A haircut and a fairy - working title

Maeve slowly became conscious of her body, flitting in and out of warm fuzzy nothing to the growing awareness that she had been asleep and dreaming of fire. Again. The dream had haunted her thoughts before and she did not know what to make of it. Living breathing fire, an entity in itself, that was the subject of her dream. Was there such a thing? She remembered the strange way it moved, the warmth of it as it twisted toward her. The strange hissing and crackling that almost sounded like speech. Why did this dream keep haunting her? How many times had she dreamed it now?

Then aches and heaviness of her body came rushing into her reality, the force of it nearly knocked the breath out of her. She lay panting, trying to control her breathing. The pain was worse than yesterday, not the worst she’d ever experienced, but it was enough that she was having trouble blocking it from her mind. Her head swam and she realized she was hyperventilating. She breathed in and out, once, twice, trying to focus her thoughts around the pain. She slowed down her breathing and focused.
There was something new today, a throbbing, a strange throbbing rattled her. It was almost like her bones were singing, as if they were a musical triangle that had been struck, or maybe a tuning fork. Maeve knew she had never felt anything like this before, nor had she ever heard anyone describe what she was feeling.
 
She could hear her bones. Actually hear them. She could pin point each and every vertebrae, the tiny bones in her hands and feet, ankles and wrists, and the even smaller bones in her inner ears. She could hear them all. 

“I must be crazy,” she thought. “People don’t HEAR their bones.”

But it wasn’t going away; she sharpened her focus on the sound and her bones. Her mind was overcome with sound instantly. She lifted her hand and flexed her fingers; the movement became a symphony of noise. The intake and exhale of breath became the background beat to accompany her heart beat. Slowly she moved her body and focused her mind on not hearing her bones. The singing returned to the throb she’d felt before. The vibrations in her bones were making her jittery and anxious, as if she’d drank too much caffeine and followed that up with “stay awake” pills. Maeve focused on tuning all of this out.

The throbbing, jitters, and pain receded, but it curled around the corners of her mind, threatening to overcome her again. She took a deep breath and stood, her bones sang out, but she quashed it with her mind.

“Ok,” she thought, “I can control this.”

The process of getting undressed and then dressed for the day was arduous. Even brushing her long hair, and then her teeth afterward, was now complex, and strained all her focus. 

To her amazement, her HAIR sang too. Each movement, every swish, any tiny movement of her head, sent ripples of sound down her back to her waist. Brushing it sent a clamorous shout through her head. Walking was going to be impossible.

In a moment of panic that threatened all of her strength, she tuned out all the sounds.  Maeve had to focus hard. Her hair was worse than her bones and the sound from it radiated directly into her brain.
She vigorously brushed her dark blonde waist length hair into a loose ponytail, then plated it into a long thick braid, securing the top and bottom of the braid with a hair elastic. The singing made her wobble and her head spun; she was shaking from the vibrations. A braid wasn’t enough to stop the noise; in fact it seemed to make the noise more concentrated, instead of each strand singing alone, bundled together the sounds were amplified to a single shout.

She ran to her bathroom drawer, the concussion of sound from running and pain, dropped her to her knees. Panting, she grabbed a pair of sharp scissors, and while sitting on the cold bathroom floor, she thought.

She had to get the hair off her head, had to, only way. Otherwise the noise radiating into her brain was going to drive her mad. Her hand shook, somewhere a voice in her mind squeaked at her about the insanity of the entire situation.

She told that voice to "Shut Up."

The first snip of the scissors, parting her from a long strand of hair sent shock waves through her mind, but shorter was better. She sighed. Another snip, slicing through a thicker section of hair and she was sure. It had to come off.

Maeve began to hack at the back of her head with the scissors. The loud snips were sharp and long as she sliced through layers of hair, careful to stay away from her skin and in between her scalp and the elastic band. While bones and hair were singing and vibrating through her body, she worked until the back of her head was parted from her long braid. With the last snip she felt lightheaded, wobbled and dropped the scissors.

What was left of her waist length hair was now curled in her lap like a snake. She realized that tears were running down her face, but the vibrations were lessened. The singing in her head was almost silent, she was trembling, but able to move. She put her braid and the scissors in the bathroom drawer and stood up facing the mirror over the sink. The tears she hadn’t noticed falling were fresh on her face, and she wiped them away. Without her hair contributing to the cacophony, she could focus as she stood, and moved.

She took a long look at herself. Her hair looked like a botched imitation of those trendy unisex angle haircuts, the ones where your hair was really short on the neck and gradually got longer up the back of your head and around the sides ending in longer pieces toward the forehead area and eventually “bangs” that reached chin length. 

Maeve’s hair wasn’t sleek in the back like those cuts; hair stood up in all directions and stuck out in clumps. Where an angle cut would have been even and swept down toward her ears, her hair was jagged and rough looking, a funky shag angle cut mix. Maybe washing it would help? 
She definitely wasn’t getting out the scissors again.

Maeve painfully undressed again, the aches and pain in her body piercing through her focus, and the singing of her bones broke her concentration. She drown it out again. Hair was on her shirt and down the back of it. Little clumps she over cut while trying to get the ponytail off. She switched on the water and started the shower, stuck her hand under it and jumped back. The beating water had made the singing in her bones a hundred times worse. She switched the shower off and started filling the tub instead. 

Maeve carefully stepped in the tub and sat after it was full, then sunk into the water and let it cover all of her… blissfully the noise stopped. Where beating water made it worse, still water deadened it, absorbed some of the vibration, it did something.. She didn’t know why this would be, but she relaxed her body and enjoyed it.  Only her nose and eyes peeking out of the water, as she floated and let her mind drift.

