010. Blue

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010.


//In which Liria accidentally reveals they may or may not be a Furry. //





When Liria wakes up, the first thing they notice is the stress headache is a vague echo in the back of their mind; blunt and annoying, but less crippling and more of a bad memory. The receding headache is immediately followed by the feeling of gross dried mouth syndrome and the feeling of something clamped over their head like a vice. Everything is muffled, hot, and it feels gross and sticky; something, Liria decided, is really weird and probably overheating their brains.


That, and the tight feeling of what appears to be a rubber band around their head.


"What the-" Liria bolted up, eyes opening to see a grey concrete wall and white sheets with pretty floral patterns. The mattress underneath them is lumpy and a spring is digging in their spine, but it's definitely a mattress. Twisting off the rock hard pillow, Liria pushes themselves up.

Their hands scramble upward to rip the thing off their head, pulling the blankets aside to come face to face with an unkempt mangy person with these ridiculous pink fluffy things on his (her?) head from across the room. They look like cups, and really, really do not go well with silver hair falling in front of his face in long mangy curls. An ugly bruise blossomed along his lower jaw and strange dark orange eyes, almost amber, gazed back from a somewhat emancipated and very tired looking face. There's a healthy bustle of facial hair on his face; Liria would totally call him very very attractive, if not terrifying gaunt and kind of looking like a hobo.

Liria tried to smile.

The reflection grimaced back, looking like he ate a ghost pepper.


"Ah," Liria muttered, staring at their reflection. "Ah hell no." The mirror didn't really reply back, but Liria can't hear the usual echo of their own voice back to them. Scratch the attractive scale. They look hideous.

With shaky hands, they reach upward to unclasp the pink things (earmuffs, they actually have ear muffs!).

The noises immediately assault their brain like an angry drill, as if Liria resurfaced from under water. It takes some difficulty for Liria to snap the muffs back on, but they manage, breathing a shaky sigh of relief when the noise cuts like a noisy television.


"What the fudge is that?" They ask themselves, but they already know the answer. The noise thing was never as bad as this before, and Liria can still hear ringing as they massage their primary ears, the human ones, wincing. They were being dumb, and decided to go from zero noise to a bunch of noise. Experience tells them that they'll adapt, but that doesn't mean they want to live with stupid echoing and earaches painful enough for them to want to cut an ear off or something. And with the fact most of this is caused by stress, living at the end of the world is kind of the dumbest moment to get an ear infection.


Kicking the covers off, they turn around, observing.


It's a small room, probably a refurnished storage room of some kind. Two large rectangle like machines, probably a washing and drying machine, sit in the corner, unused and quiet. To Liria's left, a pile of suitcases sit, a red cross on most of them and strange white pill bottles in a neat line underneath. Strange medical stuff sits around them like some horror movie, and Liria is really, really sure that might be a bone saw sitting incongruously on the shelf. Basically, it looks like somebody broke into a hospital and just grabbed whatever they can hold.

Actually, judging by how the users act, that's probably what just happened.


Talking about users...


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