Chapter 1.4

The flashes were now coming so fast they ceased to be separate emissions of light and became a singular continuous glow. The scenes that accompanied this glow became general categories that began to blend together, each encompassing multiple memories simultaneously. Playing reverse tag. Climbing trees. Swimming in pools. Watching anime. Playing on monkey bars. Running. Reading. School. Cake. Beach, video games, police, woods.

Soon, her mind's ability to parse any information from the images was distorted and began to fail. Running a teddy bear birthday cake in Christmas presents for vampire grass. Bloody lemonade ice cream satire serenaded a Christmas tree parking lot toolbox on a Martian Tuesday. Buzz buzz blur.

Everything was a single indecipherable blur of light. The shards were obscured, a green sparkling haze barely visible amidst the brightness as they each collapsed into precious emerald dust. The shards appeared, unloaded their cargo of memories, and were destroyed all at the same time. The dust slowly overtook the light as the brightness faded. Until the last shard hovered before her, alone.

The surface of the last shard looked like a mirror. She could see herself and the snake that held her reflected from its surface. The snake looked her in the eye through the reflection. Its irises glowed with a green light. Her face appeared small atop its folds. Then a crack appeared on the shard's surface, bisecting it. With a whoosh, it broke apart all at once, specks of glittery green dust gently drifting toward the ground as the cloud slowly dispersed.

Only the blackness of the void remained where the light-grey space had once been, and the snake coiled around her form. Her mind went hazy as she struggled to even remember there had been a light-grey space or black void. Even the existence of the snake coiled around her became blurry in her perception. She closed her eyes.