4-47
Posted July 5, 2015 at 09:00 am

And then Liya realized she could see something, a distance from her bed, presumably across the room. A fire was burning quietly, not throwing any light on anything else, and it seemed to be inside something that was smudged hazily by its brightness. She worked out the blurry shape of ribs, spine, folded bony legs--the totally black silhouette of an animal-like skeleton, the edges of which faded indistinguishably into the darkness.

Hypnotized, she reached up, and carefully put her hand beyond the border of her bed.

Her hand vanished into the darkness, so absolutely that she could not see it at the end of her wrist. A sudden burst of panic gripped her and she lit up her nerves in response--the magic coursed into her vanished hand, lighting up the nerves in them but nothing else.

And then like lightning the magic shot beyond her hand and out into the darkness, zigzagging this way and that, ending only in small starbursts of white light and clouds and clouds of blue, like tiny galaxies.

She gaped.

"They're nerves," she said, out loud, "they're all nerves?"

As if in answer, a pair of searing eyes in the head of the skeleton shape popped open. Liya saw them only briefly before, with a strange howl, the darkness behind her began to peel back.

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