Everyone who knew Wendy always said she was a soft touch, but Wendy didn't see it that way. Did it really make her a soft touch to spend a quarter on a gumball for a crying kid with a harried mother? In the big scheme of things, wasn't it worth dropping a dollar in some panhandler's hat? Or taking a moment to give a stranger a smile, fix her wide blue eyes on theirs, and tell them that everything was going to be okay? Stray kittens, baby birds, lost puppies...Wendy always had a moment to spare for all of them. If that made her a soft touch, well, she was ready to wear that label with pride.
So when she saw Ebony sitting by herself in the student union, holding her pendant at the end of its string and tapping it with a desultory gesture, Wendy's heart went right out to her. She looked so forlorn, all alone in the table by the corner watching the green glass crystal slowly spin to a halt before giving it another apathetic flick of her finger to get it going again. Wendy couldn't help but head over there to see if she was alright.
"Hi!" Wendy said, plopping herself down in the chair opposite Ebony and beaming at her as if they were old friends. They'd really only had a few conversations together-Ebony had just transferred in from one of the local community colleges, and the two of them only shared a couple of classes-but Wendy always felt like the easiest way to make new friends was to act like an old friend. "You look like you could use someone to talk to. Having a rough day? Professor Truesdale got you down?"
Ebony looked at her for just a moment, her dark brown eyes flickering over Wendy without much interest. Then she went back to staring at her pendant. "It's nothing," she muttered, giving the crystal another tap. Green light gently refracted across her dark skin, but Ebony didn't seem to be paying it much attention. She didn't really even seem to be looking at her pendant much. It was just something to keep her eyes occupied while she moped. Wendy couldn't stand to see someone looking so down.
"Oh, don't be like that!" she said, putting her full cheer assault into her voice. (She didn't mind that her nicknames on campus included 'Care Bear Stare' and 'Pollyanna'. It was a mark of honor to her, in fact.) "There are so many people in this world who have problems that nobody even notices, and here you are lucky enough to have someone walking right up to you and asking if they can help. Whatever it is that's wrong, you'll feel better if you at least talk about it, I promise."
Ebony rolled her eyes a little, but Wendy was used to that. She sat in silence for a long moment, clearly weighing up the pros and cons of opening up to the little wisp of a blonde-haired girl who acted like she was being sized up for pixie wings. But finally she said, "Alright. It's...you know I'm in Bachmann's psych course this semester, right?"
Wendy nodded, widening her eyes to near manga levels to indicate that she was paying attention. "I saw you coming out the other day," she said. "I've never taken any of his courses, but I hear he's pretty tough. You need a study buddy? I might not know the material, but I can hold the flashcards for you!"
Ebony's mouth finally twitched into the first approximation of a smile Wendy had seen from her since she first spotted the other woman on campus. "Not...exactly," she said. "See, Bachmann's doing a unit on hypnosis, and we're supposed to be practicing our skills, but..." She let out a deep sigh. "I don't really know anyone in the class very well. And it's not that easy to just ask someone if they'll let you hypnotize them. People get weird about it. I was trying to hypnotize myself, but I couldn't really practice like that."
Wendy couldn't imagine anything sadder than being the only one without a partner in a group activity. "I could help!" she blurted out, almost before Ebony had finished her sentence. "I mean, I don't really know much about hypnosis, but if all you need is someone to sit there and stare, I'm pretty sure I can handle that!" She grinned, practically willing her smile to pandemic levels of infectiousness.
It worked. Ebony gave her a little smile back, and said, "Okay. But we should probably go somewhere a little quieter, alright? I don't want you getting distracted by a puppy that needs a bath or something." They both chuckled at that-Wendy was used to jokes about her reputation as a pushover for a sob story, and she knew that stories about her spread pretty quickly. Carrying a sick squirrel in your hoodie for a month while you nursed it back to health did that. "Come on. We'll go back to my dorm room."
They gathered up Ebony's things, and a few minutes later Ebony was ushering Wendy in to a double in the campus residence hall. "I've got a roommate," Ebony explained, "but I haven't seen her in about three weeks. She's been staying at her boyfriend's every night since school started, and I think she finally had enough clothes over there that she could do laundry at his place instead of stopping off to change before classes."
"So you've really been all alone?" Wendy asked, trying not to get choked up. "Oh, that's awful!" Mentally, she was already making plans to stop by every couple of nights with snacks, maybe a movie or two to keep Ebony from getting lonely. Wendy always said that half the fun of college life was making new friends and having new experiences-if Ebony didn't have anyone to share her evenings with, Wendy was more than happy to be her first!
Ebony shrugged. "Eh," she said, tossing some pillows onto the floor, "it's got its upsides." She tossed her things in the corner and flopped down onto one of the pillows. "Go ahead and get comfortable," she said, pulling the pendant back out once more. "I'll tell you what to do once you're ready to relax."
Wendy set her book bag down next to Ebony's, and sat down on the pillow across from the other woman. "So what do I do?" she said. "I mean, do I just look at the pendant, do I listen, how do I tell you if you're doing it right? Or is it just one of those things where-"
Ebony gently but firmly pressed a finger to Wendy's lips. "Right now," she said, "all I need you to do is watch and listen. You're not going to try to do anything in specific, you're not going to try to be hypnotized at all. You're just going to watch the pendant in my hand as it moves at the end of the string. Let your eyes sink deep into the light of its reflection. Don't think, just focus on the pendant for me, Wendy."
Wendy nodded. "Got it. When you don't know what you're doing, just listen to the person who-" She caught sight of Ebony's expression. "Right," she mumbled. "Sorry. Watching and listening."
"Much better," Ebony said, making a tiny gesture with her wrist that sent the crystal into a slow, twirling dance at the end of the string. "I know you want to be helpful, Wendy. You're just the kind of person hypnosis works best on, because you're open and receptive to the emotional signals I'm sending. You noticed me earlier, looking like I needed someone, and you instantly responded to that emotion. And now, you're picking up the calm and relaxation that I'm radiating as you stare at the pendant and follow it with your eyes, and it's very easy to reflect those emotions back to me. You're calmer with every breath, listening to my words and absorbing that peace within yourself."
Wendy nodded. She still wasn't sure if she was doing this properly, but she knew that Ebony had told her not to talk just now and she really didn't want to screw anything up. Not when Ebony so clearly needed someone. If being hypnotized was how Wendy got Ebony to open up to her, then Wendy was determined to be the best hypnotic subject ever. She gazed with fierce intensity at the pendant, keeping her stare wide and unblinking and focusing all her attention on it.
"That's it," Ebony said, her voice already exuding a cool and quiet praise. "Just stare and relax. Everything else floating away, your surroundings growing less and less important, even my words beginning to drift in and out of your conscious mind as you center your attention on the pendant and focus on reflecting my emotional energies. You're becoming a lovely little mirror, Wendy, your mind and your thoughts acting in sympathy with mine. That's so easy for you. You've always been able to sympathize with the feelings of others, and all you're doing now is just that same process, only more formally. You can feel it happening, can't you, Wendy?"
Ebony nodded at the same time Wendy nodded, and somehow that just seemed entirely natural and normal. It didn't matter to Wendy that Ebony was a good foot taller, had short curly dark hair and skin almost as dark as her namesake. She felt like she was seeing herself in the woman sitting across from her. Unconsciously, she adjusted her position so that she was sitting in the exact same stance as Ebony was. It felt so easy-the hypnosis only helped what she already wanted to happen. She wanted to bring Ebony closer to her emotionally, and it only made sense that to do that, she needed to bring herself closer to Ebony as well.
