Dark Matter | JJK

35. Weaknesses and Winters

"One bright morning as the Fox was following his sharp nose through the wood in search of a bite to eat, he saw a Nightingale on the limb of a tree overhead. This was by no means the first Nightingale the Fox had ever seen. What caught his attention this time and made him stop for a second look, was that the lucky Nightingale held a bit of cheese in her beak.

'No need to search any farther,' thought sly Master Fox. "Here is a dainty bite for my breakfast."

Up he trotted to the foot of the tree in which the Nightingale was sitting, and looking up admiringly, he cried, "Good-morning, beautiful creature!"

The Nightingale, her head cocked on one side, watched the Fox suspiciously. But she kept her beak tightly closed on the cheese and did not return his greeting.

"What a charming creature she is!" said the Fox. "How her feathers shine! What a beautiful form and what splendid wings! Such a wonderful Bird should have a very lovely voice, since everything else about her is so perfect. Could she sing just one song, I know I should hail her Queen of Birds."

Listening to these flattering words, the Nightingale forgot all her suspicion, and also her breakfast. She wanted very much to be called Queen of Birds. So she opened her beak wide to utter her loudest caw, and down fell the cheese straight into the Fox's open mouth.

"Thank you," said Master Fox sweetly, as he walked off. "Though it is cracked, you have a voice sure enough. But where are your wits?"

"So the moral of the story, little doves, is that if you don't know what your flaws are, people will always use them against you. Can you repeat that?"

A disjointed chorus of sounds followed, tiny mouths wrapping around words too big, rolling the rs and stretching the os.

But as the group of toddlers seated on the round table in the library began chartering in childlike gibberish and stuffing storybooks in their bags, Petra sat still in her seat. Her eyes zoned onto the criss-cross of scratches on the mahogany table top.

A continuous string of words whizzing back and forth between her eyes.

They'll use your flaws against you.

Flaw.

Fumbling with her hand bag, Petra unzipped it open and retrieved her blue folder, yanking it open so aggressively that the papers in it almost flew into the air. She sorted through the documents and removed a single transparent stapled file, turning the sheets until she was on the right page.

Property 32: Aenigmium can only be found in the universe in two states: liquid and gas.

And under it, in brackets and next to an asterisk:

(*FLAW: Ae cannot exist in both its liquid and gaseous state at the same place and same time. If such a situation is created when Ae exists both as liquid and gas in the body, one state will compete for dominance until a singular, uniform state is obtained throughout the body.)

Breathing out shakily, Petra grabbed a pen and scribbled the words in almost microscopic handwriting on the paper:

To defeat the enemy, you must use their flaws against them.

She stood by the library door and waited for the kids' parents to arrive, ensuring every child left only with their true guardians. The tiny tots peppered kisses on her cheeks like they usually did, waddling out of the doors and drove away in their parents' cars.

Petra liked how people reacted at times like these. Instead of staying cooped up within the faux security of of their homes, a few chose to venture out with care and send their children in the far off, safer world of stories.