Equilibrium

POV Isla:

When Wanderer reappears, the barrier shimmers before allowing her inside.

She created the barrier before she vanished with little explanation, leaving me confused, frustrated, and more than a little frightened. My feelings in my previous life were never so intense - I could barely contain my fear pacing and twitching within the barrier. I shouldn't leave it outside of her protection, she told me - it would keep out most threatening presences that would now want my blood.

I hadn't realized until recently, but yes, I must now have blood, being a human girl. Is it red? It's probably red. Human blood is red. But everything else about me is bleached a pale white from my transformation - is it possible that my blood would run colorless as well?

I've just been considering scratching at myself to see what would come out - and trying not to become dizzy at the thought - when the barrier shimmers purple and she reappears, her tentacles furled protectively around a bundle of something. I can just barely see it through the wispy smoke that makes up her body.

"What happened? Why did you have to leave so suddenly?"

"Strange events have been occurring, Isla," she sighs, still cradling her bundle. There's something small growing within it.

It's a baby. But she wasn't born. She's forming, the way a Magical Girl forms, but I've never heard of a Magical Girl forming as an infant before.

"I made her," Wanderer says breathlessly, "But I didn't expect her to be a baby, and now even I'm not sure what to do. But we need to keep her safe until - until she's ready to fulfill her purpose."

Her purpose? But what purpose can an infant fulfill? She can't hold up her own head.

A surge of unfamiliar emotions overtakes me, similar to when I found the sentient beings in the forest, and I'm overcome with the urge to hold the child. "Does she have a name?"

"Her name is Equilibrium, and she could be the source of a lot of trouble, but we need her," says Wanderer. She's oozing thick goo and it takes me a minute to realize that it's coming from her many eyes. She's crying. "Wherever we go, she comes. We have to protect her."

TO BE CONTINUED.

End