Bound Together

Quiet Reading

The paper felt like sand as I skimmed my hands over it. Fine sand with gritty parts erupting out from the coloured ink that stained the pages. I rubbed my eyes and looked over the pages again. The shapes came in and out of focus: a flower, something that looked liked a radish, shovels pointed towards the ground...

A drop of blood exploded onto the page. Shit. Is that my lip or is my nose bleeding again? I don't have enough water around if it's my nose. I quickly moved my head back from the book, trying not to spill blood anywhere else on it. My tongue tasted blood, but, luckily, it seemed to be coming from my bottom lip. I'd been unconsciously biting it while reading, again. My lip was already swollen with all the times that I'd bitten it before, my gnawing a sign of my ever-growing impatience. 

Was there anything in the ground aside from dried-up radishes? The painted pictures of plants looked more or less normal, but they were always accompanied by strange black or golden yellow circles. Circles of light? Of mold? I stared back at the symbols above the plants. Some sort of olden speech, looking nothing like our writing. Lots of rounded shapes, but I couldn't figure one way or the other what they meant.

There didn't seem to be a pattern to decipher because the text that appeared under or above the plants wasn't consistent. I stared up at the dark ceiling to give my eyes a rest.

In the moonlight you could just see the light glint off of the machine up above. Springs popping out, the door hanging off of one of the hinges. I'd climbed up the broken stairs to reach the small edge on which it stood, hoping to pry it open and figure out its use. That was months ago though, and I'd only managed to rip open the door and, with all that momentum, throw myself solidly on the ground, breaking my arm in several pieces. It mostly healed, but I have a long, thin scar of where the bone tore through skin, like a very sharp knife through peacock breast.

Thinking of peacock breast made me hungry. I hadn't eaten in hours, but there wasn't time enough to go back to the tent and pick anything up. The sun would rise soon enough and I could eat with the others. There was always time; time for my arm to heal, time to eventually figure out this god-damned book.

Breaking my arm was the stupid thing. Too fast and no patience, no forethought. How are you supposed to carry around a baby with only one arm? How are you supposed to do that and feed yourself? Where were the two other arms that were supposed to hold the baby?

Clark used to say, Don't worry, I've got it all figured out. Just get the ring from one of the two. Make sure that you get it.

Get the ring, and then we'll figure it all out. Getting the ring was easy enough, but asking me to leave town made me feel like I was duped. Of course, when I came back to Pennock, Clark was gone. Swept up and away, apparently sucked into a cyclone and deposited somewhere east.

Rings around the plants, rings around my fingers, rings around my eyes. I paused. I placed the ring on the book, beside one of the golden rings painted on the plant. The stone in the ring refracted the light from my candle. Striations appeared on the page, with light hitting the center of each of the plants, creating a dark ring around their stems. Nice light play, but it doesn't solve your problem.

I quickly stood up and felt a rush of blood to my head. I tipped my head back to make sure that my nose wasn't about to bleed and then ran to the stairs. Slowly making my way up, around the piles of rubble and broken steps, I reached the machine again. There were thin grooves across the top of it, as well as a small slot. I shoved my ring into the slot and turned it slightly so that the moonlight hit the stone. Light shone on the grooves, enough to display the circular outlines of symbols, but too faint to really read anything.

I dug my palms into the machine. How much longer do I have to wait? I gritted my teeth and tried to keep my swollen lips from being bitten again. Elise...breathe. You have all the time in the world. I inhaled deeply. Whooo...you got this, Elise. Just don't fall down onto your arm again.

The sun slowly started to rise and rays of light began to filter through the stone. The grooves were splashed with light. My eyes started to water from not blinking. I ran my fingers along the hinges of the door and shoved my hand in the machine. A sharp pain started in my fingers, crawling up my arm. I ripped my arm out and discovered that my arm was pricked in bands, bloody circular characters making up each band.

My balance wobbled as I examined my arm. Taking my glance from my arm to the floor, I saw droplets of blood fall and pool into a small mass. But I don't....why would you need to ...

I looked back as the sun crawled into the room. My eyes closed as I weightlessly fell off the platform.