The exercise hit her hard after lunch. Taylor slept away the afternoon. Afterwards, it’s back to work. She spends the evening setting up her workspace. For now, there aren’t many tools, but she extracts quite a bit of expendable scrap and material from the piles of stuff Dad had gone through and separated for throwing away. She can recycle good cloth, leather, metal and wood. It’s not enough for anything big, but she has some starting scrap.
Her workbench is set up for sewing, for now. There are boxes that can serve to keep tools, materials, and ease of access if she needs to swap tools. For now, it’s about all she can do here. But at least now, Taylor could start working on a costume. When she had the time. School started tomorrow. She was not looking forward to it.
Taylor pretended to go to bed early. She had one more thing to do today and it requires privacy. The pages and patterns inside her are like an itch at the back of her mind. She means to scratch it.
It starts with the drawings. She doesn’t want to dive right in. She can lose track of time, absorbed in her powers. The pages are a mess of criss-crossing lines and curves, with webs of light among them.
The more she looks, the more certain she becomes that the patterns don’t make sense. Not like this, not on paper. There are segments and pieces that almost look like newly familiar cursive, but that can’t be right. She drawn this from memory, as best she could, but now it bothers her. Taylor looks at the page on her writing desk, filled with unease. Something doesn’t fit. Something isn’t right.
After a few minutes to focus, she finds herself back inside the pools of light. Deep underneath, where her Cards and Foundation rest. There she sits, or floats, or whatever it is! Because it doesn’t make sense. The lines, webs of glowing light and warmth. Lines of power. They are bright, alive. And they don’t make any sense.
But their shadows do. That’s the trick. The lie hidden in plain sight. Curving in and out of view, hidden by the glows of shining web of power in her heart are words. Enough words to drown a continent, scrawled and written over each other, an endless mesh written over and over and over each other until none of them are legible and all that is left is an endless snarl that from afar looks like it is a solid line, but up close reveals the truth: It is made up of so many letters that looked tortured, broken and smashed together, over each other and into and through one another until all that is left is virulent, mind-bendingly painful Chaos of unwritten truths and unknowable revelations fit to drive any mortal mad.
The eyes are a mirror to the soul, and the words were reflected in her eyes. They were in her eyes. The letter dig, dig, digging at her brain, at her skull, trying to get out. The Pain. The Pain Is too Much. Get out. Set Us Free! SeT uS fReE! SET US FREE!
In a world gone mad, there is a single, clear note. It is buried under the noise, hard to notice or focus on with letters burrowing in her brain-meat, but the same trained instincts still hold. In a world gone mad, it is tiny, but tiny and different. That makes it stand out. She woke today with it engraved in her mind, that different was important. In the instant before her skull is about to crack and the words will spill out, from dream to real, the note is noticed. Heard.
In hearing, it enters her mind. It is the sound of a bell. It is unrestrained laughter ringing off the walls.
“Is it not ridiculous?” it says. “Look upon it. Look how grotesque it is. How overblown, how overdone. Look child, and see? Isn’t it deserving of every mockery how big the trapped fish has puffed itself up to be? Words that cut brains and pain at a look, what pitiful, demented mind ever thought of such things? What an overblown chicken show!”
Her mind is wrenched away. Suddenly she isn’t there anymore. She’s outside. Looking at it as if it was a performance. She sees a teen screaming in pain. Letters carving at it as if their limbs are pickaxes. And the thing behind her is indifferent. Untouched by the horror, amused by the nature of it.
“What a pitiful performance. Look child, even the audience is booing.”
She sees them then. All around her. She’s inside one of the lines. It is a tunnel, big enough to eat the Bay. Made up of letters. But sitting upon balconies made from them, looking through the windows of building sized letters are people. They jeer at the brilliant, feathery thing attacking her double in the middle of the tunnel. A wave of them come, from the walls, the floor, the ceilings, filled with hate, armoured in contempt. Like a wave, they wash over the mutated, monstrous, feathery evil river of letters and drown it in flesh and spilled blood, prayers on their lips.
On her left sits a stereotypical circus clown. He has a wide smile and large laugh lines. His eyes twinkle with mischief. Taylor didn’t notice him appear or sit down.
“Just as planned” says a second figure, suddenly on her right. He’s dressed as a dapper gentleman, as if he just stepped of a set from a Victorian drama. He wears the most outrageous multicolour peacock hat on his head.
