"'If I want something, the world adjusts itself to it.'"
After those words, the old man stared at Natalia in open shock. For a split second, something he hadn't seen in a very long time flashed behind his eyes, so vivid it felt like he'd been yanked out of the present by the throat.
A sixteen-year-old girl.
Long, pale-blonde hair falling down her back. A young face, not fully grown into itself yet, but already wearing that same expression of absolute certainty, those same eyes that looked down on everyone, the same posture of someone who'd believed since childhood that the world existed to move out of her way.
And that voice.
"If I want something, then the world has to adjust."
The image vanished as suddenly as it came, dissolving like fog in a gust of wind. The old man was looking at Natalia again, grown, powerful, ice-calm, and for a moment he simply stood there, silent, as if trying to organize what had just crawled out of his memory.
Then he started laughing.
