The wind tore chaos through her hair and clothing as the world took tangible form around her, solidifying beneath her feet, anchoring itself into a clutter of shape and color, scent and sound.
Her hands closed over the railing in front of her, cool rusted metal chilling the skin of her palms, and Evelyn leaned forward to survey her surroundings. She had emerged on a balcony overlooking a cobbled street, lined with aging buildings, weathered and cracked but still standing strong. Below surged a cacophonous throng of people clothed in fluttering swathes of bright blues, greens, purples, reds and yellows and shimmering gold and silver, every hue imaginable. She could feel the celebratory atmosphere coursing through the crowd. In the distance, music played, raucous and pounding and piped from some unseen location, and many of the people below danced to it. To Evelyn it all seemed to be a jarring, discordant frenzy, like a Bacchanal, drowning her senses-- yet a part of her longed to immerse in it, to dive in and seek release and freedom and peace in unbridled revelry, celebrating, for just a moment, nothing in particular. Eat, drink, and be merry-- for tomorrow we die!
She had been a refugee for too long. Would she ever stop feeling hunted? She felt so... alien now. Everywhere she went-- displaced. Extraneous.
Tired of caution, tired of hiding, uncaring if anybody saw her, she closed her eyes and again and focused, breathing slowly, letting her consciousness dip deeper and deeper, seconds melting into minutes until she felt the familiar sensation of shifting space envelop her. She had been practicing a lot lately, and she was getting better at it, quicker at it, but it still took a good degree of meditative centering to cross that threshold. Directing with her will, she flitted in and out of reality so quickly she scarcely saw the in-between. She alighted in the midst of the crowd like a windblown sylph rising out of a maelstrom, head held high, dark eyes sliding over the faces surrounding her as a brazen smile touched her lips.
“And what are we celebrating, then?” she asked no one in particular.