Hallucinations?

Pre-dawn light cast everything in heavy grey as Lily headed back for the underground shuttle. The distance wasn’t so far but a fog had also crept in overnight. It obscured her view as she walked, bringing a chill to the air where it hung.

Needing to find privacy when relieving herself wasn’t the worst part of travelling, but Haven did offer a few conveniences that were pretty unbeatable.

If only there was… her thought faded.

A tall figure watched from the mist ahead. Silvery patterns covered dark skin. A bald head and bright eyes regarded her – a human-sized kami?

Lily blinked. Impossible! she thought.

She dashed forward... and what had seemed like a large kami was, in fact, just one of the trees near her destination. A trick of the light? There really was nothing there but a pale tree trunk with its dark undertones.

My imagination making a fool of me, then, she decided. She frowned at the tree and the ground below.

Nothing out of place.

“Fine.” Lily hurried on to enter the building, pausing at the hatch. If she was being observed, there was no need to lead the watcher straight down to Gabriel. She lifted Emerald’s jar. He hung in place, drifting gently. “Emerald, did you sense anything just now?”

Only you thundering across the earth. Why?

“I just saw something impossible.”

Oh?

Emerald did tend to be a little more curious than Blue. “A human-shaped kami with silver patterns.”

Hmmm. No kami are silver.

“And there are only two sizes,” she added. “Like you and like Elders. Everyone knows that, so if it wasn’t a kami just now, what did I see?”

Tell me more.

She explained what had happened before finishing with a sigh. “Even so, I could have imagined it.”

Something unusual happened in this place. Don’t rule anything out. I wouldn’t.

“I’m definitely not planning to,” she said with a grin. “You’re a little more talkative lately.”

Interesting times, I suppose.

Hard to disagree.

Lily replaced the jar before poking her head from the building to look around once more, but the mist revealed no threats. Only vague shapes of surrounding buildings. Maybe I did imagine it…

Downstairs, she woke Gabriel and explained what had happened over breakfast. The first of the fruit, its sweet flesh was soured a little by the conversation. But Gabriel was in agreement about staying on guard. [Let’s wait for the morning sun to burn off the mist. We can keep watch better, that way.]

But no silver kami waited for them when they left the abandoned village.

Nor on the road beyond, and by noon, Lily had stopped looking over her shoulder. Instead, it was becoming necessary to keep a close watch on the path ahead. And the barren plains, with their fields of death-marks.

All around, and sometimes crossing the road itself, heart-shaped symbols waited, thistles growing tall. Their pink blossoms dripped occasional acid, a faint hiss rising from the barren earth whenever it hit.

Where the death-marks had bunched together for long stretches, a faint haze filled the air. Not so strong as the Narrows, but enough that she and Gabriel lifted their fibre masks.

Soon enough, finding shelter would be a problem but Lily strode on with a clenched jaw. No mere poison is going to stop us, she thought.

Darkness threatened when they finally found a suitable place to camp.

A hillside of yellowing grass that overlooked the fields.

They climbed swiftly and from the top were rewarded with a stretching view. To one side was the road, and to the other, an empty riverbed. The dry river ran deep enough that a misstep from the bank would easily result in broken bones. Beyond the hill, the river’s course eventually met the road, and together the two ran toward Zarima.

And between, beside and surrounding both road and river alike, death-marks spreading…

How long before the marks reached the abandoned village? The Eastwood?

Haven?

The heart shapes left only meandering paths between their poison. Sometimes those trails followed the road or the riverbed, and sometimes it was clear that they would force brave travellers on serious detours.

[A shame we can’t use the riverbed yet,] Gabriel said. [Not so many in there.]

Lily nodded as she pointed to a bridge. It lay at the limit of her vision but seemed free of death-marks. [I wonder if there’s a reason for that?]

[A good reason, I hope.]

[We should have been studying them since the first one appeared,] she said.

[The Twins have been but it is dangerous.]

[You’re right. I know. But I’ve seen so many myself… and I don’t really know enough about them.] She should have helped Mia and Noah carry that burden. For so long, they’d been striving to create something to fully reverse the effects...

[We’ll figure something out,] Gabriel said, then he paused. [Lily, are you sure about leaving the tamer’s jar behind?]

[I am.]

It wasn’t right to replace Yellow so soon. The jar could have been useful… for trade, at the least, since no Tamer carried more than three kami, anyway.

But something about taking it just seemed wrong.

[I understand… but I just hope we don’t end up regretting it.]

[Me too.] She sighed. [Let’s set up camp, for now. I’ll ask Blue and Emerald to watch over us tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll reach that bridge and find out why it seems to be different.]

[Sounds good. At least that silver kami turned out to be a trick of the light, right?] He started to clear the ground for their bedrolls. [Not that I’ve given up watching completely.]

[Me either].

She was almost disappointed. That’s ridiculous, she thought. No. Disappointment was too strong. Instead, she felt… a need to be right. To trust herself. To trust that she’d actually seen something. Something more than a strange hallucination.

It was real, whatever it had been.

Wasn’t it?

Without any proof, all she could do was wait for the mysterious figure to appear again. And then, to hope that the spirit carried no ill intentions.

Lily turned to their back trail and found, to her confused relief, that the road was empty of large, silver-patterned kami.

For now, she thought.