Revan in Xanadu: Big Change (Interlude)
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This story is a work in progress. |
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Xanadu story universe |
Revan in Xanadu: Big Change (Interlude)
“Ow ow ow ow! You’re going to pull my arms out of their sockets!” Released, Sandra Cavner lowered her arms and rested her torso back on the ground.
Landing and striking his signature Heroic Pose, which was rendered only slightly silly by the angle of viewing, Superman looked up at her and said, “My apologies Miss, but it looks like you’ll have to wait a while longer before you can be freed. That door is too tight; even if your arms remain attached I don’t want the building to collapse.”
“I understand,” Sandra said, folding her arms and resting her chin on them. She hadn’t really thought he could help, not when Eric couldn’t pull her out. By now she was pretty resigned to the situation. “You should go and help someone with a more immediate problem.”
“Good luck with that, Miss. Up, up, and away!” The Man of Steel bounded up and vanished into the clouds.
Eric checked to make sure that nobody was under him before crouching. “We’ll get you out sooner or later. Something has to work. If nothing else, we can take that guy up on his offer.”
“Which one? The one where I turn into a horse, or the Playboy bunny? No thanks.” That had come out sharper than she’d intended; at Eric’s wince she sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that, honest. It’s just…”
He was a good guy. “Yeah. I’d feel like that too if I was stuck there.” Eric took one of her hands in his, stroking it reassuringly, although Sandra had to question who was being reassured here. Still crouched, he shifted to block the view of yet another set of police seeing them for the first time.
“This is just really embarrassing,” Sandra admitted. She shifted her free arm and put her forehead over it planting her chin and hiding her face. The breath from her nose struck the little tiles of sidewalk, stirring and scattering the tiny scraps of debris. She thought she saw infinitesimal red and blue moving figures with green leaves on their heads running, and jerked her head back up. “The firefighters took the doors, but they can’t get me out from this side without cutting me, and I can’t be pulled out without possibly damaging the superstructure. I don’t know if they can cut the doorway away from the other side either since they’re too busy right now, so the only solution sounds like turning me into something else.”
She closed her eyes against the frustrated tears starting to well up in them. “Macross isn’t even my favorite anime! I was only a Zentradi because I didn’t like the Lina Inverse costume, and this was the easiest thing...”
“You’d make a bad Lina,” Eric said, tucking a curl of hair back behind one of her ears in a soothing gesture. “And I’d make a worse Gourry.”
It wasn’t funny, but Sandra managed a watery chuckle. “Yeah. That’s true. We could’ve been characters. It could be worse.” She looked and felt the same, anyway. She was still recognizable as Sandra. There was really only the one change. Eric was here, and he’d shared it.
“That’s the spirit. We’ll get you out.” He was a good guy, a very good guy. All day, he'd been acting very nervous, but it was sweet how he was being strong.
Bending her legs at the knee, Sandra’s heels bumped against ceiling almost instantly. “Why’d I have to go back inside, anyway,” she asked wryly. “This would actually be kinda cool…”
Eric matched her, wry for wry. “Well, there’s about fifty dollars worth of collectibles in that bag. That might have had something to do with it. And neither of us knew about the whole not-an-instant-change thing.” Pushing his finger through the handles of said bag, he swung it in little circles with flicks of his wrist.
“Mmm.” She'd decided that the moment of vertigo had been sodium imbalance. When the guy with the beer and the inflatable gag Halloween boobs had touched himself and started squealing, she’d written it off as some idiot prank. When someone caught a booth on fire, with sparkly orange flames no less, she’d been concerned. When the Hulk busted through a wall and started getting hit by laser beams, everyone in that particular dealer’s room had caught on and stampeded outside. Only then had she remembered the bag.
“I still should’ve caught on when I saw things getting smaller,” Sandra muttered.
“Hey now. It was pretty slow at first. I thought I was seeing things,” Eric told her, voice mild. “I just about went crazy, especially when you weren't there.”
That’s how it had happened to her, just about. First, getting lost and walking at the same nervous rate that she’d used coming back in, then ducking doorsills and running, then running stooped over, then crawling, then pulling herself with her hands in a slow, claustrophobic nightmare. It had stopped just before she could squeeze her hips out.
Fortunately, the convention center, although mazelike in its complexity, complied with Orlando’s fire codes. There were exits everywhere. Otherwise, she would probably be blocking the way of everyone who hadn’t gotten out yet.
