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Aradia woke up from her recuperacoon with a quiet start and a sharp inhale of breath, lurching upwards out of it like a rainbow drinker, gasping sopor into her lungs that was quickly coughed back out into her sleeping receptacle. She got up and out, stumbling over the edge of her recuperacoon, and fell down onto the floor of her hive, running a hand through her hair as she slowly pulled herself back up into a standing position. The bath mat underneath her recuperacoon eagerly drank the remaining sopor dripping off of her for recycling, and she grabbed a nearby vacubrush to get the worst of it out of her hair. Her mane, forced to detangle by the squirming brush in her hand, ached quietly at the roots, and Aradia quietly wished she could afford a better brush. She retired to her ablution chamber, and refreshed her hygiene needs, returning to her hive with a fresh set of clothes.
Her dream was odd, to say the least. She was in an unfamiliar room, with a strange, wide window. It was white outside, but an unfamiliar white, not like the ashstorms of Alternia that accompanied the regular volcanic season. She knew, somehow, that it was something called "snow", and that it was very cold in a way unlike the ash. It was wet, also unlike ash, and was generally full of unfamiliar properties. She ran her hand on the window and found it biting back from the cold, and then turned around to face the rest of the chamber she was stuck within. There was a door, slightly ajar, made of an unfamiliar material, and a cushion she was sitting upon, cross-legged, on which there was a blanket and a small sleeping thing. Jet black fur, and a single eye crooked open, glaring towards Aradia like she was an unfamiliar intruder.
Surely, this must've been a dream, as reality could not be so strange. The door creaked open, and in walked an unfamiliar, strange figure. Like a troll, but with far more shine on her skin, unnaturally so, glinting off the artificial lights in the room, far too bright white to be comfortable. Her hair was a pale shade of blonde that Aradia had only seen on the most outgoing of mallgoths, and her eyes were just as unnaturally white as her hair. She glanced at Aradia, holding a wonderful smelling cup of something in her hand, a mug, even, and took a quiet sip, assessing the vision. She seemed to regard Aradia as just as unnatural to her world as Aradia was to hers.
"Is this hell?" Rose (and Aradia knew her name was Rose, somehow, in the way one knew things in a dream) asked. Her cat, Jaspers (again, from the same font of illicit knowledge) shied away from the space on the comforter that Aradia occupied, scowling at her.
"In what sense?" Aradia replied, finding the words coming out of her mostly against her will. She tried to cover her mouth, but failed, instead sitting up on Rose's bed.
"The present moment is both eternal, and painful." Rose answered, taking another sip of whatever was in her cup (hot chocolate) and then staring down into it, bewildered, clearly, by herself. She seemed just as confused as Aradia.
"In hell, there is relief in utter helplessness. Here, our actions have consequences for both ourselves and others." Aradia mused in response. She wasn't even sure what "Hell" was, other than an archaic cuss word no longer in use except by old people and violetbloods. Perhaps she should study the etymology when she awoke.
Rose nodded knowingly. "Truly, it is worse,". Aradia wasn't sure if she was referring to "Hell" or "The Present Moment", but the entire occurrence filled her with a sense of unmitigated dread.
And then she woke up. And now she was here, in her respiteblock, staring at the shimmering surface of her sopor slime. She knew that she had just gotten dressed, and she knew she had just gotten bathed, but something inside of her wondered - if she went back to sleep now, would she catch a glimpse of that mysterious woman, name already forgotten, once more?
She dipped a finger in.