In the Chapter: Rey, meet your blasting living timebomb… Beware of some surprises along the way, too.
Chapter Rating: PG/K+
Chapter Warnings: Mild Language, Mild Sensitive Topics
Chapter Word Count: 1,388

Chapter Notes: I apologise in advance if you find this chapter boring in the end of the reading. I have no excuse to give you, save that this meeting and exploration is necessary. Action will begin in the next chapter, involving Rey's parents and an incident in the bathroom. By the way, I'm not satisfied with the title of this fic; could someone please help me – suggesting for new titles that I might pick?

Day 1 Part 2
Stormie and the Hapless Girl

Monday, 18 Decembre 2011

The first thing that I'm aware of is how tired I am feeling at present. The second thing that catches my attention is how cold and dusty the ceramic floor is beneath my right cheek. The third aspect that I realise is how something seems to blanket me from under my skin: as breezy as cool air, as wet and sticky as salty water, and tingling like when one accidentally puts a finger into a power socket – and I have no clue how or why I can sense these weird feelings in the first place. And the last thing that enters my bleary mind is that I am clutching a small ball or sphere in my left hand—

No. The sphere!

The figurative cobwebs are instantly gone from inside my head. Fright replaces it, coupled with indignation and an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

He has been using my life-force! He…

Is sitting on the floor before me, I reckon, because I can sense the presence of a tall, upright something a few centimetres away from where I am sprawled.

Great. The very first day and I'm already prostrated on his feet, figuratively or not, and despite my unwillingness. I can't do anything about it too at present. Just so, so tired…

The sphere warms a little right beneath my fingers. My heart skips a beat. I grow even more weary, and the sphere seems to beat with every pulse of my veins and every throb of my exhaustion. I lift my left hand up and shake the sphere weakly, hoping to loosen up the stiff muscles on the fingers around the accursed thing, therefore dislodging what might very well be the cause of my deep, sudden weariness.

My entire being shakes with the motion.

I groan pitifully. My brain spins; my stomach roils; my heart pounds; my muscles twitch uncontrollably. It's as if I were aboard a ship that's wrecked by a bad storm!

Well, a storm indeed, literally. And on that reminder, my stomach heaves again in another dry wretch. My throat is choked by bile and the spasming muscles. Just my luck… To think that I liked him so—!

A sense of disgruntlement floods into my jumbled mind; but it isn't mine. But then who—?

Oh.

I cringe. I completely forgot that my uninvited guest is a thought police of sorts, despite everything. Gah! Misery atop more misery. To think that I'll face another kind of trouble at work too, what with my unfinished report cards…

I lever myself up into a – slouched – sitting position using my right elbow and forearm with difficulty; more like squirming and scrambling into the semblance of an upright position, actually: slouched against the long cabinet. Before I can say or do anything though, something brushes against the back of my hand that's now clutching the sphere rather loosely. I jerk the hand back, gasping, my heart pounding even faster. Chill sets in my bones, it feels, a sense of coldness that is not related to the strange blanket underneath my skin that is slowly but surely tightening. The touch is real, totally real, so now I can't deny that I really am having a stranger – an invasive one at that – in my bedroom, a male no less. The tiny space feels trapping, suffocating, now, and the uncertain distance between me and my uninvited guest is quite daunting to me, as I cannot see what he might do next or even where he is in conjunction to my position. Now, as in a very few other occasions, I wish I were yet sighted.

A brief pang of pain and sadness replaces the horror and panic. I blink. It strangely eases my heart and calms my mind. And a new resolve rises: I've been blind since nearly twelve years ago, still going to be blind for the far foreseeable future, so no need to lament over it, and I best use all that I have to their maximum; and my cane is one good start.

My right hand sweeps the floor by my right side in search of my makeshift weapon. I can use it to poke him at least.

I find nothing. Instead, I get poked on the stomach by something that feels suspiciously like the missing cane. (I've got poked by it by my friends either in jest or by accident enough times to recognise its feel.) So, dismayed and curious, I fumble for the thing, hoping to find the culprit poker also by doing so. But just when my searching-and-feeling fingers confirm that it is indeed a cane, my cane, a large, soft but definitely masculine hand covers my left fist still bearing the sphere and grips it lightly. Another foreign sense accompanies the gesture: baffled, not understanding why there's anyone who can't see what's right in front of him or her without any visible maiming on his or her eyes.

I flinch. The source of the sense is familiar. Moreover, the feeling has been innocently delivered, and I can't fault it; but still, it cut me deeply somehow.

The large hand covering mine squeezes my twitching fist briefly. My heart twinges. I never thought him capable of any sympathy, much less empathy, especially after how he reacted just now to our initial meeting. He is truly confusing; I can't make any sense of him at all.

But isn't that true in all the stories about him, both canon and fanfiction?

The sense of bafflement floods my mind again, appended to that very thought, now coupled with interest and curiosity. I cringe away mentally from it: embarrassed, ashamed, angry, awkward, and also confused and uncomfortable about this new way of communication totally alien to me.

And on my reaction, I hear him sigh, both physically and mentally.

It's truly a weird experience for me, and truly unnerving too, now that I've got two tangible evidence that I've got somebody right inside my bedroom: by touch and by hearing, two senses that replaces the duties formerly performed by my sight. I truly can't deny his existence in this way, and he seems to be too cosy to move anywhere else too.

Damn stupid weird foundation.

But I can't carry on cursing, even mentally. The longer I try to stay awake, the more exhausted I feel, and right now the bed and my Spencer and the woollen blanket and the woollen socks sound heavenly to my mind, even though normally I would not think about lying down with a male stranger present in my bedroom – and being so without my parents' and my consent, furthermore.

The large hand has let go of me. I use the chance to crawl away – rather drunkenly – to my bed, using the face of the long cabinet as guide. I try to shake off the sphere and put it in the always-open top drawer of my desk standing by my bed, but it won't come off. Instead, a pair of strong hands lift me by my armpits like a small child and deposit me on the mattress.

My body seizes up in reflexive fear. My heart-rate goes up again. I curl up into myself defencively against the wall on the opposite side of the bed, cowering.

But the pair of hands don't come again. Instead, another sense is conveyed into my mind, this time of a small white mouse chittering in anxiety and chasing its own tail, underlain with the feeling of teasing amusement. It reignites my indignation and, similar to what happened before, banishes the crippling fear. I uncoil myself and shift across the bed, hoping to at least strike at the offender with my boulster or pillow, or perhaps my small unkempt-looking sleeping companion. Sadly however, the world seems to shift alongside my movement, and my mind decides – quite without my heart's permission – that… erh… postponing is the better side of winning. So I change the course and let my body crash against the mattress and pillow, quite forgetting about the presence of another person in the room in the spell of dizziness.

And without mypermission, the world around me turns empty and silent like a door shut in front of my face, and I am buoyed on a tide of warmth that seems to sustain me even as I'm sustaining it.