So it's late and all by now but I really wanted to do this one! I had to allow myself an extra 5 minutes to finish up at the end, and since the third prompt didn't say explicitly that I needed to start with it I leniently allowed myself to simply use the prompt as part of the writeup :) I'm not too happy with the integration of especially the 3rd prompt into the story, but hey what can I say this thing was HARD!
This is for a special weekend 3-part 5-minute freewrite exercise where you're supposed to do 3 5-minute writeups for 3 prompts successively without peeking beforehand. The prompts are part 1, part 2 and part 3
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The aroma of coffee wafting through the window woke her. She smiled. Suddenly, she sat up. She had no idea where she was.
Or rather, she theoretically knew where she was, but something wasn't right. She ran her fingers through the familiar sheets of her bed and blinked in squinting perplexity at the gentle rays of dawn, streaming in through the curtains of what is certainly her own room. Or what looks very much like her own room, except! Now as her mind woke further, there is something off about it. The form was her room alright, but there is something about it that is not quite right. An etherealness. Almost a radiance. Kind of like her room but after the most meticulous bout of cleaning, and then set in the most attractive but most natural time of the day so that the shading of the light and the softness of the shadows made everything beautiful.
And right there at the back of her mind there was the insistently lingering impression, almost a trauma, that this isn't where she was supposed to be. She knew the last thing she remembered was not going to bed on a usual evening. Something happened. Something bad. Something impacting and appalling. She couldn't quite place it, but she knew with a kind of certainty that she shouldn't have woken up on her own bed. How has she come to?
"...Most importantly: Feel free to change, my dear." she was suddenly aware of a soft voice to her right. It was not alarming, and now that it crept on her awareness she realized the voice must have been speaking at her side all this time, only its gentleness was so at home with the sleepy softness of her room so it never stood out. She turned, almost alarmed that she wasn't alarmed, to find a woman at her bedside. She was reading contentedly from a large, old looking book, softly but out loud, seemingly to herself. There was something disarming about her, and in spite of this strange abberation from her usual room - she slept alone - she couldn't help feeling comfortable. She wondered if she should say something.
But then the woman spoke first. "Awake, child?" She turned, and the woman had a warm smile on her face. But when she looked into her eyes there was something indescribable in there. A feeling like eternity, like enormity, like kindness, but enlarged beyond all conceivable recognition. The woman's eyes mesmerized her.
"You are afraid of something child" The woman was saying. "That is why you are here. You find yourself on a threshold, a precipice. To go forward would mean the incalculable, in all the senses of that funny human word." The woman chuckled a little. "So here is a little borrowed time, that you might reflect. Reflect upon the lives of the people you know, and upon yours. Do you fear being no longer yourself? Do you know who you are? The people that you know, do you know who they are?"
The woman paused, and she found her hands clutching her sheets. The woman was right, she knew. It seemed like the woman knew her all her life. And knew she must take the jump, though it took her beyond all she ever knew. It would make her as a new person, but would that person be her?
"But are you truly yourself, who are not yet the best you can possibly be?"
Suddenly, she realized the woman was on her feet. The woman's hands seemed to flow out from around her as they clasped themselves around hers. And there was a glow and a warmth to it, an acceptance, an assurance. The woman smiled, and began walking for the door. And she had a sudden flash of realization that this pocket of borrowed time would end as soon as the woman left it. But it was already enough. It was already..
Her eyes popped open, and she sat up with a start. Her messy desk came blearily into focus as she swiped the drool from the edge of her lips. All at once the chaos of a difficult day at work came crashing down upon her consciousness, and she began to curse herself for dozing off, but stopped herself. Her hands zipped forward to her documents to take up where they left off, but she was a different person now, she knew, from she who not 20 minutes ago sank into an exhausted, fitful sleep on her desk. She now knew, and now dared.