Walking through the minimal lighting of the few and varied street lights, the feeling of eyes never wavered. Fear and calm battled through Mana's head, conflicted between running in fear or walking with her chin held high, but ended up walking as she usually did; unconsciously hyper fixating about something (totally not the saviour) with her head low, watching her feet, hair in her mouth, mumbling with a finger placed against her lower lip and walking at the speed of sound. Before she realized it, home was at her feet.

When she opened the door, the smell of fresh roast and steamed vegetables, broccoli, and carrots welcomed her in, engulfing her. Drawn to the kitchen, Mana saw her mother swaying along to the soft classical music from the speaker on the counter by the fridge, humming with each note, her honey-blond hair swaying with her.

"Do you have any work to do dear?" Mana's mother asked. "If so, go ahead and work on it." Her mother held out a piece of broccoli to Mana before heading upstairs.

Her backpack was heavy as Mana body-slammed it to her bed, lying face down in the giant stuffed frog she got for her third birthday. Pushing herself up off the frog to look at the poster above her headboard, "RISE UP" it read, Washington Monument in the background, the back of a woman's head wearing an orange beanie and holding up her fist in the main ground, from the Woman's March on Washington 2019.

Kicking off her shoes and rolling onto her back, she looked at the ceiling, counting the strange dots from the house's old age that she used to think were moving as a child. Her eyes moved to the ceiling fan that was on nonstop. She couldn't sleep without it. Little drawings she had made moved fast on the blades, melting together. The fan distributed the incense she burned that morning, making her room smell like Indian Rose, helping her calm down from the stress of her day, just as she had planned that morning.

Sitting up at the edge of her bed, she began getting changed. Trading her skirt for grey plaid pyjama pants with a repeating picture of Shadow the Hedgehog's face, replacing her button-down and vest for an oversized Mitski shirt, putting her hair up into a quick messed up bun that started as a ponytail that she didn't want to pull all the way through on the last pull. Grabbing her headset from on top of her cluttered desk and sat down on the ground, pulling her bag close to her.

Silently working on assignments from the day, she felt at peace, until the lights began to flicker from outside under her door, a pattern, morse code.

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