It hadn't happened all at once. The feeling in her chest had been slow to burn, an itch under her ribs that she couldn't quite scratch. But the further she traveled from that strange eldritch encounter on the moon, the more she felt choked by the miasma, like she might be overtaken by whatever strange substance she'd allowed to pollute her.
Katie had made a horrible mistake, she decided, but she didn't know how to initiate take-backsies.
It hurt less when she called upon the memory of her starry white dress, so once the kids were in bed she snuck out of her windows and became an explosion of lights and glitter in her backyard, struggling to climb the fence in her sparkling tulle dress. Chauvet had felt initiated to a new world of glamour and intrigue on the moon, but the feeling was diminished when walking alone on the streets of her neighborhood with nothing but the hum of streetlights to talk to.
But then she felt something prickling on the edge of perception, that slimy miasma that reminded her of the Code, and she knew she would find answers there. She followed her inkling down a corridor of houses to the back of a gas-station, where a shadow-made torso held up by a dozen arms loomed ominously over a clerk whose only transgression seemed to be that he was try-harding at his job.
"Hey, stop it!" Chauvet shouted, running to intercept the beast while her chest burned. The torso convulsed and faced her, revealing a dozen milky white eyes that settled on the page, and instantly her bull rush slowed as revulsion held tight to her legs.
"What the actual s**t," the page gaped as the youma jerked into action, arm over arm as it bolted for her. She felt her ball materialize into one hand, but it did little to assuage the panic building in her gut--what was she going to do, play fetch with it? At the last second, she jumped out of the way of the fray, instinct taking over reason, landing deftly on the tiled roof of the gas station with wide eyes. She was safe now, but there was still the clerk, unconscious on the ground below, and an arms-spider between them.
What was she supposed to do here?
Nuxaz
