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It's quiet.
There's a bed opposite Musa's, made of green in many shades. Clean sheets, fluffed up pillows. An owner's mark on their property.
Morning comes, and the light spotlights the different shades; emerald and olive and fern. Musa once memorised many colours in the colour wheel in an effort to expand her songwriting capabilities. She was good at that, memorisation.
There's a reasonable distance between her bed and the other. No barricades block her view of it. No walls, no pillar, no gadgets that sometimes flew to ceiling height, just for the enjoyment of their maker. It's just a few steps forward and two steps up to reach the bed.
The turquoise of the wall stretches all the way to her side of the room, only broken apart by posters and cupboards that block specific areas of paint from sight. The paint never cracked or peeled; a spider has never set a single hairy leg on Alfea's walls. It knew better, than to attempt entry into a building that radiated ancient magic.
Magic was used to set the dining tables in the cafeteria. It was used to merge the foundations of Alfea with the earth below, tearing dirt and ripping pebbles apart to set its own, newly coated pink roots into the ground.
A magical solution was the natural solution. Someone would have disagreed just the slightest bit with that notion.
Musa brings a plate of scrambled eggs and toast from the cafeteria back to her room. No one stops to scold her for it. She eats. Slowly, uncaringly. She loses her appetite two bites into her eggs.
Musa sits crossed-leg on her bed, on the sofa in the Winx dorm. There's classes, naturally. She was a student, a final year one too. Yet she stayed put in the dorm. No one scolds her for that either.
They do try to talk to her though.
"Do you need anything, sweetie?" It's Flora that's constantly checking on her. No surprise there. Musa hates to see her face drop when she vehemently denies any offers to help or talk, but it's not like Flora doesn't already have dark bags under her eyes.
Musa doesn't trust herself to make things easier, to herself or to the other occupants of the dorm. Flora reaches out to place a hand on her shoulder, and Musa stays silent, picking on her cuticles, because she knows a single word from her mouth has the potential to do damage like a bomb.
The bomb always feels one step closer to exploding everyday. If possible, Musa would like to mitigate the risk of collateral damage as much as she can. Blessingly, Flora's powers do not consist of properties that could set an explosion off.
However, three- No. Outdated count. Two occupants do though.
Bloom, for all their shared anger issues, was, and always would be kinder than Musa. She was less cowardly, more willing to suffer in silence and let her tears fall where no one else could see. Brave, like the dragon in her.
Musa walks pass Flora's and Bloom's shared room and hears muffled sobs. She continues walking. Vulnerable, unguarded love was Bloom's thing as much as unrestrained, viscous defences was Musa's.
Bloom knew how to express her love at the right times and moments. Musa feels jealously crawl beneath her skin like a leech.
Everyone knew how much Musa clashed with Stella. That was the norm, yet Stella isn't blunt nor insensitive now, so what's there to fight about?
There's still jokes, attempts at bringing up the mood. Stella tries to force a smile as she says them, but her lips just catch on empty air, twisting into a frown as the mood drops further than she knows how to handle.
She hasn't shut down entirely, but she isn't acting like Stella. All the metaphorical gunpowder that typically lit Musa's fuses has been replaced with a splash of ice cold water to the face.
At this point, Musa just wants to turn all her emotions off. Isolate and run. Don't blow up and make the situation worse. She has a reputation for the latter, and she knows about it, and she's trying. It's hard, but ultimately she loves her friends.
In the end, she loves her.
She returns to her room for the rest of the day, scratching her nails on her notebook binders. The marks stuck out on the metal, unlike the perfectly pristine ceiling.
The room's lights could blow out, and its magical back-up would be instantly activated before darkness could engulf the room. Musa could close her eyes, and her memory would back-up a magenta-haired girl smiling at her, as kind and beautiful as she always remembered her to be.
Aisha comes by sometime in the afternoon. She sits next to Musa, resting her head in the crook of Musa's neck. Tears soon soak Musa's skin, falling to the neckline of her shirt. She doesn't say a word, just silently pulls Aisha closer and buries her nose in the curls of her hair.
They stay like that for hours. Musa doesn't cry. She already sobbed loud enough for her voice to echo in the oceans of Andros, on that very day. The weeks old untouched bedsheets in eyeview says enough for the both of them.
Light pours in through the lone window in the room until it doesn’t. A plate with breadcrumbs sits at the foot of the bed. The accompanying metal cutlery is only used once.
In the dark, the bedroom grows shadows with all its harsh angles. The angled desk becomes more jagged, and the shelves overcast the floor with its weight.
Musa's mind runs before she has a chance to distract it with a glorified carrot and stick.
Her Enchantix, in all its beautiful tragic glory, sparkling in the whirling portal that seals her fate. Wind pushes everyone else back; the prison dimension had its gaping maw open for only one prey that day.
In the end, her hack job fairy dust patchwork seals the Omega Dimension portal. In the end, Musa loses another person in her life. Tecna’s wings get rendered useless from strong winds, and she screams, descending into her destiny.
