>>5789182Question after question rose in your supercharged mind, and the new ones bubbled up before you could voice the old ones:
Was she a hybrid—a half-human, like yoruself? A chimera? Something else?
Was this a dream? A drug-induced hallucination? A fey trickster, somehow attracted to you by your dabbling in feycraft?
Were you in danger? Was IZIRINA in danger?
“You’re not Henzler,” you spoke aloud.
“No,” said the jackalope-headed facsimile, “but I am Izirina.”
You stared in silence, trying to parse out what that could mean, and settled for:
“Are you real?”
“Are you?” she countered.
You blinked, suddenly unsure how to answer that—or how to justify your answer.
“Izirina Henzler isn’t really here…” you surmised. “But you… You are, in some way, Izirina Henzler.”
The apparition nodded slowly, and lifted hands to clasp your face. The fingers writhed and shifted, ten tiny serpents stroking your face, coiling around your throat and chin, but not squeezing or choking you—just holding you in place, fixing your gaze.
“Do you see me?” she asked again.
“I do,” you said, so quietly you could barely hear yourself.
“Do I frighten you? Do you hate me, pity me?”
“No,” you said, truthfully.
You could not look away. You didn’t’ WANT to look away.
“Do you love me?”
You didn’t even BEGIN to know what to say to that. A ‘yes’ seemed inappropriate. A ‘no’ seemed almost profane, and to not be the whole truth.
“I…”
You gulped, and placed your hand upon her hand, so that your fingers and hers—once more normal, slim, humanoid fingers—were squeezing one another.
“I want to understand you,” you said.
This was the truth. You felt it deep in the heart of you. To understand Izirina Henzler would be to understand the world… To understand EVERYTHING… To understand YOURSELF. That was why you were drawn to her—as a rival, then as a friend and study-mate. It was something intuitive—something outside of conventional logic, which you could only realize and understand NOW, in your current state…
