CLONING
After her talk with Arya, classes proceeded in their usual rhythm, a structured march of hours that ticked by with academic precision. Amani navigated her day with the practiced ease of routine, her mind occasionally wandering to the unnerving clarity of what she had experienced the night before—a dream, or so it seemed, that felt too visceral to be merely the conjurings of her sleep-addled brain. It lingered in her thoughts, intrusive and insistent, almost like it was more of a memory- a memory that was deep in her mind but she could not see so clearly.
She had shared these dreams only with Tae Seo Dunman, for multiple different reasons, one of them being that he was the only one who could truly understand her and her dreams, giving the fact that although they were not the best of friends originally when they had first met, they shared a really strong connection and he often helped her to decipher this weird dreams back when she was a child and this dreams were quite frequents- dreams that they both seemed to share. And Last night dream was particularly vivid, a replay of scenes so specific they felt borrowed from a life she wasn’t sure was entirely her own. That was to say Amani did not particularly understand that dream and if there was one thing Amani hated was not understanding or knowing what was happening.
After her last lecture, Amani returned to the quiet solitude of her dorm room, her footsteps echoing softly in the empty hallway. The room welcomed her with its familiar, comforting embrace. She set her bag down with a soft thud against her desk, marking the end of her academic responsibilities for the day. The plan had been simple: a quick shower to clear her mind, to try to think about the dream more- to see if she could understand it before Tae came like her text had asked him to do.
As she gathered her clothes and toiletries, a knock at the door sliced through the silence. The person who was behind the door was predictable, Tae, it had to be Tae, because she had not invited anyone else other than him and all her friends who were not Celestine or Tae knew that they were not allowed in her room at all due to let’s call it circumstances.
He was here earlier than Amani had predicted, but he was here none of the less making relief wash over her like the waves. She hastily wrapped a robe around herself as she walked up to her door. When Amani had swung the door open, she could not tell you what she was expecting- no, actually she could and it was definitely not her favorite Dunman slumped against her doorway, his face a canvas of bruises and cuts, his breathing shallow and labored.
“What the!” Amani gasped, cutting her self short as her eyes widened and she instinctively knelt beside him, her hands hovering hesitantly over him, afraid to touch lest she exacerbate his injuries. “What the hell happened to you?”
There was no response, just the labored rise and fall of his chest. Acting quickly, Amani flickered her wrists, using her shadows to wrap around him and carry him up, Once inside, she had placed him on the bed, releasing the hold of her shadows on him, assessing his injuries with a swift, worried glance. She could not help but to think that this was almost like Isaac- like the day she saw Isaac after the incident, bruised and bloody, but the difference was though Tae looked half dead, he was not actually dead, he still had a pulse and he was going to keep being alive because Amani needed to find out so many things, starting with what happened and why. Amani reached into her drawers, pulling a ‘magical safety kit’ like her mother called it , it was basically a compact collection of essentials taught by her mother who loved to use her magic to care for people (silly Amani knows, doctors exist for this kind of thing, why waste magic on that but that was a topic for another day) As she pulled the kit from her drawer, her fingers moved with purpose, unzipping the bag and laying out its contents: salves, bandages, and a small vial of shimmering liquid that glowed with a soft, ethereal light.
Kneeling beside the bed where Tae lay, Amani took a deep breath to steady her nerves. She had used some Photokinetic Resonance to examine him properly, her fingers working with the magic that she was taught to use by her mother. She dipped her fingers into the shimmering liquid, whispering the indications as she let the shadows dance from her fingertips, gentle and coaxing. They wrapped softly around Tae’s injuries, not with the cold touch of darkness but with the warmth of night’s soothing embrace. The salves cooled and the potion’s magic seeped into his wounds, knitting the torn skin and easing the swelling.
“So, are you going to tell me why you look like shxt?” She asked, as she raked his appearance, going over the final touches of her magic, “Because a few seconds ago there was no difference between you and a man on the verge of death,” Amani continued, her face far from the usual amusement that seemed to flicker.