Borealis Twenty - Adroit Anomalies

     The long, metal hallway was purple and cold. Aurora didn't like it. It was too small and cramped. Where was the sky? Why was it so dark?
     Ember walked along in front, quiet and cautious. "You okay?" she said, looking back, a faint echo following her words.
     "I'm fine," Aurora lied. Her new clothes were too tight.
     "Loosen up, will ya?" Ember said with a slight smirk. "The goal is not to stick out." She thought for a moment. "Not that that's really achievable given that there are no records of you ever living here. Your name isn't on file. Your face--"
     "I thought you said you watched us somehow, even though you're in here. Doesn't that mean other people watch us too, people that know my face?" Aurora said as she tugged at her white shirt and pants with some futility, hoping that they would suddenly free up and stop clinging to her so snugly.
     "Yeah... I guess." Ember turned back around. "I just mean that you're not supposed to be in here, which is sort of 'duh,' right? People can't hide stuff like that with new clothes and a hair brush."
     That was of little comfort to Aurora. "Then what do we do?"
     Ember was silent. "Um," she started. "I never really thought that far ahead. I just wanted to meet you." Ember sighed. "And, it didn't help that Garnet practically forced us through that false wall. What was he thinking anyway?" She threw her hands in the air. "Oh no! A little boy's coming to get us! Oooo!"
     The girls walked on for a few minutes, mostly listening to each other breath. Their footsteps were largely muted by their rubber soled shoes. Aurora wasn't used to shoes either. She very well might have been better off as a new born, pigeon toed duckling. Her movement and posture was almost as awkward, and she wouldn't have looked so much like someone from the desert had she actually been a duckling. Aurora frowned.
     At the end of the hall was the only light the girls could see, and it was the one responsible for all the purple in the hallway. The closer the girls got, the more white the bulb and its light seemed to become. Next to the light, on the right, was a rusted metal door. Aurora didn't like the look of it. Perhaps it led to an even smaller and darker place. She shivered. The thought of it was absolutely dreadful to her.
     Ember, unaware of her friend's fear, started talking again. "Really," she said. "I thought you would have been left shivering on the floor by now."
     "Because it's cold?"
     "No. You have to be claustrophobic on some level, I'd imagine."
     She was. She didn't know the word, however, but she was. Had it not been in her nature to mask any weakness, even around those she trusted, she probably would have just collapsed into shivers upon entering the hallway. She was beginning to have some difficulty breathing as it was... Despite the look of the door and her concerns about it where it might lead, she just wanted something to open up this hallway and give her some more space.
     At the door, the girls stopped and looked at one another. Aurora gave Ember a sheepish smile, but Ember didn't see it in Aurora's silhouette. The silly Roof Rat was standing right in front of the now purplish white light. Ember, rolling her eyes and showing yet another halfway amused smirk, put her hands on the door's wheel handle and turned. It opened with little fuss or force and with almost no squinging or screeching to accompany it.
     "Huh. Wasn't expecting that, " Ember said drollfully.
     They both walked through the door, Ember first and Aurora second. The door closed lightly behind them.
     "Huh. Wasn't expecting that either."
     Before them stretched another hallway, this time well lit, nearly too well lit for the poor outside girl who had never seen artificial light before. The hall was wide, littered with closed doors and intersections, and the end of the hallway wasn't even visible. This was a new source of stress for Aurora.
     She looked over to her friend who had by now gone forward a few steps. "What do we do now?"
     Ember shook her head. "I don't believe it. I can't believe we're just right here."
     "What?" Aurora was confused and starting get a headache from all the fluorescent lighting.
     The fiery blonde whipped around, her grin toothy, straight, and ear to ear.
     "What?" Aurora asked again, this time nervous.
     "Haha!" Ember jumped up and down. "We're on the other side of the city!" She ran up and grabbed Aurora by the shoulders. "Garnet teleported us to the other side of the city! And look!" Aurora followed the girl's finger toward the way they had come. "That door's not even a door anymore! It's a wall! It's a freaking wall!"
     There were no words. The Roof Rat simply raised her eyebrows.
     Her friend ran over a few feet down the hall and then pointed at another wall. "This is my room!"
     "It's a wall."
     "And it's my room! It's hidden! Watch!" Ember ran her finger along the wall, drawing a large rectangle.
     The wall fuzzed briefly and then revealed a simple white door, much like the others that lined the hallway. The door opened. Inside was a room with three large white walls and one giant, wall-sized window that looked out onto a rooftop, the one where Aurora had been captured and the place she had slept after getting tipsy that night. The shards of glass and even a little blood, all of it was still there, glistening in the midday sun.
     Aurora rushed inside to the window, glad to see the outside again. She pressed her face against the window, much like Ember had done before. "I can't believe it," she said. "You were right behind me the entire time!"

Borealis Fourteen - Nonsense, I'm Losing My Mind.

