It was like a car accident. Athena had never experienced anything like this before, but she knew what was happening, in her head she knew it could happen, but the chances were so rare, she never thought she would end up here, in the pull of magic. It was deeply uncomfortable, everything in her body wanted the world to feel normal again and it knew how to do it too, just let go of the arm, just let what wants to happen be, but she couldn't do it, her mind was stuck around a cog, and soon the wheels and gears were grinding.
Everything felt hyper real in tttttthhhhhiiiiisssss second, to the point where basic reality hurt, the color of the latex, the texture of it against her hand, the fact that Athena existed, all of it felt wrong, the random twist of fate that had allowed her to be standing here as a human girl of 17 and not a spider or dust or nothing. She could be not be, she could float land on a jacket and hide unnoticed in a closet, she could wait for a fly to enter her web, she could be anyone. She looked at her friend, and in that second realized that her friend didn't have a name. Here was this amazing girl, bound in latex and make up, eggs escaping her womb but only 2 that had names, Athena saw all the hair that would ever come out of her head like a rainbow, the tears of her birth, love, and death all hot in her cheeks as one drop, all the same tear, her face like a baby, fresh but wrinkled with age, but there was no name with it, no persona attached to it, and behind that face another face, which fell like masks, Sarah, Zelda, Sabrina, Toms mom, Her, all in a chain, linking around the Around.
Around her Athena felt the universe swirl and bend, if she would just look away from the girl she would see, she would be offered all the answers to the universe and in that moment she remembered not to ask. The threshold was crossed. The chain was broken. The universe snapped back into place, like a river that had been damned was reforging it's banks, faster now. The second ended. Things returned.
Athena watched as the student body president walk away from her, very concerned with planning prom, with making people happy, with being in control, and with being just cool enough to be liked by most people. Zelda was her name...Zelda Whitfield, she had a sister named Sarah who was into cyber gothy things, who was friends with Jon...no Gena Gibson...these were her friends, it was like remembering something in reverse, the memory came and then the thought that recalled it. These thoughts seemed to crowd Athena's head like novels, they didn't feel untrue, but like a second draft. Athena had the sensation that something had changed, but she wasn't sure what, it felt like something had ended. She was wrong, things hadn't stopped changing, reality hadn't settled yet, and it wasn't done with her.