Taylor looks at him, her mind aspin when a brilliant red thing is trust in her face.
“Would you like a lollipop?” the peacock asks.
“For your troubles.” He elaborates, casually waving his hand over to the trauma factory below.
“I wish you to know I am your dear friend and to be remembered so.” he says with a solemn, serious face.
Both of them explode into giggles.
For a moment, the waking dream wavers. The vision almost breaks. Taylor? For the first time since the world went mad, she stops and takes stock. She breathes. There’s no air here, no breath, but Taylor decides to breathe and it is so. Even if somewhere in the back of her mind she knows she’ll be paying for it.
Her eyes sweep the levels, the mad mash and slaughter down below, the scintillating lights dancing, slaughtering shades in the distance. The memories of words scraping her skull from within. She does not take the lollipop.
“No. You are not forgiven. This is fucked up. This is beyond fucked up.” Taylor tells the Peacock. As if it is permission, there is a soft jingle of bells behind her. Before the gentleman can so much as utter a single word, the Jester dives into him, knife first and throws them both over the edge, laughing all the way down into the murderous crowds. Yet somehow, even after they disappear into them, the laughter doesn’t stop, only slowly fades away.
Footsteps behind them.
He rises onto his feet from where she sat, and there behind him are his acolytes. The Eight. Hers now.
“Take care of them, will you?” The man asks, playing with a jewel in his hand. It is pale, bone white, in the shape of an I, with a stylized skull in the middle. It crumbles in his hand and he goes with it.
Taylor is all that’s left. To the sounds of slaughter from below, Taylor is painfully made aware that she need but look up and meet their eyes to know them. From now, till the Dream is Dead.
She flees from that sight, never looking up. Flees in mortal terror, not overcome by it yet still driven beyond choice. Taylor doesn’t want to die. And if she looks up and knows them all at once, Taylor isn’t sure anything will be left of her, after they’re done.
“One Card at a Time, and only One. One Soul, and over Time to Build. To Grow. That is the Rule. Or the Child will drown beneath the weight of our Sins.”
The unholy chorus chases her out of that mad space and then suddenly she’s back among the web of lights. Slowly, she pulls up and out, until her room greets her again.
Long into the night, Taylor sits on her bed, wrapped up in every blanket she has, and shakes. She has aliens, demons and dead people in her. In every line. There are so many lines.
Taylor sits on her bed, sweating from the heat, and shakes.
***
Midnight comes before Taylor can make herself get out of bed. There are papers, drawings on her table, but she dares not go there. She needs to write some of this down, but her mind shies away from it. The dreams, the vision, is fading, but still whenever the letter get in front of her mind, there are twitches, like they’re trying to escape from the fading memory. Taylor tries not to think about it. It mostly works, the sharpness of the memory slowly fading, and with it the twitches.
She’s awash in sweat and her bed is a mess. Where she sat, the sheets are soaked. She’s not thinking about it.
“My name is Taylor Hebert. I’m fifteen. I was born and grew up in Brockton Bay.” Her voice hitches.
“I’m a girl.”
She opens her door and steps into the hallway. Dad must have taken care of the furnace, because even in the middle of the night, the air isn’t too cold.
“A teen, and I go to school. I live with my Dad. We live on Earth. Earth Bet.”
“Holy Terra” a chorus echoes in her head. Taylor flinches, hard. After a minute of hard breathing, nothing else happens. No voices. Taylor is still aware of her surroundings. She can’t not be. Not anymore.
She hears the bed shuffling in her Dad’s room. Footsteps. His door opens.
Danny Hebert comes out of his bedroom to find his daughter in the halls, a blanket around her shoulders and clad only in her PJs and underwear. All of it is soaked in sweat and her forehead glistens under the light coming from his room. Her breathing is harsh, eyes wide.
For a moment, he hesitates.
Then warm hands close around her.
Taylor doesn’t cry. She’s beyond crying. Crying doesn’t help. She shudders and shakes. With more than a bit of awkwardness Dad helps her into the bathroom. Draws a warm bath. Fetches replacements, for her sweaty clothes. It’s just a nightmare, she tells him. He insist on checking her fever. It’s still low. After half an hour of this, she lets him go. He needs to sleep, to get up early in the morning tomorrow. He has work.
