Descertina felt unsettled in the silence that remained each time Lataio left his space. She felt "restless?" The word awakened a tremor in her, a rapid breathing, and she didn't feel it because... Here in her world, "irregularities" were unknown? She jumped backward contemplating the word that appeared in her "spirit?" Now she paced around the pristine kitchen, pure white, totally clean due to the efficiency of her own automatic movement that kept everything in order.
The plants that radiated a supernatural green, so thick they seemed to swallow everything around them, made her startle. She now contemplated the brown of the living room that appeared before her, the beautiful leather sofas that molded to the body in search of perfect comfort, the green of the plants climbing the walls made her yearn for the blue of "something to balance me" - they were a pressure that accentuated her nervousness. The mermaids swimming with her son [saying] "You're already a man, give yourself to us, you don't need her or anyone, come with us, you'll be happy" made her walk around the room restlessly without looking where she was going.
The furniture, the sofas automatically moved away from her path to avoid any kind of injury or accident, something that didn't exist in this perfect world. She now contemplated Lataio's room in search of clues to where the Mermaids might be. The plants continued to climb through the house until, with a sudden pang of longing for the wildness of a world she barely remembered, she shouted, "Water!!!!! Appear, cowards who hide in the element that belongs to us!!!"
And suddenly, a giant wave materialized before her, surging through the pristine home, sweeping aside the carefully arranged furniture, and shattering the illusion of perfect order. The wave crashed against the walls, the force of its impact reverberating through the very foundations of the house.
A ripple of shock spread through the perfectly ordered neighborhood. From behind pristine windows, faces peered out, their programmed serenity momentarily disrupted by the unexpected chaos. The wave carried Descertina with it, tossing her against the unforgiving trunk of a tree. Her cry for freedom was cut short, her struggle for individuality extinguished in the violent surge of the very element she had summoned. The water receded, leaving behind a trail of debris and a lifeless form, a tragic symbol of the price of defiance in a world that demanded absolute conformity.
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The neighbors came out of their houses and, astonished, saw something they didn't understand. Their faces, normally serene and content, were etched with confusion and a flicker of something akin to fear. The sky descended towards their heads, creating a sense of oppressive weight, a pressure that forced their gaze downward, preventing them from fully comprehending the scene unfolding before them. A lake formed from the ground, its waters rising swiftly, carrying the disoriented neighbors towards a virtual center. There, they were confronted with their own reflections in giant mirrors, their familiar shapes distorted and fragmented, their sense of self momentarily shattered.
They saw themselves, they saw Descertina's lifeless form, they saw the ground beneath their feet, all merging and shifting in a dizzying kaleidoscope of images. The disorientation was overwhelming, a chaotic symphony of reflections and perceptions. And then, just as suddenly as it began, the chaos subsided. The mirrors vanished, the lake receded, and the sky lifted, leaving the neighbors standing before their homes, their memories of the event hazy and fragmented.
With this forced disorientation, normality was seemingly recovered, the disruption contained, the anomaly neutralized. But beneath the restored order, the image of Descertina's rebellion lingered like a crack in perfect glass, impossible to unsee yet forbidden to remember.