Eternal Love Sings

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sophia's POV

The brilliant light overhead was still blinding-bright and yet I could plainly see the glowing strands of the filaments inside the bulb...I could see each color of the rainbow in the white light and at the very edge of the spectrum an eighth color I had no name for.

Behind the light, I could distinguish the individual grains in the dark wood ceiling above...in front of it I could see the dust motes in the air the sides the light touched and the dark sides distinct and separate.

They spun like little planets moving around each other in a celestial dance, the dust was so beautiful that I inhaled in shock...the air whistled down my throat, swirling the motes into a vortex but the action felt wrong and realized the problem was that there was no relief tied to the action...I didn't need the air, my lungs weren't waiting for it and reacted indifferently to the influx because I did not need the air but I liked it.

In it, I could taste the room around me...taste the lovely dust motes, the mix of the stagnant air mingling with the flow of slightly cooler air from the open door...taste a lush whiff of silk...taste a faint hint of something warm and desirable, something that should be moist, but wasn't...that smell made my throat burn dryly...a faint echo of the venom burn, though the scent was tainted by the bite of chlorine and ammonia and most of all, I could taste an almost rose-spice-mix scent that was the strongest thing, the closest thing to me.

I heard someone shift their weight on the first floor as well as two faint, thudding rhythms along with upbeat and musical sounds...music...I was mystified for a moment and then the sound faded away like a car passing by with the windows rolled down and with a start, I realized that this could be exactly right...could I hear all the way to the freeway?

My mind quickly moved on with the realization that someone was holding my hand when whoever it was squeezed it lightly, my body locked down again in surprise as this was not a touch I expected...the skin was perfectly smooth but it was the wrong temperature...not cold.

After that first frozen second of shock, my body responded to the unfamiliar touch in a way that shocked me even more, air hissed up my throat spitting through my clenched teeth with a low and menacing sound like a swarm of bees before the sound was out and my muscles bunched and arched, twisting away from the unknown.

I disappeared from my spot so fast it should have turned the room into an incomprehensible blur but it did not and I saw every dust mote, every splinter in the wood-paneled walls, every loose thread in microscopic detail as my eyes whirled past them so by the time I found myself crouched against the wall defensively it was only about a sixteenth of a second later I had already understood what had startled me and that it was overreaction as I remembered the smells I had sampled upon awaking, the knowledge of who had been beside me while I was burning...Demetri and he wouldn't feel cold to me anymore...we're the same temperature now.

I held my pose for an eighth of a second longer, adjusting to the scene before me...Demetri was standing on the opposite side of the operating table that had been my pyre, his hand reached out toward me, his expression anxious and his face was the most important thing but my peripheral vision catalogued everything else just in case as some instinct to defend had been triggered and I automatically searched for any sign of danger but the room was empty...just me and him although I knew that the others were close...five of them...I could sense them just in the other room like there was danger.

My nostrils flared, searching for the threat but I could smell nothing out of place except that faint scent of something delicious but marred by harsh chemicals which tickled my throat again, setting it to aching and burning however all this was a sideline as the greater part of my senses and my mind were still focused on Demetri.