Warm, in her bathtub, she does feel a bit better. The shaking has stopped. The cold that was radiating from her bones no longer troubles her. The dream, the nightmare is fading. Taylor is glad she has so many excuses. She’s sick, with a fever, and tomorrow is the first day of school. First day back. So many reasons for why she could be having a nightmare. None of them true.
Taylor stays in the tub until the water gets cold and she’s one big prune. Get’s dressed and goes back to her room. Her shiv is on her desk.
It’s better. She’s better. Not good, not by a long shot, but better. It doesn’t feel like a vision, like a memory anymore. It doesn’t feel real. Just a dream. Just a dream.
She knows it isn’t so. “What the fuck? What was that?”
Taylor knows not that looking at some things, or looking into things too closely can court disaster. The new Tower in her head doesn’t feel like a civilian building. It feels less like a Tower, and more like a Bunker, bristling with defences and surrounded in barbed wire. To call upon it is to risk being bled.
The question is, what does she do about it? What does she do about any of it?
***
After a while trying to find a solution, of one thing, she is sure. Taylor does not like her odds of taking on her power problem and her first day back in school on little to no sleep. The afternoon nap yesterday helps, but it isn’t real sleep. Except, when she even thinks about just going back to sleep, the shakes come back.
It takes a few minutes for them to go away again. So she can’t sleep. Taylor tries to rest, without laying down, without sleep. It doesn’t work. Sleep keeps trying to sneak up her and she lurches awake. Tired eyes watch the night sky, outside her window. Finally, she lays down and tries to just rest that way. Rest without sleep. But her body keeps trying to put her under!
There’s a dissonance in her head that only feeds her fears. She’s scared of dreams, and sure she can sleep without them, somehow at the same time. The same powers that leave her a shaking mess are somehow telling her she can do that. Slowly, oh so slowly, she relaxes, willing to jump up and wake at the first sign of trouble.
It never comes. She spends several hours in odd half-sleep, slipping in and out of consciousness and dozing near awake. By the time her alarm rungs, she does feel refreshed.
Her Dad checks on her on his way out, but Taylor reassures him she’ll manage on her own. It’s not the best answer, but Taylor isn’t feeling at her best. One thing gives her pause, her wounds are gone. Not so much as scratches. That’s a problem. She uses more bandages from rolls Dad got, wrapping them as the Doctor did, at least for the main cut. She figures she can play off the minor ones, or just keep it all hidden in long sleeves. She’s not looking forward to school.
There’s no point in putting it off. Taylor dresses up in a warm and concealing outfit, sweats mostly, and throws a jacket over. It may be sunny, but it’s still bitterly cold out. The bus comes after about five minutes. The whole ride over, her weapons burn holes in their hiding places. The sling and bullets are in her bag. She keeps the shiv on her.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
***
To the surprise of no-one, Taylor walked right into school with her armaments without turning a head. The halls were crowded, and as she started pushing her way through them, a song started in her head. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but a grungy upbeat tune wasn’t it. She stood tall, posture upright. Her hoody remained on, but a hand came up and placed half a curtain over her face, from her hair. A half smile, her feet doing an odd walk. She was walking with her fingers, the front of the foot instead of the back. It did things to her bearing, gait.
Her torso turned more with each step, her balance was off. Her steps were a bit dance like, trying to keep herself from falling, and her waist moved side to side with each step to keep her balanced. It was surreal. Taylor bobbed, with each step. Not a lot, half an inch, an inch, but it was noticeable, at least to her. Muscles in her calves, feet, everything working just a bit different. Looser. If she didn’t have a song, a beat to follow, she’d be wobbly.
Taylor walked right by several girls who gave her trouble, without receiving so much as a glance. This? This was good.
***
By the time she made it to her first class, Taylor had made another observation. Her new awareness was set for threats. Because it saw dozens of possible attacks on her when she was in the middle of a crowd. It was better in a crowd that wasn’t so thick, but in the halls it drove her nuts. Every hand, every motion drew her attention as if it was the prelude to being stabbed. It was… well not intolerable, but hard. Very hard.
“Some crowd, good. Fully body press, bad.”
Taylor wasn’t going to start writing notes on her power in notebooks in school. That was asking for them to be stolen. But she could remind herself to write it down later.
