Quote:
The Calling (10) : A beautiful melody drifts on the air from somewhere far away. The vocals are in a language you don't quite recognize, but feel somehow familiar to you. Something about the song calls to you, but no matter where you go, the song seems to sound the same distance away. The longer it goes on, the more emotional the song becomes--and the more emotional you become. Something about the song is possessive and consuming, like it's all you can think of. Something resonates in you as the song crescendos, and the feeling is at its strongest--be they good, bad, anything, but suddenly the song fades, and there's only an emptiness inside of you. The feeling of loss is strong, and can leave someone feeling emotionally numb. Someone out there was calling to you, and you couldn't find them.
In the weeks since fighting the giant space snake, Sophie's parents had been incredibly overbearing. Not only had she snuck out of the house at night, but she'd come back with a massive scar or tattoo thing on her right side. To say she was ground until she was eighteen at this point was an understatement. Her mom had taken her to multiple doctors trying to see if the scar was detrimental or infected or literally anything bad or negative to her health.
Oh and the whole stars in her eyes thing.
Every doctor told her the same thing: it was benign and as long as nothing changed, it wasn't going to effect her growth or health. It sort of boggled the doctors as to how it was made, especially when Sophie said that 'black lightning' had struck her. They had no explanation about her eyes, especially when it didn't affect her eyesight. They passed it off as weird child things and essentially brushed it off. Which made her mother even more overbearing that she already was.
It did fade some as time passed, though in the sun it was still pretty visible. Her eyes returned to normal after about a week, sadly, and she was none the worse for wear. The grounding did not let up though, and she spent a good majority of her summer stuck inside. They did take her door (thinking she was leaving out the front door) but her window was unbarred and left open most of the time.
Sophie quickly learned the schedule for 'bed checks' and 'check ins' and never ventured far from the house when she would sneak out through the window. Mom would put her to bed at 9 pm. Dad would come in at 11 to check to see if she was asleep. She would see the lights go out down the hall at midnight. Sophie would then have a few hours before her mom came back in at 5 am when she got up for work.
Most of the time she just patrolled around her neighborhood for a little while, then went back home. She wasn't quite willing to push her luck as other kids might; she really did want her door back after all.
Tonight, she decided to sit in her local park, where she'd first become a magical girl. There'd been some sort of singing she'd heard coming out of her room that night, and she followed it to the park. The sound never got any louder though and she sat under the little geometric climbing cage thing. For some reason she felt full of loss and sadness, and it reminded her too much of that empty space between universes. She couldn't find the source of the singing, she couldn't exactly protect Terebellum or fight the big serpent.
They had beaten it, but didn't feel like she was, well, useful. She was just a kid after all. A magical girl kid, but a kid. She hugged her knees to her chest and let out a heavy sigh. Drakonia needed to do more, be out there more. Learn to right better, and get stronger. So she could fight to protect her friends, and her parents (even if she wasn't really a fan of them right now) and the world. Maybe go back to her deserty world and see what she could learn there. It might seem kinda dead. but maybe worlds just went dormant when their senshi weren't around.
That meant a lot more defying her parents and dealing with the consequences of that. Was that something she could live with? With privileges being taken away and being grounded for the rest of her life? She thought about it for a long while before she crawled out from under the play structure.
It kinda scared her to openly defy her parents and the consequences of it, but she couldn't just... not make use of the power she was given, yeah? Magical girls never just hid inside and didn't use their power. Julienne would want her to fight, Terebellum would want her to fight. So many people fought to save the world.
Her parents just didn't understand that she had a destiny to fulfill. She was Drakonia, after all. Conflict terrified her, but if it was for the greater good? She'd do it.
[ wc: 725 ]
