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There was little reaction, until he touched her. Her body froze like a sudden snap freeze in the coldest winter; just immediate stiffness in her entire being, from her face to her body to her very heart, at least, it felt to her. 

[i]Are ya STUPID?[/i]

It surprised her, it very nearly shocked her. Reaction was delayed, but once it happened, it happened with the same photonic speed of light; she was there, where he put his hand on her, the sudden sensation of warmth and the overwhelming sensation of calm, like touching her was some kind of emotional anesthetic—but she was also behind him, untouched, literally a blur of motion and being.

Once he looked behind him, she’d be gone in front of him, as if she was Shrodinger’s metahuman. Both there, and not there, depending on the observation. Her eyes were big, their golden color shining and shadowing as she moved, the very human emotion of slight anger very present, though, it was closer to irritation. 

“What if touching me was dangerous? What if I was dangerous? What if I…” her eyes darted, searching for the words, finding only things she did not want to say out loud. There was an underlying truth, and she knew it: she wasn’t used to being touched. The last person to hug her was her mother. The last person to touch her was her dad, handing her a drink as they settled into the car that night after the restaurant, and the drive back. 

She re-lived it. She re-lived it every day, in one way or another, and the sadness could creep in like a fog before the dawn light of a new day. “Don’t do that,” she half-whispered at him, just shaking her head, slowly, absently. He was staring into her eyes, and it was the easiest moment, she just…knew. So she moved them. 

To the beach; where the distant drum and roar of waves could sooth her, where the sun shined bright as any gold upon her being, where the warmth could soak into her. She liked the sun. It was that it was a star. She knew that, somehow…it gave her power. Like the star, itself, brought her back to life and gave her purpose. 

And because this stretch of beach on the Massachusetts coast was not fluffy sand, but darker, browner, harder stuff that crabs used for burrowing, and the shrubs of the dunes nearby were used by thousands of birds. It was a bird sanctuary; one her father had taken her to for bird watching when she was a little girl. 

There was no one nearby. She was no fool, she understood what happened now. Just as a scientist made describe the chain reaction of a chemical compound as it lost a carbon here, broke an atomic bond there, so she started to describe what would take place: “Your people will want to know. Finding me won’t be easy. I don’t appear on satellites. I don’t have metadata to mine. I have a phone, but I can just…make myself a digital ghost. I’m not sure how, exactly, I just…will it. Like flying. Like healing that variant. Like saving those families. Like saving that woman.”

She shrugged, looking back at him, briefly. He was cute, at least, for an old guy. “So, good luck, anyway.” She looked away for a moment, a long one, before finally starting to talk, turning her head to look at him, as if she couldn’t just bend the soundwaves to him no matter which way she turned, “Don’t call me that. I’m not that. I don’t know what I am, exactly, but I’m not that. Just…call me Dawn. It’s my ‘name’…at least the one I want to answer to. I’m tired of watching, being afraid of getting involved…so, I’m coming. I’m not a bad person. I’ll do what good I can do, just don’t try to ‘help’ me.”

Awkwardly, she paused, and looked this way, upward, than back his way, “I’m, uh, gonna fly off now. We’re in Massachusetts. Your people know where you are. They’ll come get you soon. Sorry about the long flight back.”


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