[img]http://i.imgur.com/SsySWU5.png[/img]

...and then there was light.

Leila was thoroughly confused. She could feel the light through her closed eyelids, yet she was hesitant in opening them. She could also feel the once suffocating cold receding and the temperature around them nudged back to normal as the warmth from the light soaked in.

Her eyelids flickered a few times before her eyes finally completely opened, under the protection of a raised hand. For one moment, at the edge of the scene that seemed like an overexposed photograph to unadjusted eyes, she believed she saw traces of black not unlike that from which the figure of the Midnight Man once arose. It was, however, only over the duration of a blink that she realized such a feature disappeared from the picture, and Leila debated whether to dismiss it as an artifact of imagination.

It didn’t matter, she figured.

As her brows relaxed for she got accustomed to the light. Every single possible source of light in this room seemed to have just been switched on, resulting in a cascade of rays - slightly painful to look at, even, but under these circumstances, Leila couldn’t have been more pleased to bathe in it for a few more moments, as if it would somehow wash away the remnants of fear that still lingered in her mind.

Then it struck her and she took a quick check around the place - Ace, over there. Haku, the other way, on the ground. Haku had a cut on his face - didn’t look particularly bad, he’ll probably be fine. Inadi, to the side. Ace and Songbird and Brandy. She didn’t turn to look as she took the hand which was left to be Riley’s.

“...the library.”

She muttered as she struggled to push herself up from the ground.

[centre]*	*	*	*[/centre]

Leila tried to use the time they spent on their trip back to the library to think things through and recollect some ideas. It was a longer trip than she remembered, likely because their lot was all tired by now. The extra time, however, didn’t really benefit her thinking, for most of what happened was not to be made sense of anyway, and she ended up mostly between being confused and being uncomfortable remembering the encounter with the Midnight Man.

It seemed that the entire mansion was lit up as well - even when the light sources throughout the mansion was a mixture of oil lamps, torches, and light bulbs. Every single one of them seemed to be lit. She wondered how that would be possible. Part of her mind wanted to speculate whether the broken lights back near the door would magically light up as well. And while that was an absurd idea, she decided she honestly didn’t know what to accept and what to dismiss anymore and she let those thoughts stay.

She looked around her. Haku walked in front of her and seemed a bit irritated by his injuries and she decided not to bother him even though she thought he’d have answers to some of her questions. Inadi was aside her, and she realized her hand was still connected to the sleeve of his robes, as it was back in the darkness of the room, and she let go as soon as she remembered that.

“Uh...” on second thought, she decided to tap Inadi’s shoulder to gain his attention as they walked down the corridors on the way back to the library,

“...sorry…about...back there?”

She said, referring to when she presumably knocked him over in the room with the Midnight Man, unsure how to word it only because she was unsure what even actually happened.