Creatures from Melody have the best hearing and sound permanence in the entire magic universe. Musa pulls her pillow tightly around her ears, praying for mercy.
She doesn't turn the lights on. Doesn't want to stop playing pretend with a life that is so far from reach now. If the lights were on, the shadows would stop projecting the illusion of a body beneath the bedsheets opposite hers. She could keep living in a subversion of destiny when in the dark.
The Winx were six, their name and count known even beyond school walls. Fame had poured into the laps of teenage girls like free candy, because the press only cared for the origin behind their wounds and not the infection they would cause if left untreated.
Paparazzi hounded on the news of a loss in their close-knit group. Their cameras snapped and flashed whenever any of the Winx even attempted to tread outside Alfea. Musa wants to take their cameras and bash their heads in.
She restrains herself, not because of the callous display of humanity in front of her, but because of the devices they wield. The logo branded on their cameras’ sides, marking them as manufactured by the biggest Zenith tech corporation out there.
It makes her want to throw up. All of it. This trick of destiny she and the ones closest to her found themselves chucked into. The dozens upon dozens of reminders that she was a moment too late to everything. It had cost her a confession tinted with the scent of saltwater. It had cost Tecna her life.
In the suffocating dark, in a bedroom for two with only one pillow warm at night, Musa thinks of all that could be and never will be.
You always told me to think logically more. Called me too emotional for my own good many times before. You didn’t mean to be cruel or cold when you said it. I know your heart as well as you criticised mine. That was your way of helping, of showing your love, even if you didn’t quite realise what that meant yet.
You grew into your own over the years. Told us that emotions, that love, was so foreign a concept until we came along. Zenith is unkind to the concept of relationships, you said.
“They raise us like the robots we manufacture, to fit into pre-made molds and be optimal, be productive. Keep Zenith afloat with your inbuilt mechanisms and not let those flaws in your design be an excuse for failure.”
You thanked us afterwards, expressed so much gratitude for teaching you what it meant to really live. That you didn’t know what you’d have done without us.
Musa's fingers grip the pillow around her head tighter.
Gods, Tecna. You’re such a fucking idiot, do you know that?
I don’t know how you don’t see it. After you consistently scoff at specialists who try to flirt with you. Or after you’d start trash-talking Aisha after beating her at yet another round of virtual basketball. How after all that and more, that you could still possibly call yourself completely void of emotions.
You joke with us and tease us and hug us after we get out of a rough battle, stilted but well-meaning words of comfort dropping from your lips. You fix and upgrade our tech and tell us not to be afraid of Valtor because that emotion was still a bit illogical to you. Fear was almost always masked by some other emotion, whether that be anger or upset, you said. Why let it ever be so dominant, then?
Tecna. Tecna, why am I still pretending you’re still here?
Tecna didn’t seem angry or upset when she fell into the Omega Dimension. Her screams echoed day and night and tomorrow again in a room for two.
Maybe, mercifully, there’d be some sort of sanctuary in Musa’s dreams. A place where all her loved ones had risen up from their graves and would sing merry songs together. A picturesque scene from a fairytale.
Her Mom would play a familiar melody that Musa’s ears had clung onto after her last breath. Tecna would be there too, snapping pictures of dolphins with her camera, excitedly talking about how she didn’t knew animals could be so adorable, so pretty and fun.
Musa thinks she hears Tecna laugh. She thinks the bedroom turns into Musa’s eighteenth birthday, waves brushing against hers and Tecna’s toes as sand and pebbles rest underneath.
You turned to me, then. You, with your sparkling teal eyes and your giddy smile. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how you look under the afternoon sun, on the planet which I call home.
I teased you for wearing a camera around your swimming attire, saying you looked ridiculous. I commented on how archaic your camera was. Shocking, for you.
You told me to shut up. Told me about how it was a worthwhile trade-off to be under such sweltering heat just to learn what dolphins were. Zenith and its lifelessness was more boring than you’d realise. You said thank you. You held my hand. Your hand was so soft despite everything.
I admit, I got scared. I pulled away, and before I ran off, I saw the hurt that made your face crumble. I admit, I'm the one who messed up.
Melodian fairies could summon instruments with a snap of their fingers like advanced stage performers could with extinct monsters and a top hat. A guitar love song on one knee wouldn’t be out of place on a day like that, or to a person like you.
I think, if bravery counted as an emotion, you’d be the most emotional person I know.
Musa’s eyelids unwillingly start to stutter, her exhausted mind starting to outweigh her grief.
Do you know that, Tecna? If I screamed at you louder, to fly far away from your impending doom, would you still be here now?
Tecna’s bed is empty. Will be now and forevermore. This is destiny, after all. To have haunted bedsheets and a haunted dorm and the ghost of a girl Musa loved to pierce her ears until time caved in on itself.
If I sung to you, with a stuttering voice to clumsy guitar notes, would your suspicions be confirmed?
Would you still have accepted this coward’s love with all your heart?