Tell Truths, Whisper Secrets || Annie and Layla
There's a lot of cliches about the night sky that people like to cart out on a regular basis like poetry. Sky like ink. Coal black. Ebony dark. Diamonds bright in the sky. Eternity. Infinity. Isolation. Enormity. It was over-fucking-romanticised and Layla hated it. And yet if there was one thing that made Layla want to overromanticise things and wax lyrical on its inconceivable brilliance, it is the unbearable majesty of the universe. She has, as most people do, two eyes in her head. Each is composed of a hundred and thirty million photoreceptor cells.
That in itself inspired a little awe in her, because that number is large enough as to be incomprehensible. But in each and every one of those cells, there are a hundred trillion atoms. Fourteen zeros in a single number is enough to make even Layla feel very small. That's more than all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
However, each atom in each cell
formed the core of a star, billions of years ago, and yet... here they are today being used to observe the energy released from that same process.
All to expand the consciousness that is Layla. Or Lukas. Or Derrick. Or Esmeralda. Or any of the other tiny, tiny people wandering the minuscule planet.
It was fascinating to Layla, that irony that the universe seemed to regard itself with. She is the universe experiencing itself. All she is is a thought. It made her breathless, both with excitement and fear, to know how small she was. Any problems she had would shrink to nothing in the face of that. Perhaps that, more than the romanticisation of it, was her issue with people's close mindedness. She recalled a moment in high school when a girl called her friend a 'star' for lending her some money, and Layla had punched her. Stars are unimaginably, unexplainably magnificent and this cunt had the... the fucking arrogance to compare her ridiculous friend to one for something so tiny? The memory alone pissed her off, and the stream of smoke that spiralled elegantly from her red painted lips dispersed into shattered, jagged shapes that seemed to agree.
That was the trouble with winter. It got dark so early and the storm wasn't helping, dark clouds shading what little daylight there was. It took effort, real effort for Layla not to lose herself in musings of the spin of a planet on its axis and the sheer improbability of earth having come together to create habitable conditions for humans. There were days like this. There were days when the only way to force herself out of childish, bratty whining was to remind herself that was nothing.
It could be ego shattering, but it was really only humbling.
The idea to come outside for a quick cigarette had been good at the time, but it was only half burned and her fingers were turning chapped and red from the inclement weather. Chattering teeth make it hard to smoke without nipping off the end and she gave it up as a bad job before long, crushing the remains beneath her shoe before turning to the door, rubbing her hands together in the vain hope that it might coax a little warmth back into them.
The lighting was still dim, just the emergency generators that were desperately trying to keep things running in the midst of the storm, and it bathed the hospital in a grim orange light. It felt like walking through a crime scene, though Layla wasn't sure why that was the first comparison to spring to mind. Much though she wanted to return to her room, to fall into her bed and forget all this nonsense for a little while, the universe seemed not to be on her side today. Perhaps, and the thought almost elicited a wry smile, the universe was out to get itself. But the wry smile never came because the thought only occurred as she felt her body, tough and wiry yet somehow fragile through malnutrition and poor treatment, collide with another.
"Fuck!" Layla growled through gritted teeth, blowing a few windblown threads of blonde hair away from her face. It was something like a deep breath, only it didn't have a calming effect. It somehow had the opposite. "Does the reduced lighting really impact your vision that much? Fuck's sake. One fucking storm and everyone turns into a bumbling goddamn idiot." It was harsh, especially given the face before her was familiar-- and one that she didn't dislike particularly, had had a few conversations with-- but she had no patience today. She was pissed off at far too many things to deal with this one incident in a mature way.
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