Second Impressions

[wolfs_daughter]

Cian's note had caused Echo to shake off the vestiges of the weird mood she'd been in since the night she'd seen the meteor, and she put the stone he'd left for her where he'd directed her to. Just knowing it was there made her feel more secure.

She'd gotten up at her usual early hour, then had breakfast and did her exercises in the front yard. Sometimes she wondered if her nearest neighbors, the Snyders, ever saw her out there, and if so what they thought of it. Then again, if they thought she was weird, they'd never mentioned anything. That was strangely comforting.

After she did some tidying up, she picked up the keys to the van and locked the trailer up behind her. She wanted to go up the highway to Vegas and catch the Strip before it got crowded. If it was ugly without all the neon, that would make her drawings better, more realistic. She was always looking for ways to expand on her talent, and urban landscapes were good for that in her opinion.

The roads were deserted because of the early hour, and when the hybrid reached the city she parked her vehicle in a metered spot. Dropping coins into the slot, she studied the street. Where was the best vantage point to start from?

Comments

[wolfs_daughter]

Echo smiled, but the expression was a little grim. There were always lessons to be learned when your nature wouldn't allow you to fit in. If the other woman's dim memories were true, she came from an otherworldly combat zone. No wonder she was having such difficulty adjusting.

"I'm sorry that I hurt you before. You were in my space, and I thought you were going to bite me or something. When strangers get too close, it makes me get weird. Bit I shouldn't have done what I did."

The words were difficult for the hybrid to say. This woman was clearly Other, and she wasn't a known Other. For all Echo knew, she'd been a god of some sort, at least until some fool had yanked her through a keyhole in the universe. Some things were better left undisturbed.

[primordial_visitation]

"I hadn't decided," the primordial visitor openly declared in what could almost have been a purr of contemplation. "Things are different here... Confusing. Light, like... Hissing feathers. The heaviness is gone."

Had she been of a more scientific mind, there would have been an allusion to a lower frequency of atomic vibrations. The eighties brought with them increased use of microchips and other technologies in medical hardware and near-death experiences were being more commonly reported to researchers. Not all of them, however, were positive. Those which spoke of darker places infested with horrifying entities, often also gave testimony to a much heavier atmospheric pressure and of loneliness being a horridly tangible sensation - save for the things which could be sensed stirring in the darkness or screams of sheer agony from... Other places.

For those who had truly visited hell, it was a genuinely terrifying place and those lost souls who found themselves there were to be pitied.

And this was a denizen of it. A creature used to thriving in a climate of the damned, than the streets of Vegas.

What kind of mentality could be homesick for a place like that?

"But the undead and others of your world are nutritious enough."