Waking up in the morning is so weird. It would seem, what's wrong with that? The usual everyday ritual, through which absolutely every living being passes constantly.
But no.
For the time of sleep the body seems to die.
When you wake up, it is difficult to understand who you are, where you are and what is happening at all, until the consciousness finally returns to you.
This process is even more complicated when you are sick. When you sometimes come out of your delirium, it is hard to understand the world around you, it is hard to see and think about anything at all.
After the attacks, Pauline slept for about a day and then came to her senses for a long time. The memories came back in pieces, slowly, tragically and incoherently.
It was hardest to remember the second before the attack itself. Each time she painfully tried to remember the terrible moment, but he came only when someone entered the room.
Friends were always scared by the missing look she met them with sitting on the bed in Lazareth. For a second, this look became normal, Pauline swooped at the obsession, and then suddenly shuddered with her whole body.
"Cold," the young sorceress argued.
"Something is wrong," her friends understood. But they all kept silent and did not even dare to discuss it with each other.
Everyone was afraid for her.
Pauline saw: they were not afraid of losing the only Water Witch, which was the fear of many magicians on the Light side. These five people, who became her real family for all the time spent in Zarechye, were terrified of their girlfriend's death.
Pauline was not afraid. She didn't remember her attacks, she didn't remember the clawed paws of the Horror that enveloped her at such moments. She just looked sad and a little guilty at her friends and tried to give them hope that everything would be okay, even though she didn't believe it a bit.
Now she was once again trying to restore the emptiness. There was no memory of the attack, but there was a terrible pain in her whole body, as if the curse was making her throw herself at something hard. But it wasn't, she knew. I was just trying not to think why it hurt so much, but I kept thinking back into the void.
As if something had changed this time. Pauline remembered her feelings. The pain. Fear.
Maybe she didn't see anything during the attacks, but just...
The infirmary door opened with a squeaky squeak, hitting the wall. The girl sitting on the bed unwittingly shuddered. Her back was unnaturally straightened out and goosebumps ran. For some reason, she felt like she was in danger, as if something was flowing in her chest.
Quick silent steps she recognized only when the visitor had already approached her, looked behind the screen.
Seva looked strange with his black eyes, so that Pauline unwittingly wanted to wrap herself in a jacket, lying right there on a small table near the bed.
It immediately became a little uncomfortable, and it seemed that with interrupted thoughts she had missed something important, serious. But she was still happy to forget them.
He knew that everything had changed. For once Pauline could read it in his eyes, recognize it by the look on his face. A little thoughtful and focused.
He frowned on his eyebrows, sat with his elbows against his knees, grabbing his hands in the castle.
And he just looked.
Not even on her, somewhere aside. He looked at the vase and flowers in it as if he was wondering where the flowers came from. I studied every piece of fabric on her sweater. Probably wondered what material it was made of.
Pauline, meanwhile, was studying his face. A little pale, as if from anxiety. A deep crease between her shifted black eyebrows. Dark eyes in which the pupil could not be distinguished from the iris. A small mole on his chin, slightly darker than the freckles on his cheeks.
She absorbed this image. For some reason, she thought she'd never see him so carefully again. It scared her so much that she didn't have time to think about it:
-Smile.
Seva shuddered from the squeaky, quiet voice that sounded in the empty room. He finally looked at Pauline, trying to figure out what she wanted from him.
-Smile," she said, demandingly, scowling her own eyebrows.
And suddenly it really became funny to him from her frowned look, from the whole situation. Who would have thought? He visited the hated Water Witch, and they had been sitting together for about half an hour. She stares at him, not shy, but he just lets her. Look, Fenshawe. Look. I want you to see me. So she never forgets.
And he really smiled. Tense, sad, but smiling.
And she stared at his left cheek with a funny dimple on it. If the situation was funny, too.
Little Fenshawe, if you knew.