Broken, Pt. 3

For Part One:  http://thedevilsdiaries.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/broken.html
For Part Two: http://thedevilsdiaries.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/broken-pt-2.html

Part Three

The corridor seemed miles longer than usual, maybe because I was so little now.  I peered into all sorts of paper thin passageways I’d never noticed when I was big, but they were so dark and uninviting that I dared not travel down any of them.  I needed to solve this fairy riddle first. 

My woolly thoughts seemed to be leading me somewhere, so I pushed out of my mind the math exams I’d missed, the classrooms I couldn’t find.  I didn’t want to think about the times I woke up in a library, with only a few days left to write a year-end term paper I hadn’t even started.  I never knew how these crises turned out, because suddenly they would be over, and I would be here, on my way to the restaurant to visit Marietta.  She never asked where I’d been.  She was my friend.

Finally the hallway widened into a large, silent atrium, with massive stairs leading to the second floor.  I buzzed up the staircase, following its curvature instead of simply flying straight up.  In the much smaller hallway off to the right some instinct, or past experience, brought me to a small bedroom, gently lit by a reading lamp.  I didn’t know whose it was or why no one slept there tonight, but I did know I would be safe here—at least for a little while.

The bed, however, was not an option, so I fluttered over to the tall chest of drawers.  Each drawer had been left open, just the tiniest bit:  I settled for the middle drawer, the one with the thick woolly winter sweaters.  When I was big I’d hated wool and its scratchy, suffocating warmth, but now I curled myself into a tight ball between a snowflake-patterned jumper and a purple cabled cardigan and let out a little sigh.  Tomorrow, perhaps, I would be big again.  Tomorrow I might remember why I kept forgetting.