#03132016

It was quiet. She was heavy. The glass on her bedside table was assuredly empty. The air was bizarrely dry and in the sleepy haze, she contemplated ordering a humidifier off of Amazon. Why would she do that when she could just fix it herself?

But the world did not respond.

Her scarred leg was stiff, and Lumen grimaced as she plodded to the bathroom, flicking on the light as she did so.

The shower faucet did not turn on like she told it to, mentally attempting to work the mechanism on her own. There was nothing to grasp. Puzzled, she turned on the water manually, not knowing which tap was which, and waited for a moment before sticking her hand in the stream, for whatever reason completely unable to determine its temperature. Panic was beginning to set in, exponentially elevating when her hand came away scalded, red, and quite angry with her idiocy.

Breathing to calm herself wasn’t helping, and after floundering for her phone, she dialed the last number she knew for Alec. 

“The skies are empty. Something’s really fucking wrong nothing’s working I can’t feel any of it I don’t know what’s going-”

“Calm your tits, jesus christ. Slow down and tell me what’s not working.”

“Everything! Nothing’s working- uh..” Where was her center? It was too fucking early for this shit. “The shower.. isn’t.. the shower isn’t working.. Water’s not responding to me-” The blonde hauled herself up and crept back to her bedroom, noting the rather full glass of water on her bedside table. “I can’t feel the pipes, either.. and I thought my glass of water was empty cause I couldn’t pick it up.. but.. it’s full.”

“..Okay,” her mentor sighed. Halfway across the world, he rubbed his stubble-laced face and glanced up at the sky. What was one supposed to do when their mutant powers stopped working for no evident reason? Could she be drugged? Inhibited? Did someone break in? Surely not.. Lu would’ve noticed, he knew. And it wasn’t like her to be so panicked as to violate a code they had set to protect themselves. “I’m on a job right now, so you’re on your own. I’m sorry kid, but try calling your therapist. Maybe they know something. Check your apartment too, all right?”

“You- er-” Grey orbs flickered over the largely blank walls, checking corners and examining the windows pointlessly. He wasn’t going to help her. She was going to be on her own. He was abandoning her to this. “Fine. Thanks.” It was terse, and for the first time in a long time, she felt scared. Something was very wrong and she didn’t know what or why or how. It was still hours before Annabeth’s office would be open. Her leg hurt. Alec was being rude, and she terminated the call, cutting off whatever words she was no longer listening to.

“It will be okay,” had been those words, offered from a concerned man who had helped mould her into the person she was, supported her, aided her. Alec was just as scared as she was, but he had a job to do.

Showering proved difficult, and functioning in general resulted in a pair of very, very frustrated breakdowns as everything refused to cooperate with her. Lumen never realized just how much she relied on her ability. Not until it was gone. The air was all wrong and she felt half blind and she had no idea which tap on any of the faucets in her apartment produced which temperature of water and how long had it been since she had to manually control its temperature? She couldn’t tell if it was going to rain or if Sharkbait’s bowl had water in it and oh god what if she got into some sort of physical altercation? Her natural strength was minimal, and for whatever reason some of her physical skills and tactical training was gone along with everything else. A coffee cup had shattered when she failed to acknowledge it’s existence and did not manage to catch it, unable to calculate its trajectory. 

At least it wasn’t a work day..

Annabeth’s offices were closed on Sundays period. And it took a good while to reach the woman’s personal cellphone, to which Lu initially received groggy half-answers until the issue was explained. Her ability as a Mutant was gone without reason, and genetic code didn’t simply ‘stop’ existing in a body and skill sets did not disappear overnight. The blonde was in tears.

“Breathe, Lumen. We will figure this out. Sit tight and I’ll do some checking around, okay? You can’t be the only one. Go to the beach and meditate for a while if you think it’ll help. You said it helps you get control on things. I’ll call and email if I find out anything.”

She sniffed, and wiped the dampness off of her cheeks. The cool of the air from the lingering moisture was almost foreign. “Okay. Okay. I.. I can do that. I’ll do some checking when I get a grip on shit. Thanks.” 

I used to never cry and now I cry daily and I let all the bad feelings win. 

In other news day, I was walking behind a coworker in a small space today and he ran into me. This wasn’t the first time it happened today or any other day we work together. It’s a small space behind our tills and it just happens from time to time. We both were just like ah sorry! I was still rustling around back there when he was done with his customer and he started doing something and we were chatting a little while we both worked on whatever we were working on and he made a comment about how I’m always making myself smaller in places and he makes himself bigger is a sexism issue. That he is taught that he’s supposed to take up more space and I need to fit around him. It’s not completely surprising to hear something like that from him because we’ve talked about privilege before and he knows that I really care about social issues but at the same time I’ve never spoken to someone offline of any gender about how genders perceive how much space they should and shouldn’t take up. Like I don’t want to be that person who gives cookies to people for just respecting people or anything but like also I was like I can’t believe he’s the one that brought that up. It was just kind of interesting and caught me a little off guard? Even though I’m friends with this person and like I know that he knows a lot of stuff about social issues and we’ve talked about knowing your privilege and not speaking in spaces that aren’t yours to speak in. I don’t really know what my exact thought it on this but it was just something that happened today that I was kind of like interesting to. 

I’m far too used to arguing with people about how they are being sexist not someone who’s the more privileged one talking to me about how he’s been trained to take up more space and that’s not okay and he’s working on it. 

Today was weird.