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Conventional Foundations (Part II)

***
Mari blinks.

She’s in a white room – no, a white hall – suspended in a white hall, seeing nothing but white all around. Mari blinks again, maybe hoping that it’ll go away if she blinks hard enough, but no, she’s still there, feeling small and insignificant.

Then, she decides to look down.

There’s no floor.

I’m falling.

She gasps, confusion and imbalance rushing in. She reaches her hand out to steady herself, but since there’s nothing for her to step on or grab a hold of, she only manages to make herself even dizzier. 

It’s not a white hall.

She’s in a featureless white space, with whiteness stretching out in all directions as far as the eye can see. And she’s suspended in the middle of it, cartwheeling her arms and legs in a mad dance, trying to feel for a floor or a wall that doesn’t exist.

I’m not falling.

The panic and adrenalin blinds her sight with another flash of white. The mental image of a camera flash going off briefly pops up, then quickly evolves into a nightmare of that flash in the room and the horse’s blank face and monstrous mouth and hooves, and this time she can’t even see her hand in front of her face for all the white and the repeatedly-playing horror reel in her mind’s eye.

But gradually, the white sheet fades away, two dark blobs gradually dissolving into her line of sight. As sight returns, she’s suddenly aware of all the other senses rushing back with a roar – suddenly the dull whunn whunn whunng of the fan, the feel of a mattress under her body, Satomi’s muffled voice indistinctly floating in from somewhere –

“Ugh.” Mari shuffled up into a sitting position, trying to clear her thoughts. The place was unfamiliar, but it definitely wasn’t the old house. And as much as she wanted to throttle Satomi right now, hearing her voice at this point of time brought Mari a sense of security and relief. At the sound of the loudly-protesting mattress springs, Satomi herself peeked into her room from behind a doorframe.

“Mari! I thought – ”

Whatever Satomi had thought at that point of time was cut off as the mysterious guy from earlier walked out from behind her with slow, deliberate steps. That, oddly enough, had the surprising ability to shut Satomi up. He gently - but firmly - closed the door with a click, leaving Satomi outside.

Mari realized that in proper light, he wasn’t as shadowy and mysterious as she had remembered him to be. He was tall, and carried the weary air of someone who had seen the ugly side of the world and wasn’t too happy about it; he didn’t, however, look that much substantially older than herself. 

Over an off-white inner shirt, the guy wore another, simple shirt that flapped a little behind him as he walked. Long-ish hair threatened to cover half his face. A cap was perched on his head earlier, but as he approaches her he politely removes it and sets it on a nearby chair.

“Mari?” His voice sounds soothing, but Mari senses steel beneath the gentleness. “Relax. My name is Graham, and you’re now at my place. Satomi has been looking after you for the past hour and a half.”

“I’ve been out an hour and a half - ?” Mari’s blurted words are slurred, and she instantly regrets speaking.

Graham doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. “Yes, roughly. Now, listen. Are you feeling okay? Any dizziness or headaches?”

There’s a dying throb in her temples, but she shakes her head.

“Good. I need you to listen very carefully and answer me truthfully.”

Graham looks back at Mari, then lowers his voice to little more than a conspiratorial whisper. Mari strains a little to hear him.

“In the old house, you were attacked by a Moroven. They’re a certain species of magical creatures, usually appearing as many-tailed horses. Do you remember this? Do you remember seeing it?” Mari nods, slowly, once.

Graham nods back, then continues. “They are usually docile, but are drawn to the use of magic which, in simple terms, makes them very angry and prone to attacking anyone in sight. Your friend over there - I was talking to her before this - claims not to practice magic.”

Mari nods warily. Satomi may have a lot of fanciful ideas on magic and an obsession that bordered on the unhealthy, but for all her interest she herself had complained that she could not practice magic. Was she lying? the thought surfaces in her mind for a second, but Graham continues:

“So. The question is: were you the one that set off the magical flare?”