CHAPTER FOUR

The almost voice of intuition has whispered to Thera. Now she must decide if she will trust it… and live with the consequences.

Thera doubted.

It was only human.

She felt the need to poke at the place that her inspiration, her intuition poured from. Like a child with a bad tooth, she prodded. Her sense of certainty flailed as she wondered how much control she had over her own thoughts.

She couldn’t help it. It was the source of her triumph. Her downfall. Her identity.

She questioned.

She ignored the voice in her mind and went to start with the least probable option.

It wasn’t that she was afraid of finding out that the voice in her mind was right.

It certainly wasn’t that at all.

The metal stripped from the Obscura’s brace like a fish tickled from water. 

She bound both ends of the darkened glasses to the wire. Hoping to reforge the pattern.

Ash and her heartbeat settled. Nothing else moved to the beats of life.

After a while she stood.

It had power. She knew that. But not the type of power she needed.

Or her fix left a lot to be desired.

She collected the arm of the Obscura and walked away, abandoning the sacred pattern she had tried to right.

Her doubt bloated, stifling her intuition, but she was committed to the thorough approach now.

She walked. Found the bar of light hanging in the air like the diamond glint of water on the horizon.

Looked it, eye to eye. Glint of her soul to a soul, glinting.

The ash stung her eyes.

Her lips pursed in anticipation, a piece of ash caught at the back of her throat.

Hacking coughs wracked her.

When she stood straight the only change was that her certainty had melted like the ash in her mouth.

Doubt your own intuition at your peril a voice seemed to whisper from the chorus of her mind. 

Fittingly, it sounded a lot like the voice of hard won experience. 

Of intuition. 

She snorted. Walked on.

Thera walked the now familiar route. The ash smelt like forest fires and cooked pig.

She felt her stomach rumble and the taste of her spit was dry of flavour. It tasted like hunger. 

Thera focused on the weight of her feet as they lifted off the cobble only to return and spread flat with each step. Small blisters were forming but each step was progress. She didn’t count the steps. Her shadow did that for her. Her shadow had begun to flicker before she delved to the deeps once more.

You didn’t ask what the most important step was. You couldn’t, when you were so absorbed in simply taking the next one.

The ossuary was cooler now. The Catacombs contrasted to the pulsing heat of the blood between her toes.

She finally arrived at the deep teal skull she had in mind. The one that seemed most…friendly. In the dark a glint seemed to sparkle from its sockets.  

The skull seemed caught by a joke she couldn’t reach. 

It smiled.

Even then, with nothing else in the city having proved a threat…she paused.

Reached out and curled her fingers through the cold bone of the socket, lifting the skull from its pedestal.

Cold.

She heard a noise that slipped her mind before she could comprehend it.

Shivered at the idea it might have been laughter.

Walked back through the stretching darkness to the marble statues above.

Moved through the darkening streets to the specific statue that matched the pattern of the skull. On its dress, in what would be, on a human form, its tattoos. On its feel.  The one her trained mind had identified.

Checked the simple ornamentation of the statue against her memory of the picture in the ossuary.

They were the same.

Almost.

Dehydration was announcing itself with further fanfare now and the marble seemed to pulse and bend before her.

She hesitated before placing the skull atop of the marble head.

One moment it seemed a thread to the needle. Obviously the skull could fit.

The next moment it seemed an ocean to an urn. Obviously it would never fit.

With a sigh she closed her eyes and, one hand on the face of the statue, she brought the skull to its crown.

Blind, she tried to merge bone and stone.

Blind, she felt the moment that physics bowed to a superior force.

A click.

The marble under her hand, the bone under her fingers; gone.

She curled her hand in a desperate affirmation of the change and the long locks of hair pulled themselves together under her fingers.

She opened her eyes to see a woman of incredible beauty staring back at her. 

Thera was breath-close to her, fingers wrapped in the smaller woman's hair. 

Her parched throat betrayed her when she tried to whisper. 

She swallowed. Never blinking away from the kind eyes that seemed to buoy her soul. 

Before she could speak the livened statue stole the silence. Her breath drawing deep as if against the weight of an age.

“We need your help.” The woman who had been a statue whispered, her voice sounded to Thera like it was made from innocence incarnate.

Thera decided…

1) She is obviously in great peril. I should agree to help her. If she wants my help she will help me in turn and my time is running out.

2) I should tell her I can’t help anyone while in need of water, drink and shelter. In that order. She can’t ask me to help anyone while I’m in this state. 

3) Hold the cold edge of the Obscura glasses to her throat. Say one thing about her time with The Company, say it taught her to bargain from a superior position.

Head to the discord to vote before Midnight EST 22nd July.

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