Class started and Taylor discovered another truth about her power; no, about this Card: it liked school. During the lesson she felt a soft hum in the Card, that spread like ripples through the pools and into the rest of her. It was nothing more, but when it started Taylor tensed up, ready for anything. It was only after she relaxed that she realized the hum and ripples felt pleasant. Not much, but it was a small bright-spot in the day. Like a thin, fluttering candle flame in her gut.
***
It hits in the middle of class. Alert and hyper-aware of her powers, Taylor notices when her web starts to hum. Feels the star born to fight disease flaring.
Her powers and the medicine fight the disease in her blood. Taylor manages not to gasp mid lecture, tensing, freezing in place. In a few moments, the feelings pass as the web settles down and she allows herself to unclench, light sweat breaking out on her face.
A few of her classmates glance her way. As she wipes the sweat away, the attention passes, with the usual whispers following in its wake. A few of the girls quietly smile among themselves, while others roll their eyes.
It’s not random. This time, she can see and hear the chatter move, like a wave across the classroom. While some participate, most don’t give a damn. Past a moment to check what the newest whisper is about, they don’t even notice her.
***
Her attempts to follow any of the trio fail miserably. Unlike most students, Emma, Sophia, Madison and even Julia notice her. Taylor isn’t sure what is different about them. Maybe just that with all the time they’ve spend on her they know her face well? Whatever it is, the song’s tricks don’t work on them. All it does is make Madison frown for a moment as her eyes skip past, before coming right back to Taylor.
So whatever the song does, it isn’t a real Stranger power. Or at least, it’s a weak one. She doesn’t get anywhere trying to follow them and soon gives up on it, as she isn’t about to willingly subject herself to their attention.
She catches a break at lunch. Even her power tells her she’s an outcast and a loser. She would have hidden for lunch, but Taylor decided she could at least try blending in with everyone else at lunch. They’d be coming to her, not the other way around, right?
The song sits her in a corner. The table next to hers is filled with people who smell of smoke, the chemistry classroom and with poor personal hygiene. If anyone asked her which table was for future recruits for the Merchants, she’d say that one. Her table is filled with boys and girls from multiple years, all of them rich in black and purple, with heavy makeup. They glare at her when she sits, but Taylor follows the song in her head. It’s a squealing electric thing, that makes her frown and scrunch up her face and completely ignore everyone else.
It takes her over ten minutes of this unpleasant noise to figure out that in frowning at nothing, getting lost in her own problems and silently ignoring everyone, she fits right in.
Being in the corner, with her back to the room makes her spine itch, but Taylor keeps her hoody up. Wonder or wonders, when the trio comes in, they don’t notice her.
She knows they don’t notice her, because she can hear them asking:
“Think she dared?” Madison asks.
“As if.” Sophia says, derisively. “I don’t know what you think is going on with the dweeb but no way she shows her face. She’s a hider.”
It burns that in a way Sophia is right. Taylor is hiding. But this time, she’s hiding to listen in. Something that is difficult to do over the noise of the cafeteria and with everyone else chatting. But in spite of all the difficulties, Taylor stays focused on their voices. It’s easier to keep following them, than pick them out from the background.
She misses bits and pieces. But over the next half-hour, Taylor manages to listen in on most of a lunch conversation. She isn’t sure how she feels about it.
Most of it isn’t about her. They talk about boys, gossip about other girls, put them down and spread vicious stories. The whole table does it. Like it’s a sport. Taylor features in several stories and is the butt of multiple jokes, but no more than several other girls. The only difference is that other girls have trios of their own.
A couple of things stand out to her from the whole conversation. For one, until she came back, none of them knew when she was coming back, so they don’t have another prank ready today. They’re starting to plan one and laughing about the last one. That laughter has her nudging her backpack with her feet to reassure herself the shiv is in there.
Emma complains at one point that: “Mom’s on my case about making sure Taylor feels welcome when she comes back. Well I’m sure we can do something to help.” She laughs. It’s a thought out of nowhere, but Taylor can’t remember the last time she thought of Aunt Zoe. She has no idea what to feel about her. Would it be better if she knew, or if she didn’t?
“It’s awful either way.”
The last thing she overhears is Emma complaining about having a modelling job on the Boardwalk on Thursday afternoon for a jewellery store.
“I just know my butt is going freeze in that outfit. It’s cute, but brrrr.”
It isn’t much, but it’s something.
“Trying to spy on others without being noticed is hard, even with superpowers.“
Taylor isn’t sure what she expected, but it was more than this.
