. She doesn't want anybody to live like that, so she hopes that the sorcerers aren't trying to encourage her to go mad slowly. Let this guy be Polynina's dream, the birth of a sick brain, than a real person. Let him remain those who cannot help.
She is cold. She is wearing a worn dress, her hair has long been tangled, and her face has been covered with ugly strands. Once they didn't reach their shoulders, but now they are running on their backs. Pauline had heard that witches did not cut their hair short. They protect their hair, and they respond by making sure that the sorcerers can withstand magic. Pauline doesn't need it - she has the strength to defend herself in any way, even if she loses all her hair.
She wants it. Get scissors, shaking hands, to grab the dirty strands and cut them off so that nothing reminds her of her past life. Or maybe he could ignore it and just take his own life? Pauline would have had to try harder, but it was worth it.
Pauline doesn't want to feel weak and unprotected, but would she dare to end it? She doesn't have confidence.
Sometimes, when the cold gets to the bone and her eyelids don't stay open anymore, Pauline falls asleep and sees the same thing there. To her great surprise, not a bad stranger at all.
She sits on the bank of a river and touches clean water with her fingers. Somewhere in the back there is bird chirping, but Pauline does not turn around. She looks at her reflection in a smooth surface. That girl seems strange to her. She has long, blond hair woven into her tail, pale skin and a slight smile. A stranger's gray eyes shine when she enters the water. And after the twitter of birds disappears. Pauline hasn't seen the sky before, but she knows it was clear and bright. Now it is dirty-grey, and the clouds in color will exceed even the black eyes of a stranger. She thunders so much that the river comes out of the shores, and a thin figure of a girl is absorbed by water. Pauline breathes calmly because Water Wizards cannot drown.
In reality, but her dream is so far from it.