Armband -5minutefreewrite, Nanowrimo, a Chibera story

For https://steemit.com/freewritemadness/@freewritehouse/the-madness-prompt-3

Today's chapter two might be messier than yesterday's chapter one for a few reasons, not least among them that I'm writing it from my phone. Hopefully it will at least serve as a bridge between yesterday and tomorrow. Good old tomorrow. I can't believe it's Friday already. Welp, off we go.

Janice stood outside the high school gymnasium that had just housed her hopes for the future and her excursions into Chibera. The double doors banged behind her as the auditor tested them as well.
"Just making sure they're locked." He told her awkwardly and unnecessarily.
She nodded and continued standing there, coming to terms with the experience being over.
"I get it, yeah. You spend so many hours preparing for the thing, and you do the thing, and while you're in there, you're like 'this is my life now' but then the thing is over and it feels like you'll never have to do the thing again. But don't worry. Firstly, you're never done taking tests. And secondly, if you bombed, you'll take this one again!" He paused, as if waiting for her to chuckle. This adult was trying to make her chuckle about the SATs. He knows nothing "...or maybe you're just waiting for your ride. Well, get home safe!"
The elbow patches man turned towards an old grimy silver hatchback. Old MacDonald's bags...there were enough of them that even if one were recent, some must have been very old... sat in the passenger seat. An open bag with jumper cables looked like it got regular use. Janice noticed, for some reason she felt more observant than usual, maybe it was all this standing still silently, noticed that the windows weren't automatic. There on the door was a hand crank to raise and lower windows.

---

Jan's hand touched the smooth silver of the beech. "She's so human," Jan murmured to the robed and dark-haired woman who stood beside the copse of beech trees that Jan herself stood within.
"Oh?" was the only sound Chrysanthemum made. The sound carried bemusement, exhaustion, and a hint of exasperation, as if she'd heard many other ethno-centric folks anthropomorphize trees through the lens of their own racial species.
Jan heard all the nuances, but ignored them, simply enjoying the tree and how its color matched the band that Chrysanthemum had tattooed around her forearm. Yes, you have arms, my tree friend, and a nice hatchback trunk
Again, Jan became aware of the meaning of a meaningless word. And, worse, it layered its ugly meaning onto that of the strongest beech's main branch, from which all its other branches received mana. This most beautiful of words became ugly. This idea of stuffing a gift of Chibera with...junk.
"Jan," Chrysanthemum placed her dextrous elegant bone-thin fingers against Jan's face. "Your countenance has lost its piece. You stand in the beech grove and lose your contentment. I wonder if your desire to have what is difficult to get is leading you to take what you do not want."
Jan stood still.

---

Janice noticed that the parking lot was empty. She looked down at her book bag at her feet. Her lunch bag was open... She noticed a pain in her lip. She was chewing a carrot and had bit her lip. Damnit this was going to be with her for days. She always re-bit her lip for days afterwards. She had no idea how it EVER healed. And carrots were even worse. They were so particular in texture. Just firm enough to need hard biting, hard enough to really hurt a lip if you bite wrong, but then they don't stick together, so your teeth and tongue and lips all get in each other's way, trying to gather them into chewable mounds.

Janice hadn't always been following Jan's life. In fact, she wondered if she'd even crossed paths with her before. She thought that there were a few different people that she was peering in on regularly, though she couldn't always tell who was who. This seemed different, though. Always before, Janice had simply seen and heard and smelled and felt and tasted what whoever it was was experiencing. Now, though, they were, or rather, she was, feeeeeeeellling. There were non sensory impressions. Thought patterns, senses of disgust. There was something more to what was happening.
Janice felt excited. Inexplicably, explicably, all kinds of excited. She put away her lunch bag, swallowed the partially chewed carrot, picked up her lunch bag, and started home.

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