The numbers swim in front of her tired eyes. She cannot go on, but is not free to stop. Radicals, squares, numbers and meaningless squiggles dance on the white paper. She should be able to extract some meaning, some point from the jumble, but she simply can’t.
The marks on the page rush up to her face and the two collide with a sharp jerk. The force of impact knocks the foreign symbols off the page, sending them twirling away, around the room shinning like dust motes in the light. They settle on the ground, on desks and books, little pagan symbols to decorate the room. The numbers seem to be falling form the roof now, and the torrential fall doesn’t slow as the room begins to fill.
The girl back in her chair is frozen in place. She and the other students are trapped in their places; their limbs are weighted with lead, unable to move. All they can do is watch, watch as the meaningless, evil, numbers and symbols fill the classroom. They blot out the light from the window, slowly block the doorway. Finally, all that any of them can smell, see or hear are the softly settling piles of black marks. Suffocating them all in the pure logic of their existence, the numbers kill and desecrate the holy creativity in the minds of the students, while they remain trapped under the spell of the numbers.
The girl in the back of the classroom is fighting the numbers, forcing them back and slowly, regaining sensation in her finger tips. The prickling sensation travels up into her hands and burns through her forearms until it bursts into her chest, then radiates out into the rest of her body. Her heart starts to beat again, and it beats words, beautiful words into her veins. Out of the corner of her eye, just barely through the numbers and symbols she can see her skin aglow with a soft but harsh light.
In her mind all she sees are letters, smelted into words, crafted into poetry. Glittering and shinning with creativity, imagination, and beauty she forces them to form a sword, something to free her classmates with. She opens her eyes once more to the sea of crushing logic, to the trapped classmates, shackled to their desks. But now, now she has a weapon. In her hand she holds a dazzling sword, bathed in that same comforting harsh light. The sword is inlaid with gemstones, and carved with stunning words. She slices room in the numbers to stand up, and dances with her weapon of choice.
She and the sword twirl through the room, obliterating the senseless numbers, freeing the ensnared minds, beauty and purpose together in their dance of faith, inspiration and freedom. Slowly, so slowly the room begins to clear. She twists, turns, jabs and slices and inch by inch the logic gives up ground, retreats back to its paper. The students free themselves from the mass of black as she cuts their bonds, and they go to work with weapons of their own. No two weapons are the same, but each is wrapped in soothing but savage light. Soon the room is nothing but a blur of light, and bits of the invaders floating in the stagnant air. Axes, staves, swords, and maces flu through the air, until the last is trapped in calculators and on the board but still the students dance on, unaware and blissfully overjoyed in their freedom from the laws of the world, of logic, of reality.
The girl however tires, and skips through their joy to the safety of her desk, not long ago a prison. The sword plunges back into her, returning to whence it came, ready if ever she should need it again. She is exhausted by her dance, by her elation, by her freedom, and when her head hits the desk this time she is jolted back into reality.
The numbers stay on the page now, but she can feel the sword inside of her, and it gives her the will to go on, and to keep the fire within her alive to fight another day.
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