The voice is not speaking English, but is understood nonetheless, the way things tend to work in dreams. This is not much of a hiding spot; she knows they'll find her eventually, but she is too tired to run anymore. Everything she has, she's used up getting this far. They won't even need the gun.
Clad in what looks like a hospital gown, she's maybe twelve, thirteen years old, olive skinned, her eyes and cheeks sunken from starvation. She's sitting in the sand behind that tall dune, leaning her weight on her arms behind her because she can't get up to run away, she can only crawl. Her head is shaved. She's missing one eye. The remaining one is green.
Around her, or in her, or a part of her — it's hard to say — there's an after-image of another figure, like an echo, and that one is familiar, Benji has seen it before. Colourless, ageless, genderless, and yet somehow still having form, somehow childish.
She's not making an angry command, she's frightened. She's had this dream before, she's always reliving it, and she knows every part of how it goes, like how she can't stop making the same evasive maneuvers even knowing how futile it is. But this is something that isn't supposed to be here, and change is terrifying, not hopeful — the way that the alignment of the stars being not right feels wrong, the way that the sand curls around in odd patterns when the wind blows feels wrong.
"Please go away," she says again, edging further backwards.
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The voice is not speaking English, but is understood nonetheless, the way things tend to work in dreams. This is not much of a hiding spot; she knows they'll find her eventually, but she is too tired to run anymore. Everything she has, she's used up getting this far. They won't even need the gun.
Clad in what looks like a hospital gown, she's maybe twelve, thirteen years old, olive skinned, her eyes and cheeks sunken from starvation. She's sitting in the sand behind that tall dune, leaning her weight on her arms behind her because she can't get up to run away, she can only crawl. Her head is shaved. She's missing one eye. The remaining one is green.
Around her, or in her, or a part of her — it's hard to say — there's an after-image of another figure, like an echo, and that one is familiar, Benji has seen it before. Colourless, ageless, genderless, and yet somehow still having form, somehow childish.
She's not making an angry command, she's frightened. She's had this dream before, she's always reliving it, and she knows every part of how it goes, like how she can't stop making the same evasive maneuvers even knowing how futile it is. But this is something that isn't supposed to be here, and change is terrifying, not hopeful — the way that the alignment of the stars being not right feels wrong, the way that the sand curls around in odd patterns when the wind blows feels wrong.
"Please go away," she says again, edging further backwards.