"Thank you," she murmured as she slowly slid onto her side. The dust puffed around her, and she closed her eyes tight. Her nose twitched, twitched again, and she smacked a hand over it as realization of what she was about to do hit her.
A sneeze.
"No no no no no—Watermelon! Pineapple!" She fought the growing urge with a nasal voice before it passed. Tears formed at the downward corners of her eyes. After several moments, she finally unplugged her nose.
The moment after she exhaled, she inhaled sharply, then let out a series of sneezes with incredible force, and each knocked her around doll-like until they finally stopped. She yanked a tissue from her pocket and shoved it over her nose as she squinted to restrain more as the dust stirred by her fit threatened to do it again.
It took some time before her sneezes passed, and the bed was 'miraculously' cleared of most of its dust enough that she could be there without stirring up more. The small woman wiped the snot from her face, eyes still closed. Another tissue wiped at her teary eyes.
"Excuse me," she uttered in a shaking voice, then looked up. She half-expected him to have disappeared, and his continued presence relieved her. "I... need to sleep. Hopefully I did not send away anyone important."
Finally, she laid back down with a small shudder as she felt the urge still to keep sneezing, but it wasn't a true urge so much as the echo of her previous.
Several people in town disappeared without a trace, though: one of whom was in the middle of town babbling on about the monster who killed and drank blood from a group of strange men in blue.
Jade's sinuses ached, but she forced herself to rest, and wondered if she would somehow gain contact while unconscious, or if she would dream.
Dreams won in the end.
She relived the second war. A pregnant woman injected by a syringe began to steam as her blood cooked her from within while her heart's beat carried death through her and even to the unborn child. Jade screamed, but all that emerged was silence. Needles drove at Jade, stabbing every part of her. Three pinned each of her eyelids wide open, and six stabbed through her eyes themselves.
All at once, the needles injected fire.
A man spoke, his voice familiar but unknown: "It's not luck, it's just perfect planning. You could never win against us. You're an infant, and you killed the ones who could have saved you."
A woman with her same face, but more height and curve appeared before Jade as she burned, and the needles finally pulled from her, except the ones that held her eyes open were replaced with hooks. A teal blur yanked the taller twin's head upright, then pressed a gun up and into Topaz's cheek as the sleeping woman hung, unable to wake despite twitching fingers. Twelve infants, each dead, stood between the pair, and as the blur pulled the trigger, nothing happened to Topaz, but pain blossomed instead through Jade's head.
The world bled into red and black as she fell, and then fell through the ground. Everything fell apart. She groaned and reached out, trying to grab threads, to beg in the silence. "Do not move on! I am not dead, do not move on! Let them live a short time more!"
Silence met her, but the threads moved to her hands. "Take from me all you need to survive this trauma, even a little longer, just a tiny bit longer. Please... It is drawing out the suffering, but our denizens...!"
An orb came together and the threads wove, and the ends snapped suddenly into Jade. Reality turned dim as she felt drained almost dry.
Outside of her dreams, the whimpering, leaky-eyed little bird twitched and flinched, and then finally gasped awake with a single word: "Failed!"
Eyes wide, she stared forward at the foreign room, panting as her eyes refused to focus and her mind struggled to catch up. She scrambled to the far corner of the bed with a shudder and covered her head in her arms.
Outside, A Hunter's knuckle rested an inch from the door. Concern grew as the stink of her terror grew, and he shoved the door open, uncaring whether it was locked or not. "rrRRStupid girl, why did you come!?" A wild mane of yellow contrasted with a red hat and shirt and nosebleed, and he ran to the girl, then grabbed her arm and pulled it from her face. "What'd that thing do, huh?" He directed a snarling glare at Feng, but a tiny foot shot from Jade and slammed his jaw.
The Hunter blinked rapidly as stars filled his vision briefly before he looked at Jade, who seemed to finally have some recollection of where the hell she was.
"That—He. He is an ally," she managed as she pulled her arm from the Hunter. "Hunter Violi. Traveler Feng." The introduction was brief as Jade gripped her braids. "Where is Hunter Aspa?"
Violi glared again at Feng and shifted between Jade and the man he didn't recognize, but he seemed calmer for the kick, which left no mark except the dirt from her shoe.
"Hunter Violi. Where is your partner?"
He looked toward her again and huffed. "She's here, just keeping distance. You know."
Jade nodded as she looked from Violi to Feng. "Apologies. Hunter Violi is obnoxious."
"Last time you described it as 'passionate'."
"You did not almost rip a door from its frame last time."