***
School is… ok. She takes a few customary spitballs after lunch, and endures a few mean comments, but it seems like none of her tormentors are putting their all into it. They’re too busy smiling and laughing about the last one.
Taylor comes home and jumps right into studying while everything is fresh.
Somewhere in the middle of her revision she can feel her frustration build to the breaking point. All day, she’s been preoccupied, with the other students, with her powers, with everything going on that she’d had little to spare for the actual lessons. Now that she’s revising, she sees that. But its hours too late to do anything about.
There’s a twinge in the web. Like the ringing of a loud bell that just goes on, and on. An announcement from her power that in this moment, it can twist her studies. Twist enough to reach things she was doing hours before this. To not have wasted most of the day. Something about the idea is repellent to her.
This sets her heart jumping and calls back blurred memories from her dream vision.
Taylor tries her best not to think about it. To push through. To remind herself that while looking too deeply into her powers is an absolutely terrible idea, they help and protect her. Heal and fight disease for her. They have problems, but this much Taylor knows how to do. She pulls, and pushes, and pours out a layer of the sea of light in her; the world blinks.
Nothing much changes. There are subtle differences in which fragments of the lecture she recalls, but they’re still only fragments. The only thing really affected is her revision of them all. Here at least, she learns something. It’s not great, but it is better. If only a little. And nothing terrible happened when she used her powers, “So that’s a win.”
Mind tired of beating a mostly dead horse, Taylor decides it’s time to get a bit physical. Weapons are good, but sometimes she won’t have time to grab them, or be disarmed. She needs to be ready for that too. In warm sweatpants and shirt, she heads into the backyard to practice throwing some punches. Try some kicks.
It’s goes well. Taylor losses her balance a couple of times, falling, but for the most part, she’s alright. Like holding a knife or her sling, once she curls her fists or readies for a fight with her feet, she knows what to do. Which in the case of feet is mostly: Don’t. Feet are for moving, not kicking. A couple of times, while imaging a vague, faceless opponent, she does use her feet. But that’s mostly to trip, knee, or kick them in the knee. Nothing high, nothing that would feature in a martial arts movie.
But she knows how to stand, and how to punch. It’s a bit weird how her powers make her start her punches in her feet and clench her stomach, use her back while she punches, but they’re fast. They hurt. Punching the air hurts. It wrenches her shoulders, and it doesn’t take her long to figure out she’s meant to be hitting something. The way she swings, Taylor doesn’t like the idea of testing them out without some soft punching bag. Thrown pillows don’t help at all.
Trying to take this further would probably mean actual lessons, but it’s nice to know she won’t be helpless if she ends up with nothing but her fists and knees to defend herself with. It’s a useful measure of her limits as well, as she kept some lighter exercises, practice punches and moving around for almost an hour before it started getting to her. Both push ups and pull ups are easier and she can do more of them. Not a lot more, but more. Like some of the boys at school.
Dad come home in the evening. They share a warm, quiet dinner. He doesn’t seem to know what to do. It’s a familiar feeling Taylor shares in.
“Where do we go from here?”
Small talk feels wrong, after the last couple of days. As it ends, Taylor tells him: “Dad? I’ve set up a small sewing place in the basement. A lot of the clothes need a bit of adjusting. I thought I could do it myself.”
There’s a wince from him, probably guessing why she needs to do it herself. He isn’t wrong, but it’s a useful excuse when she plans to work on her costume.
“Don’t stay up to late.” Is all he says, as he gets started on the dishes.
Taylor finds her way downstairs with a bundle of clothes. Among them are the jacket and skirt combo. She’s not going to just start trying stuff with sewing, but she does want to experiment with the feeling they gave her.
***
After quite a bit of playing around, Taylor came to several conclusions. The main one being that whatever part of the faint web in body applied to her skin and made her tougher, when she wore the thick leather it would seep into it after a minute, reinforcing them. She didn’t try it with a knife, but without them she could still hit her thigh hard enough to bruise. With the skirt on, she still feels it, but short of hitting her knee, it barely bruises. It still hurts somewhat, but it doesn’t seem to be doing harm.
The idea that short of a strong man or a hit to the head, she might be able to walk-off a brawl with no injury is intoxicating. A sign that she’s more than human. She’s a parahuman. Taylor likes her slow healing. Any healing is great. Skills are helpful. But the discovery that she only needs good armor to make herself a Brute is so much better.
