[The transition is never easy. Hardly anyone manages to make it gracefully. It almost seems to be a sort of initiatory requirement: every new arrival must find themselves, at some point and in some way, fleeing from something. They rush out into a strange new world and bounce off one another in an improbable, strangely comforting game of cosmic pinball.
Even so, it's relatively rare that the collisions are literal. OA cannot at first discern fault -- the events of her own day have left her distracted enough to have failed to notice the juggernaut coming her way. It winds her, more with shock than with pain; her lips part around a harsh gasp, a hissed profanity. Once the immediate concern of staying upright is addressed, she finds herself reflexively embarrassed. That too fades into understanding at the clumsy brush of hands when they both reach up to steady one another.
The contact is brief, the meeting of souls barely more than a tingle of foreign sensation, but it tells her everything she needs to know. OA pulls her hand away as though burned; undertaken without consent, the intimacy of the empathy bond is unbearable. She won't inflict it on somebody else. Safer to take the girl by the shoulders until she's sure they're both steady, the intervening layers of fabric shielding them from both that breathtaking transparency and from the wonder and horror of touch itself.
It's then that she notices the darkness, the spreading shadow -- and if she notices, others certainly will too. Best they try to avoid that. She cranes her neck about, assessing passers-by. No harsh stares, no running footsteps. Whatever this girl was running from, it seems to have been more internal than external, though that doesn't make it any less real.]
It's okay. You're okay.
[As okay as any of them ever are, anyway. OA gives Cass's shoulders the gentlest squeeze before her hands fall away again. Empathy is transparent on her face, solemn and sad.]
001
Even so, it's relatively rare that the collisions are literal. OA cannot at first discern fault -- the events of her own day have left her distracted enough to have failed to notice the juggernaut coming her way. It winds her, more with shock than with pain; her lips part around a harsh gasp, a hissed profanity. Once the immediate concern of staying upright is addressed, she finds herself reflexively embarrassed. That too fades into understanding at the clumsy brush of hands when they both reach up to steady one another.
The contact is brief, the meeting of souls barely more than a tingle of foreign sensation, but it tells her everything she needs to know. OA pulls her hand away as though burned; undertaken without consent, the intimacy of the empathy bond is unbearable. She won't inflict it on somebody else. Safer to take the girl by the shoulders until she's sure they're both steady, the intervening layers of fabric shielding them from both that breathtaking transparency and from the wonder and horror of touch itself.
It's then that she notices the darkness, the spreading shadow -- and if she notices, others certainly will too. Best they try to avoid that. She cranes her neck about, assessing passers-by. No harsh stares, no running footsteps. Whatever this girl was running from, it seems to have been more internal than external, though that doesn't make it any less real.]
It's okay. You're okay.
[As okay as any of them ever are, anyway. OA gives Cass's shoulders the gentlest squeeze before her hands fall away again. Empathy is transparent on her face, solemn and sad.]
You're one of us, aren't you? A... castaway.