And there was the Over-18 Hall, not too many rooms away. While she’d been running stooped over she’d stepped in, seen its occupants, and immediately gone back out, as fast as she could. What if they’d followed her? She couldn’t move; her waist fit the double-door exactly, her butt was covered only by clothing. What if, even now, one of those things was behind her, about to-
Something touched her ankle.
Sandra screamed and kicked frantically, her heels cracking the plaster on the ceiling, her toes forcing the floor to soften. There was just no room!
“What! Sandra, what is it!” Eric cried, springing up to his feet.
“Th- there’s something in there!” Sandra gasped. “It touched me!” She did her best to kick again, this time sweeping the cramped space sideways, but hit wall before her legs could spread more than a few inches.
Nothing. Whatever was there must have jumped back.
“What! Are you sure?! Where is it? Sandra!” Eric’s eyes were as wide as they could open. He looked helpless and genuinely terrified, and somehow knowing that eased Sandra’s fear, just a little bit.
“I don’t know - I don’t know, Eric!” She reached up and he wrapped his hands around her arms as she did the same with him.
Very consciously she closed her legs again and held very still.
Several long, anxious seconds passed before the touch returned to her ankle. This time, although she jumped a bit, tightening her grip on Eric, she didn’t kick. And after a moment, she felt… something.
Reassurance, in the form of a sort of momentary thought inside of her head. It was an alien sensation, but the wordless message was clear.
I’m not here to hurt you / I will help
A breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding rushed out of Sandra’s lungs, leaving her almost limp. “It’s okay,” she said, looking into Eric’s anxious face. “It’s help. I’m fine.”
The touch – it felt like a little hand, she could feel the fingers – glided upwards from her ankle, up the outer edge of her calf, as if someone was walking and raising their arm as they progressed. Sandra produced a nervous giggle as it passed her knee, then silenced as it traveled up her thigh.
The momentary thought returned.
be still / do not move
There was plenty of noise in the air, sirens and alarms, shouted conversations, cries of shock and fear and joy and bewilderment, the bwouushhhh of someone or something belching flame, and the beat of great wings sharing the sky with helicopters, among myriad other sounds. It was understandable, then, that Sandra heard nothing as the doorway which trapped her was cut through.
Then the pressure on the left side of her waist diminished. “Pull me out! I think-“
His expression skeptical, Eric tugged, eyes widening in surprise as she moved. He pulled again, harder and farther this time, and Sandra was at last free.
Unsteady, she put her feet underneath her and stood, reeling a little. “Oh, wow. Is that the apartment building over there? Geez.” A half-rectangle of metal frame still dug into her waist. Sandra got one hand free and pried it loose with a wince, aware that there was a series of four livid red lines imprinted now on her waist. “Where the hell are we going to live?”
“We’ll figure something out, baby,” Eric said, although she knew that he had no more of an idea than she did.
Belatedly, she remembered that she’d just been rescued. Sandra dropped back to her hands and knees to peer through the remaining half of the doorframe. She spotted someone from the back and remembered just in time to lower her voice.
“Hey, thanks for the help!”
Whoever was in there – hard to tell if it was a boy or a girl, it was much darker inside than out – turned and shouted, “Least I could do! You looked like you needed it!” It hesitated, then walked closer to the exit.
“How’d you get that frame off, anyway?” Eric asked, having also lowered himself.
It – no, she, Sandra saw, although it was kind of hard to tell – hefted a tiny silver cylinder before tucking it back away. “Lightsaber!” She wore trousers and was wrapped in a tunic with an obi, as well as a shapeless cloak.
“They’re useful in a pinch,” Eric observed, deadpan. Sandra sneered at him.
“I’m in your debt,” she told the little woman seriously. She started to reach out with one hand. “If there’s anything I can do...”
“Pick me up, and you will lose fingers!” the woman called. Still, she reached out and touched Sanda’s outstretched forefinger for a moment, splaying gloved fingers over its surface before withdrawing. “Think nothing of it. Least I could do.” With that, she turned again and vanished back into the dark hallways of the center.
Steadied by Eric, Sandra straightened again. “Now what?”
"Now... um... I was going to ask you before, but then all this happened. I don't know - this is probably a bad time, but I don't know - I want -" Eric fumbled out a felted gray box and fell into the traditional pose. "Sandra... will you... marry me?"
One more big change, par for the course in a long, long day of others.
Congratulations, Sandra and Eric. Hope you don't mind me using your names like this!
| Preceded by: Revan in Xanadu (Part 4) |
Revan in Xanadu | Succeeded by: Revan in Xanadu: David's Camera (Interlude) |
