I jolted awake and felt the low rumble start up as it always did. The low purring of the engine in my centre spurring me onwards. The woman’s eyes were locked with mine. She looked at herself, stared into her eyes intently. They fiercely stared forward, gaze fixed with intensity. Deep breaths entering her nose followed by sharp exhales. Her left hand griped one side of the sink and her right was pressed against it clenched around-helping her upwards and holding her forwards. Held her poised to really look at herself.
The pace of her breath slowed as I found the rumbling power inside me begin to rise. My heart’s racing accelerating, the engine shifting up gears as she did the opposite. Itching to keep the feeling rising I cast ensnare on the women, compelling her to simply keep looking as she was, to keep gazing, to lean in a little closer.
A second or two passed, taught. Then she slumped, the tension dissipating, dispersing out of her. She breathed deep as she unfolded, eyes closed and face softening-her mind briefly distant from thought.
The second in which the inhale ended. The brief pause between the huge intake and the sweet release. In that one stretching moment of peace, that moment that seemed to last. That brief point of tranquility. I wondered, what did the woman go through outside this room to come here like this? I wondered what the world was to send someone back to my domain in such a state. I wondered at this timeless space in between breath and action.
That moment of tranquility felt foreign to me, the point between build and relief. For me there was no in between, no middle moment. I felt trapped in that time, the moment not as much stretching as I was frozen in it.
The woman breathed out, her body sinking further into its slump. Her eyes opened and she locked back onto the mirror. Before long she drew herself up. She drew up to her full height, spine straight and chin high-not high simply level and yet seeming raised. She stared into the mirror, composed. The tension of before was purged, and with the weight of that problem gone she stood straight again. She made to leave and go about her business and I let her, leaving her phone on the counter behind. I felt the impulse to act but knew that I would be just as well to ignore it. I let her have this brief respite, as much out of geniality as out of the intuition that ensnare was better saved again for later.
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She washed hands and dried them. Eye contact was minimal as she moved through the routine of the room. I felt the shaking of my core the longer she stayed and grinned. The power was not completely lost to me, I could feel it significantly once again.
I willed myself into the oblivion once again.
I returned to the world not long after I’d left it, surprised. The woman darted into the room fast , half lunging toward the counter where the brick had been left. She’d left something behind, something important I realised-at least it was indicated so by the half leap she was exhibiting. Snapping into action I cast ensnare on the corner of her mouth. She paused to see the sauce marring the junction of lips and face where her sandwich had missed her mouth-for the consumption of what else could become so disastrous.
she put the phone down and grabbed tissue from the hazy edge of my vision to wipe the smear of her face. She propped the bin with her foot and disposed of the face sauce before moving out. But my gaze didn’t follow her. I stared down at the counter where the black mass had sat, the space where the object she’d just snatched up and made off with had just occupied. I felt the rumbling of my centre and the roiling mass of emotion there, of the rising power. I focused on that one spot with an intensity rivalling that which I just recently observed from the now absent woman. It was as I looked upon that bare white counter top, marked by the occasional glisten of gathered water drops, that an idea began to form. I started to grin as much as I was able, and it would of seemed to anyone else in the room at the time that the surface of the mirror briefly glistened.