katerina
—« watch the soft blush seep through her skin / like an indolent sigh. in her looking-glass / my red lips part as though I want to speak. »
W
hat strange dreams I've been having. Last night I thought I was someone else entirely; someone, even, from a different world. When I woke up—in the dream, that is—there was something staring straight back at me. A creature with an eye which had more colors than any rainbow or opal I had ever seen and a pupil like a long cut, like a mortal wound, and I knew, as purely as Kassandra would have, that I was about to—My quill splits. A huge web of ink spills onto the parchment, swallowing up my careful writing; before I can even react with a gasp the first part of my entry is gone, and I am now staring at an abyss that was meant to be a book.
“Gods,” I whisper, voice tight with frustration. My mouth twists. One of the library’s little helpers overhears me with his satellite ears. I mouth sorry to his scowling canine face. After a few excruciatingly long moments, he turns his back to me and bounds away. A breath, held so long it was starting to hurt, finally rushes out of me.
If anything, I’m thankful that the library is relatively empty. It’s still quite early in the morning; when I walked here from the city just a half hour ago, the sky was still dark, and the fields still rolled with eggshell blue fog. It’s only me and the bookkeepers as far as I can see. And even if they glare at me, it’s not quite the same as being witnessed by other Deluminians.
I sit up, try to organize my table, and toss the splintered quill to one side. It’s I hold the journal in the air sideways, until ink rolls down the page and drips onto a bit of scrap paper I was smart enough to bring with me. I watch the bead fall: a little jewel of glossy black, its round edges catching the light. When it hits the parchment, it spiders out into a long, dark Rorschach blot.
I stare at it in silence. I swear, inside the patterned ink, I can see that rainbow eye looking back at me.
