@fearlings-lament, continued from here:
The manacles bite into Fearling’s wrists warningly as she strides through the crowd, as if even from light years away the Managers can feel her rebellion and punish her for it. Rebellion is a strong word for it, but still apt considering the point of her stroll. She tugs uselessly at the far away feeling of her usual ability, just barely out fo reach.
The crowds press in around her and she hisses pushing at her dulled Sense, habitually and petulantly trying to make those surrounding her step back without a word. It doesn’t work and irritation rises quickly making her huff and shove a bit harder through the crowds. She hisses through her teeth as a sudden spike in fear washes over her from her right. It seems her efforts were not completely wasted.
The woman’s outward and inward appearances are drastically different. Visually she is a statue, all pale skin and dark hair, stock still among a seething crowd of being teeming with life. But she radiates the kind of energy Fearling hadn’t felt since being sent off planet. Someone who had been fully in control a second before her powers had yanked any and all latent anxieties to the surface.
Fearling reluctantly pulls back the thread of power that had seeped through, feeling it snap back into place behind the manacle’s influence. She grits her teeth and sits down without bothering to introduce herself, waiting for her accidental victim to calm down.
A forced breath in, and a forced breath out.
It is meant to be even, meant to be stabilizing, meant to ground her, but it does not feel as though it is. It feels as though she is merely wasting air -- wasting time -- wasting energy she could be utilizing in another way.
( Perhaps that is just an anxiety-fueled musing. Wasteful, wasteful, wasteful, wasting, wasting, wasting... )
There is a presence, a force there, before her -- unlike anything through which she has ever sifted. Unlike anything she has ever tasted, allowed wash over her. Black eyelashes flutter open to attempt to ascertain what it is that is happening, sees a figure she does not recognize, staring at her. The breath she has been training catches in her throat.
Neither of them say anything.
