Her name is Sara Powers. And she has a strange condition.
During my first week in Misery, I was required to stay after classes ended every day, as a sort of study hall to catch up on what I missed, as well as a seminar on the required extracurricular activities that they offered.
One of those extracurriculars was gardening, which provided the herbs for home ec, tea reading, and rootwork classes. It was also one of the only clubs that, by necessitiy, had its own building to itself, the greenhouse.
Sara Powers was a reserved and....let's say "abrasive" individual. Like 50 percent of Misery's population, she wore dark, concealing clothes, dark make up, and dyed her hair black, though streaks of her natural brown would occasionally peek through. Upon meeting her parents, it seemed like she was raised into the fashion, rather than choosing it like most of the Miserians.
She always seemed to be able to appear out of nowhere--I thought that this was her oddity, like Kurt's constant sweat of lake water or Anthony's apparent ability to talk to vehicles. However, my visit to the greenhouse proved that this was not the case.
When I entered the building, I didn't expect to see Sara in there. She didn't seem like the type to garden, or in fact care about anything that was alive.
She was kneeling on the ground, digging through a cherry red messenger bag and muttering to herself. She gasped, and pulled out a crude and shoddily crafted wooden mask.
I would have walked in and said something, but then Sara put the mask on.
Describing what happened is....hard. I could say it was like she shed her skin, but that wouldn't be accurate. It was more like her body was made of dual faced plates, and the plates were faced to the side that showed off Sara. But when she put on the mask, those plates flipped to reveal this new....creature? Entity fits better.
And yet, that description still doesn't do it justice.
What matters is that Sara was not there anymore. This new thing....she had skin that seemed to be made of polished wood. Her hair was made from the branches and trees of a willow tree, and she stood as tall as an oak. Her leaves covered the fact that she was completely naked, but it didn't hide the fact that she was levitating--my guess was so that she didn't harm the grass beneath her feet.
When this entity appeared, all of the plants in the greenhouse bloomed. Leaves stood and brightened to a healthy green; flower pods opened up and revealed dazzling heads; fruits ripened and herbs became ready for the picking.
It was like this creature was....
Spring. The word Miserians used to describe Not-Winter. I never understood it until now.
I had gasped. That was a mistake.
The creature spun to face me, and was just as shocked as I was that I was standing there right then and there. The entity grabbed her face and ripped it off; the plate ripple shifted back to Sara, and the crude wooden mask appeared in her hands. Her eyes were wide; mine were too, those hers were still the same pupiless yellow that the entity had, instead of her normal grey-green.
The entity. Spring.
Sara and I stared at each other for what seemed like forever. She began to countdown. "5...."
I was gone before she reached 4.