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 Twelve - Blinded by Fire

     "What do you want?" Ember asked the green eyes.
     The green eyes grew brighter in response, but the owner of the eyes said nothing. Green light, meanwhile, filled the balcony, cutting through the trace amounts of yellow smog that lingered in the dark morning air. More and more light flooded from the two eyes as Ember sat, making it easier for her to see who stood before her.
     A large, round belly covered in a tattered trench coat was the first notable feature the growing light revealed. Then came broad shoulders adorned with large, black feathers that stuck into the air. Last came a pair of extra long arms, most likely extended by the trench coat's length, and a pair of rather short legs that were dressed in baggy corduroy. The face, however, remained a mystery as the green eyes were now so bright that they masked any features hidden behind them.
     Ember shielded her eyes with the back of her hand. She couldn't take anymore of the light's intensity. "Well," she said. "What do you want to do besides that?"
     The lights immediately dimmed to a more bearable level. Ember brought down her hand and could see that the eyes were attached to a large gas mask. The figure continued to remain silent.
     Unamused, Ember sighed, "Is that all you can do? Turn your lights on and off and scare people?"
     The figure shifted its weight and coughed a very muffled cough.
     "Great."
     Then, what sounded like a chuckle from the inside of a full trash can escaped the figure. "Ember," it said in an equally canned, though obviously masculine voice.
     Completely baffled, Ember said the only thing she was capable of saying at that moment, "Uh." All other words left her brain. So, she sat there, staring at the fat man with the green eyes who knew her name. She didn't even notice that Aurora was beginning to wake up.

Borealis One - Kaleidoscope Sweets

     

     Aurora looked up into the neon night sky of Borealis, an aging city of shadows and blacks, these darks the horrible nothings that encased the vibrant, yet deathly lit, electronic colored advertisements decorating the city's metal and glass clothing. Stars abounded the heavens, and every drop of the rainbow was represented in their ancient star shine. Although breathtaking to behold, the beauty of the sight was little more than a grand lie spawned from the ceaseless pollution that sweated up from the streets and factories below. Aurora breathed it all in with a sigh. This wretched city of Borealis was her home. It was her comfort and the place she loved.

     In her hands Aurora held a large bottle of the sweetest champagne a Roof Rat like herself could come by on a night like that night. Which is to say, it was a night unspecial to any other. It was normal, and, thus, all she had managed to obtain was an average bottle of champagne containing only the minimum required amount of sweet a person ever really needs in a drink. But to Aurora, the near potable, alcoholic substance she grasped was unique, as was the night before her. It had been an arduous day, and of course it was the difficult things that Aurora often found boring. So, how pleasant an idea it was to sit on the edge of the second tallest building in the city and gaze up upon the celestial, studded, neon crown painted above Borealis' most absurd building. After a swig from her bounty, Aurora felt the hug of peace embrace her. All was right in her world.

     Soon, the warmth of slumber and the chaos of dreams covered Aurora's eyes and lulled her consciousness into the next day, yet another rough day that would make the mundane of her night feel like the grandest treasure God had to offer.