Auras

An excerpt of my current writing project, an urban fantasy this time. 

            Kids in junior high, as a general rule, aren’t happy kids.  Many of them dealt with bullying, or school had suddenly gotten harder than they expected, teachers were harder on them, and that wasn’t including all the emotional and physical changes they were personally going through.  It was an isolating time in a person’s life, and being crowded with a bunch of kids just as confused and unhappy as you only made things worse.

            Not all of the auras she saw in that room were bad, but few were actually good.  The darkness of self-doubt clouded the air so thickly it became difficult to breathe.  All of the colors of the energy were muted, and even the fluorescent lights shone with less electric luster. 

            Auras were different from the moment-to-moment energy emitted by a person.  Someone might be laughing now, but if they were abused at home and were stressed during class, any good the laughter did to their psyche was overwhelmingly outweighed by the bad in their life as a whole, and the whole of their life was their aura, rather than how they felt at this moment. 

            One girl was being bullied right now.  Fully a fifth of the kids in the cafeteria were bullied on a regular basis, either at school or elsewhere, and their pain assaulted her senses.  Her vision dimmed with the blackness of it, as scenes flickered over the heads of the crowd.  Looming figures of authority with thunderous expressions, hundreds of laughing faces with cruelly shining eyes, caricatures showing huge teeth, too many freckles, or any of a dozen different humiliatingly accented features, then of course visions of physical bullying.  Pulling a sleeve down over a bruise.  Looking down in shame while trying to hide a black eye.  Disapproving mothers.  Authority scolding while the bully walked away whistling. 

            Every vision flashed only briefly, but so many of the experiences were the same that they felt repetitive even after only a few moments, and seeing anything past the darkness and pain was a struggle.  She felt bruises on her arms, her face, her ribs, while shame and terror tore at her heart.  Rhia choked back a sob. 

            This had been a terrible idea.

            In her ears, above the murmur of the crowd, she heard screams, jeering laughter, and of course, tears.  Terrified tears, angry tears, shameful tears.  Silent tears with only slight hiccups to give them away, and loud, bawling sobs that had to be stifled into pillows. 

            One person’s torment wasn’t fun to experience, but Rhia had gotten used to dealing with that kind of feedback when she let her barriers down.  But each additional person didn’t merely double the feelings.  Energy had a way of snowballing, and with that many people sharing such heart-wrenching emotions, it was becoming a struggle just to keep conscious, let alone search for anyone.

            All of those bad feelings weren’t the only thing she could sense, of course, but anguish, pain, isolation are powerful feelings.  Amongst a crowd of kids who were far more likely to doubt themselves than stand up for what they thought, anything strong enough to cut through or help balance out all the trauma wasn’t terribly likely.  Not in a place that was already skewed to make them feel self-conscious, stupid, and young.  A place geared toward telling them what was right and wrong: the right answers, the right way to behave, the right way to feel.  Anything contrary to that just fed the self-doubt that choked the air, so the quiet contentment, the gentle glow of pride in doing well, the laughter of being with friends for the moment, none of it could compare to the overwhelming difficulty the vast majority had just being in their own skins, and anything positive was a quiet murmur beneath the cries of torment.

            Because pain is relative.  In their young lives, this time of their life might be the worst they’ve ever experienced, and though Rhia had seen the auras of people who had seen nothing but hard times, that didn’t minimize the pain of someone who hadn’t felt anything worse.

            But just before she had to slam the barriers closed, already leaning against the podium for support, nearly blind, she saw a flicker of something different.  Strong enough to cut through the compounded effects of all the negative auras of all the kids in the school, even though not by much. 

            Some people are extraordinary for some reason or another.  Sometimes, it’s sheer force of personality.  The truly charismatic, the supremely self-assured, the influential people all have auras that stand out in a crowd.  But it wasn’t just force of personality that could do that.  How you could affect your environment was another factor, and every person she’d met with even a small amount of talent had shown it in their aura.

            She saw that glow now.
            The barriers went up as her knees buckled, and only the podium kept her upright.  Tears fell on the closed laptop below her as she struggled to catch her breath.  The feeling of bruises faded gradually, the air cleared slower still, but the wash of emotions clung to her like water after a powerful wave.  She might not be surrounded by it anymore, but she still felt soaked.