Oddities, Part 11 - Bubbles

"Targeted?" Alaia said, incredulous. Tove nodded.

"No." Alaia said. "That doesn't make any sense."

"It does, if you think about it," Tove insisted.

Despite only having some bruises and the broken arm, Alaia had had to stay at the hospital for the night. They had said it was so they could keep an eye on her just in case she had some internal bleeding no one had found yet. She tried to tell them that aside from hitting the arm on the tram she essentially just fell down. And you don't get fatal internal bleeding from simply falling over. Unless you hit your head, which she hadn't. The doctors were not convinced. So they had given her a week of sick leave too.

So now Alaia was stuck alone at home, not being allowed to go to the office. Well, not alone, currently, since Tove had come to visit her, insisting someone had done this to her intentionally.

"No," Alaia said again. "It doesn't."

"Ok, look at this. I dug through my spell book..." Tove began.

"You mean Ronja looked up a spell for you on the computer?"

"That's not the point. The point is this." Alaia saw more than hear Tove mutter something under her breath.

Then all sound disappeared. She had thought the house was quiet, had had trouble sleeping because of it, but when literally the only thing she could hear was the rushing of blood in her veins and her own breathing, it was eerie. And there was something odd in the air, again. The same kind of odd there had been right before the tram had nearly run her over. The look on Tove's face clearly said "I told you so." Sounds returned to the world as Tove let the spell go.

"It's not a simple spell. I can hardly do it, and I can't keep it up for longer than that. What it does is it creates a bubble, in which sound doesn't move."

"But I can still hear my blood and breath," Alaia pointed out.

"That's because you hear those things from inside you. They don't have to move through the air in the bubble. They just move through you."

"That doesn't mean anything. Just because you found a spell that dampens sound doesn't mean I was targeted."

"Someone created a bubble around you, or maybe just around your head, so you couldn't hear the tram coming. How is that not targeting?"

"One question. How big a bubble is it possible to make?" Alaia asked.

Tove just looked at her silently for a moment.

"Theoretically I think the upper limit is in the range of few dozen meters in diameter. But I'm not sure anyone could actually do that," she finally said.

"So it's possible I'm not a target. Maybe someone just created a big bubble and I happened to be inside it. That someone used the silence to cover up something else? Or maybe... Create a distraction?" Alaia suggested. "Sure, your spell there seems like the same one that was used, but all it tells us is that that was the spell that was used. It means that I theoretically I could have been targeted, if someone created the bubble specifically around me..."

"It's very, very hard to create a bubble much bigger than that," Tove interrupted. Alaia ignored her.

"...but it doesn't tell us anything about why someone would have targeted me." She eyed Tove. "There is no reason to believe someone would have done that, even if someone could have."

"Marqués," Tove said flatly.

"Marqués?" Alaia repeated. " No."

"Yes," Tove countered.

"He was a sweet old man, just living his retirement," Alaia said. "There was nothing suspicious about him."

"Don't tell me there was nothing suspicious about him," Tove said, seeming like she was getting annoyed by Alaia's disbelief of what she was saying. "He's involved somehow. There was the paper with the dates and places and people. And he was acting weird when you asked him about his retirement. And then, a few days later, you get hit by a tram."

Alaia waved Tove's arguments away with her uncasted hand.

"Even if he was, there is no reason why he would suspect we, and by we I mean you, think he's up to something. And even if he did, I still don't think he would do something like get me run over by a tram."

Again, Tove just stared at her for a moment, like she couldn't quite believe what Alaia was saying.

"I can't believe you're so naive," she finally said.

"Look, I believe you when you say there is something in common in those cases of yours. And I believe you when you say Mr Marqués might have something to do with it. But I generally like to see the best in people and give them the benefit of the doubt, especially if there's no real evidence they've done anything." Alaia was vaguely aware her voice was growing louder, as if that would make what she was saying was more convincing. "I simply think that there's no reason to interpret something that could have well been an accident as someone trying to kill me!"

Tove stared at her for a moment longer, then pulled on her coat and left without saying a word.

Alaia was left standing in the middle of her living room, alone, her arm hurting, feeling horrible about the way the conversation had gone and more alone than she had been since she arrived in Embärfjell.
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Okay. So that happened. I only had a vague idea of what was going to happen when I started writing, and then it kinda got out of hand. But what's done is done.

I'm actually a little surprised we're only barely halfway through the story.

The topic for tomorrow is Thoughts.

~matu