Stormy put the gun to her head and fired. 

No – wait… that isn’t right. Somebody else repainted the walls with their brains. It was one of them… wasn’t it? In another life. Another time. Back when they still had a choice. 

Stormy clicked her heels together. [color=bc8dbf]“There’s no place like-”[/color]

No. Wrong story. Allwrongwrongwrongwrong. 

If not her then who? 

If not there, then where? 

Snippets from the aftermath of the death drifted like flotsam down her stream of consciousness. Catatonia would fade eventually, and she would be able to sift through them, put them in their rightful places, lest they be forgotten. Stormy struggled with forgetting. 

A field. Green-gray. It smelled of water colours and ash and nothing. Koda knelt. He was a man; just a normal man. Stormy stood over him. She held a small box and opened it and he turned to –

Clouds, falling towards the horizon, racing against the headstones that stretched as far as the eye could see. She stood over one, flowers in hand. She placed them, tulips, at the base of the gravestone. Wrong, still wrong, there was never any grave, he didn’t – 

[color=DC143C]“I always wondered why man cried for nothingness? Would they certainly think their tears would make the dead to re-live? Or would they hope the dead will know that they are crying for him? I really don't know the reason why.” [/color]

A lonley tear fell onto the petal of a tulip. It ran red. The petals withered, shrivelling to black dust. It chased the clouds to the horizon.

Stormy sipped her tea. He sat across from her. A blur. Had it really been that long?

[b][color=26619c]WHY. [/color]
[/b]

She refilled her cup, a floral, porcelain thing. 

Stormy...

The radio in the corner of the teamroom buzzed, then blurted, [color=eee0e5]“Are you lucid?”[/color]

She took another sip of tea. Something was wrong. It was thick, and red, and tasted of copper and iron and pain. She looked at the teapot, which was not a teapot anymore; it was the stump of her arm, pouring blood into the china. 

[color=81FFF0]”Look, just take this cursed thing and throw it-”[/color]

Stormy stood, and, as if time was a gloopy syrup, her arm raised, and, at the blur of him, she threw the cup full of blood. The world shattered.

[color=ff4500]”NO!!!”[/color]

Sunlight wobbled through the surface of the water. His form a silhouette above the surface. The water was cold. Lungs burning. Body numb. Heart beating, too fast, too loud. His arms were touching her, she could feel them. They were bars of iron. Iron holding her under. The water rose into waves, as if in a tempest and-

[color=eee0e5]"You're probably going into shock. Listen, I--..."[/color]

She burst forward, sitting upright in the bath tub. Nobody else was here. The lightbulb flickered. The empty pill bottle rested there, bright translucent orange, by the sink.

Out of the grimy water and onto the bath mat covered in mess that clung to the soles of your feet. Stormy looked at herself in the mirror. Her face deep lapis waves and sculpted tentacles. 

[color=eee0e5]"We have to get to the Magician."[/color]

A flash of bright blue-green.

The slow, uneven bobbing eased storming back into reality. She looked at the man carrying her. It was difficult to tell if she had been sleeping or awake. Away from them two figures stood, one with a hat, one with a blue-green light. Stormy listened, an then the one who had had the hat was gone.

[color=bc8dbf]“I think I can walk on my own,”[/color] she whispered, and then, meeker still, [color=bc8dbf]“thank you.”[/color]

Her pocket was heavy with the words just given to them. She would lean on Zino, of course; she was not well at all.