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[u]??? // ???
??? // ???[/u]

She awoke. A dissonance sat around her like a fog, thick and unyielding as her eyes struggled to adjust to the gloom of her room. The slow turn of her head was meant to bring things into focus, but instead everything seemed more of a blur, more [i]out[/i] of focus. Walls she had been familiar with for the last couple years looked the opposite. It was all a blur and she couldn't quite grasp as to why. More pressing, there was this strange coldness about her, something that sat deep and pierced to the marrow. Each movement felt numb and far away like swimming through ice water.

Eventually she managed to swing her legs out of bed, pushing aside the heavy covers and starting to stand. Yet she did not. With a painful slowness, the moment her feet hit the floor and she began to put herself upright, she fell forward. That impact at least managed to jar her from the worst of the fog, knocking the breath from her lungs and jolting her into a higher state of wakefulness. Fingers splayed against the carpet, Verra worked to put them underneath herself and steadily push up, taking a long moment to once more gain some sense of verticality and find a sitting position. Everything felt so odd to her, as if she was just an observer in her own body. Yet… There was a distinct ache from where she had fallen.

Once she had found her footing she thought nothing of the strangeness of her surroundings, dismissing it as some strange post-sleep weariness. Step after step she brought herself towards the door, vaguely adjusting her sleepwear into something moderately presentable and ensuring nothing was showing that shouldn't be. Her hand settled on the doorknob and started to turn. It was warm… More than that actually, she winced as the more she turned the warmer it became until it was searing hot. Letting go she took a step back, staring down at her hand as steam rose from her burnt skin. Now she began to get the feeling that things were [i]not[/i] right, as she should have already started to heal from such a minor wound as that. In fact, normally she wouldn't have even been feeling the pain of it this long afterwards, yet as she stood there and worked through just how strange this all was… It still throbbed angry and red, the ache pulsing up her arm.

Things were very much not right, and the moment she felt that first small oddity, other small pieces began to stand out. The walls were just a shade off from what she knew they should be, patterns winding through in the differences of hue and seeming to ripple the longer she stared. A soft glow from her desk brought her attention to the clock, which every time she seemed to glance over displayed a different time, and not in the expected sequential order. One moment it said six in the morning, the next eight in the evening, and again at a completely different time. Her breathing became shallow as she started to realize she had to still be asleep, mild panic starting to seize hold.

This was not the first time she had such a dream, though it was since the last memory of her previous life faded. As if summoned by her thoughts on such things, those memories flooded back with sudden clarity. An entire lifetime lived in a reality that no longer existed, she felt the room heaving and twisting about itself, soft blues of the wallpaper of her dorm room melding with a darker red. She willed it to stop, to undo this and go back, but all she managed to achieve was to halt it in the midst of everything. The room remained in a mixture of past and future, an abomination of the merged lifetimes struggling to assert domination over each other. Alone in the center of what was becoming an undulating mass of temporal instability, Verra could feel her heartbeat pounding in her chest and control slipping from her.

Then it all stopped for one singular moment that dragged on forever. Complete stillness surrounded her, and she felt her blood run cold. Drums sounded from all around her, distant yet close, and in a steady pattern that inspired her to move in an attempt to get away from them. Once more she pressed her hand against the doorknob, uncaring of the searing pain from the metal, wanting only to get out of this room. Each turn as before brought it closer to molten, but more of her concern was the growing darkness that spread from the window opposite. Tendrils of black seeped into the walls, poisoning the crumbling reality of the dream and seeking her out as the sole point of stability.

Finally with a panicked gasp, she yanked the door open.
[hr]
[u]Metropolis National Park
January 29th, 03:26[/u]

[color=ed145b]"Wh-what."[/color]

As she stepped through the open door, she felt cold air. It was… Strangely fresh, clean and pure. Her eyes struggled to adapt from the light coming down on her from above, a hand coming up to cover that spot high in the sky that shone down. With a sluggishness that was incredibly unfamiliar to the speedster, and quite uncomfortable to say the least, she worked to get her bearings. First and foremost, her other hand went to her neck, fingers grasping around the necklace that she had dearly hoped was still there. Step one done, she still had her suit with her, and if things went bad she had a way out. That was assuming she could determine where it was that she was, and what she was getting out of. Her eyes began to adjust to the rather jarring shift in perspective, picking out green in front of her. A lot of green actually. As she gained more and more awareness, she discovered that there really was [i]a lot[/i] of green around her.

Bare feet dug lightly into soil and grass, and she looked down to find that the reason for that was really quite simple. She was in a forest somewhere, her right hand falling a little and her focus shifting to take in the clear skies. The moon was high and at its first quarter, stars shining among familiar constellations.

Then two very distinct things came to her attention. First was that she was out in the middle of a forest [i]somewhere[/i] in only her pajamas. Second… She had obviously run there, and done so a little too fast. Behind her was the smell of a fire consuming cloth, and her lips creased in a frown as there was her blanket laying in the grass. It was the source of the fire, friction burns across the fabric of it as she must have had it wrapped around her during her sleep-run.

[color=ed145b]"That one was my favorite too."[/color]

All that was left to her was to figure out a bit of a more concrete idea on just where she had run off to, and preferably at some point soon.