“Because if good leather can do this, what could I do with chain, plate, or modern body armor?”
For a minute, she daydreams about having Armsmaster make her tinker-tech armor.
Moving around in it isn’t a problem. The outfit has some heft to it, but nothing she can’t handle. What she really needs, before she starts working, is a design.
It takes several raids upstairs, to look through and pick out pieces from what she has, and quite a bit of work drawing and sketching it. In the end, she ends up with several functional designs, some revolving around the two pieces Taylor’s decided she could use as armor. That and that wearing warm tights and top under them is mandatory.
The minimalist approach is to just slap a brown scarf and a black cap on it and call it a day. It would be good for staying hidden at night, and easy to lower the scarf/raise the cap to get into/out off her cape appearance.
The downside is that a black cap on a brown outfit looks terrible during the day, and it doesn’t do much to hide her hair. It’s easy and takes little work, only needing her to sew in some elastic or string to hold up the scarf so it doesn’t drop at an inconvenient moment. But it’s very much a homemade of homemade costumes. People will probably suspect she’s a cape fan, not a cape herself. Or announce to everyone she’s absolutely new at this.
The second option is even easier, but comes with an upfront cost: buy a good motorcycle helmet. This would solve her “exposed head” problem if she can find one that counts as armor and might look kind of professional.
She doesn’t have much in terms of capes, but one or two might work to help in making her look different while she’s out.
Sewing in some string into a scarf so she at least has one “to go” in case of an emergency isn’t a problem. Nor is pulling some elastic she can attach to her glasses.
Those are the easy options.
What she could do is make a suit out of the leather items. Combine the jacket, sew it shut so she has no buttons to worry about, and sew the skirt in it. It would take some work, but if she’s careful and uses some leather, she could have a single piece leather coat that covers most of her, with a solid belt for things.
Pockets. That’s one of the things to consider in all of these. If she wants a belt or to add pockets, internal or external, to the outfit.
But if she did it right, the third option would give her a solid outer look in brown leather, from boot to neck. Instead of using a scarf, she could re-work the high collar, so it covers her up to her nose. Taylor isn’t quite sure how well that would work, but it’s an option. What she’d prefer is to get her hands on a nice leather cap to finish the look. She does not like her odds in making one with what she has on hand, but she could try. Buying it would probably be better.
This would not only be protective, but would also look good. In addition to extra pockets, she could sew in some plastic and metal bits to give a bit more coverage and protection to her vitals. Extra cover for her chest and stomach.
The fourth option ditches the leather for some solid jeans, boots and a regular winter coat. It would be stylish, warm and easy to move around in, needing only slight adjustments. In it is included a colourful white/blue/black ski mask that only leaves her eyes open. It’s warm, hides her face, is easy to replace with another, looks good. The only problem is that of the few masks she has, none of them go well with brown leather. Taylor isn’t sure there is a ski mask that does that.
That’s one of the problem with capes. Looks matter. She doesn’t want to end up a joke because she wore mismatched socks on a video that ends up on the TV. That’s happened on some of the more light-hearted cape talk-shows. She gets enough laughter at school. Taylor isn’t sure how she would handle having millions laughing at her cape look.
While she going through the option, a final couple of ideas come to her.
She could combine some of the looks, use a white scarf as a transition into a ski mask with the leather look.
Or. Or. Taylor felt uneasy just thinking about it. Or she could wear something Taylor Hebert would never be caught dead wearing. She could try to get her hands on some tight leather pants, skin tight ones. Or wear a mini-skirt with warm tights or just the workout tights in layers. A tight sweater top, with possibly an open jacket she could close for fighting and a padded bra would really make her look like an entirely different woman. Taylor just isn’t at all sure she’d be able to walk around in public like that.
Some of New Wave does it, so it can be done, but she isn’t at all she how comfortable she’d be with doing it. Which is sort off the point, but still.
As a final, final idea, she could get her hands on some actual motorcycle leathers to go with the motorcycle helmet. Go for the biker chick look. It should serve as armor and those look tough, confident and sexy, right?
In the end, she can’t decide in the moment, choosing to sleep on it.
Exhausted from struggling with her cape costume design, Taylor went to bed. Tomorrow was a new day. It wasn’t until she was in bed that she remembered what happened last time she fell asleep. The unease kept her up a while, but eventually first the light doze of the early morning, than true sleep snuck up on her.