     Waves crashed onto the crushed diamond sand of the snow bleached beach, and snow flakes disintegrated with an ambiguous indifference that almost passed for normal weather. Erstwhile, the grass near the edge of the shore shown brightly with an effervescence of pearl and pleated globules, now gone dull, roundly unpleated, and purpley creme. Common perception defied itself, and Aurora sighed at the deep blue dome of weirdly blue sky above, glittered, though it was, with rubied bricks so far off as far could probably see.
     Oh, each step brought with it a silent cacophony ridiculous to the ears of those of whom no one used to hear. Aurora certainly didn't. She could not refrain, as though she was wont to do so oftenly so, from forcing her eyes to perceive the sky, how it encased her and bribed her soul into ignorant, puffy, and sandy solace. What was freedom but caged death in an open field, or, in this case, a closed beach?
     "What do you want from me?" Aurora asked, crying and laughing. "My body hurts. It bleeds internal, and I can't talk properly. Please, go say something! No one can hear me!"
     Five waves arched up and swirled at the beach. The water formed a tent tightly coned around Aurora's brain, and fire seeped out of its peaked mouth, the cone, not the brain. Although, Aurora's brain did burn as it ticked, clocking and quieting away at the bruises that surreality left at it. The girl felt drunk like a fog filled with shadows and pops, echoes and wants.
     Today was the day that the Lord had made. Quintessential, though it was, to imperfection that the day may exist. Aurora wanted gone. Pummels had pummeled her beach into submission, and water felt like falling in a desert, the winding so windy in the cold arches of city.
     "Girl hopes!" Aurora whisperdly yelled. "Girled hopes! Away, hold me! Blonde of hair hurt me! Protecting me? Hurt me!"
     The beach felt as though to be flying through the air, though nothing was different once the cone had come and gone. Waves crashed as they did before, and each color enhanced the calming ruby blue sky above. The grasses returned to its glows of jagged or flat globules. The world was calming down, and the beach was beginning to show the sky, the normal one. Sand became concrete, and bricks became buildings that stretched down from the heavens.
     A blonde girl bent over Aurora, face over face. "Good morning, my doll," she said. "At least, that's what my mother used to say."

Borealis Thirteen - I Got the Fuzzies

     Ember's chin was the first thing Aurora saw when she woke up. And, from what Aurora could tell, everything was slightly green and also very dark at the same time. It didn't make very much sense to her. Why was she waking up, again? It was starting to feel like the only thing she could do anymore was fall asleep and wake up.
     This time, consciousness brought with it an odd sensation that Aurora had never felt before, and it grew even more peculiar as the seconds passed. Aurora thought it was pain at first, but it didn't quite feel like pain. It almost tickled a little and made her body feel like mush. She wondered what would happen if she moved. She eventually tried, and when she did, her body shocked and tightened like a whip that had just been cracked. The tickling stopped, and a very high, shrill whisper then crawled from Aurora's lungs. Her body flinched involuntarily as well. She wanted to get her companion's attention, but no words wanted to come from her lips, and Ember remained oblivious to what was happening next to her.
     The fat man with the green eyes took a step forward and said, "Aurora!"
     "Aurora?" Ember said, confused. The girls had neglected to ever introduce themselves to one another. "Oh! Aurora!" She realized that the strange word was probably the girl's name. "Stay away from her. I know what you people do to each other out here!" Ember, aiming to guard her companion, slid over to what she thought was an empty spot in front of Aurora. However, it was actually the spot where Aurora's side was located.
     The hurried bump was not good for Aurora. In fact, it was incredibly excruciating. Her previous whisper of hurt left her, and an ear raking screech took its place, echoing up and down the city's walls.
     Ember jumped to her feet, startled now more than ever, screaming, "What?! I don't-- Aurora?!" She couldn't figure out how a little bump had garnered such a response from Aurora when entire buildings had elicited nothing from the girl.
     Suddenly, the fat man rushed over to the girls. The sight was threatening, to be sure, especially with the eerie green light the man carried with him, and had Ember been in her right mind after the screech, she might have stopped him, but it was better that she hadn't.
     "We need to get away from here. It's not safe," he said, his eyes focusing on Aurora, who was now frozen mid squirm, eyelids and teeth clenched tight. "The morning sun won't be waking up the denizens of Borealis today. They're already awake now, despite the gas." The man pulled up his sleeves and then reached into one of the pockets of his trench coat, retrieving from it a small sphere. "What I'm about to do will look very odd, but rest assured, Ember. I'm here to help Aurora."
     Ember, dumbfounded and full of panic, said, "Uh," again, wishing very much that her vocabulary and quick wit would stop abandoning her.
     The man turned his head toward Ember. "You're very unlike yourself today. You need more sleep or else this place is going to kill you." Then, he turned back to Aurora, knelt down, and squeezed the sphere over Aurora's head. "This will only take a second. As soon as it's done, and you'll know when it is, pick her up and follow me."
     "Okay," Ember said, brows furrowed.
     "Ready?" he said and dropped the sphere onto Aurora's forehead.
     The impact of the sphere produced no sound or any indication of an impact, really, and in a second, just as the man had said, the sphere had done its job. Ember didn't even see what happened since it had happened so quickly. One second, Aurora looked no different than she had before. The next, she was was covered in an ultra thin, transparent substance that encased her entire body. She no longer displayed signs of agony, either. Peace had overtaken her, and she was asleep again.
     Almost forgetting herself, Ember snapped to and grabbed up Aurora as the man had said. She was prepared to start running or jumping, but she noticed that the fat man with the green eyes wasn't moving like he was supposed to.
     The man grunted. "On second thought, just hold onto my shoulder. We don't want to risk harming her any further." And without waiting for Ember to do so on her own, the man plonked the girl's hand onto his shoulder.
     Had anyone been creeping nearby, they would have heard a snap. The green lit balcony switched back to darkness. A dark blue could be seen far above. The sun would soon rise above the horizon and illuminate the sky. The man and the girls had disappeared.