She didn’t get out of the tub until the water started to cool. The time spent in quiet had helped her focus. Without her long hair amplifying the noise, she could keep the singing at bay, and it settled into the now familiar curl around the corners of her mind along with the dull throb.

Wrapped in a towel, she carefully walked to the mirror and looked at herself. Seeing her face, without the long waving strands of blonde hair around it, was a shock. Critically she looked at herself, she thought her face was too round and her facial bones, cheeks, jaw, nose, not prominent enough to pull off this haircut. Too bad, it was done. She combed her remaining hair carefully, so that she could maintain her focus. Even with the careful movement, it didn’t take long, there just wasn’t much left. She dressed as quickly as she could and still maintain focus. Then an idea hit her, deaden the movement of her hair, keep the focusing easier all day. She found a bottle of hair gel and used it on her head, she was overly enthusiastic and used too much, but maybe it will help. 

***
 
Working around the vibrations in her bones all day was taxing. Maeve felt physically and emotionally exhausted. It had taken her several hours to learn to use the focus needed to ignore what was going on in her body, but she’d done it. It was similar to the concentration she used to ignore pain. As long as the vibrations were minimal, she could ignore it effectively and without much focus. When she was moving, it took more focus and anything physically strenuous caused a clamor in her head. 
She had several more paintings to complete before the art show and a scheduled photo shoot tomorrow. Today she had nearly completed one painting, but she was worried about the shoot. She didn’t know how she would deal with the vibrations tomorrow. The shoot was a required one for her photography class. She needed to do it, canceling wasn’t an option. 

Maeve stood in her kitchen and looked at the contents of her cabinet. Vitamins and first aid kit stood on the shelf and the one above it contained a cardboard flat used for cans, she pulled it out and looked at the over the counter and prescription pill bottles. Pill bottles for migraines, allergies, and an empty pill bottle from her last infection. A couple bottles for aches and pains and, there it was, the pain medication from a dental procedure. The bottle of Vicodin was still half full. She took a pill.

Half an hour later and the vibrations were deadened, and she was in bed. She’d found a solution, it wasn’t a great solution, but it would get her through the night and maybe the next day. Her body was accepting the treatment for vibrations as pain. That told her something, but what did it tell her? She drifted off to sleep not sure of the answer.

She woke with a start at dawn and the vibrations were there. She got up carefully, trudged to the kitchen and took another pill, washing it down with cold water from the fridge. Then she sat in her comfy chair for a while. The shoot was in 3 hours, time to carefully dress and pack her equipment. She checked her camera bag, and took her spare battery from the socket in the wall. Walked to her closet and got dressed as carefully as she could. She’d bathe after she got back from the shoot. Walking in the sun and through woods, would require a shower later. Wait, she thought, bath not shower, beating water made this crazy condition of hers worse. 

She thought about calling her doctor. She’d thought about it yesterday a dozen times, but she didn’t know how to phrase it without sounding crazy.

She left for the shoot and arrived early, she had the instructions already and began taking photos as she waited for her classmates and professor. After everyone arrived she got the official verbal instructions and began snapping shots again. She knew her haircut was getting looks, but she didn’t care. She avoided her classmates, and started down a path into the woods that no one else took. They were required to submit a photo to present to the class based on the natural surroundings and a photo based on man-made surroundings. Each photo must have a written defense as to why they chose it. Her mind wandered as she walked, she was getting farther away from the class but the light in the trail was intriguing her, something was flitting in the woods, something she could barely see. She was focused on looking through the lens of her camera and her feet. The added concentration to keep the vibrations at bay was taking all of her concentration and she didn’t realize there was something in her periphery vision until it was upon her. Her heart thundered and skipped, she spun on reflex, and the vibrations came crashing into her brain and she fell. The impact vibrations from the fall were skull shattering. She felt like her brain was going to explode, then darkness started closing in her vision until all she could see was a tunnel and she was falling backwards through it, the light at the end was getting farther and farther away. Then it winked out.

Maeve woke to a rushing in her ears, and a painful head. She opened her eyes and saw flitting lights in the near darkness. She gasped, “Near darkness? It was morning, wasn’t it?” she thought.
She shivered, looked around and then carefully sat up. It was getting dark. Her camera was next to her on the ground. She examined it closely and turned it on. She took a picture of the sunset through the trees, turned the dial and took another. Her camera seemed fine. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the time. 7 pm (March sunset is 7:30 after time change). She had been unconscious for hours. She was cold and shaking, the woods were getting dark, she needed to leave. No flashlight, unfamiliar woods and no compass. She knew the sun set in the west, but she didn’t know if her car was east or west of where she was. She looked at the path, which way had she come in? Should she call someone? She didn’t know where she was or how to tell them where to find her. She saw the flitting around the corners of her vision again, what was that?

It looked like a very large flying insect, as long as her hand. Maeve was not fond of insects and wanted away from anything that big that might possibly sting. Her heart started thundering in her chest again.
One buzzed by her head and another over her left shoulder. Shivering, wet and starting to panic now, Maeve stood. She had already put her camera in her gear bag and she slipped it on her shoulders. She still had her phone out when one of the insects, wait, creatures, flitted into full view. She switched her phone to camera mode and snapped a picture, then looked closer at the thing. It was a creature, NOT an insect. At least, it was unlike any insect she had ever seen. It was shiny metallic looking, like a beetle, but it was in the shape of a tiny person with wings.