The Twinning Verse Three

Chapter 1

The Woman in the Desert

As the final rays of light, carried to Serafina upon a slowly descending sun, skirted over the horizon and cast one last, longing look upon the dried valley, the woman felt the first chill wind of evening sweep over her body. She had spent seven long days and six nights in this particular valley; eating what she could find, drinking what little water she had brought with her (sometimes Fabricating more), sleeping only when she needed it and only for short intervals. This night would be the seventh and the last. She would have to return tomorrow and if she found nothing tonight then she would return empty handed. She pulled the brown and tattered hood of her long cloak tighter around her dirty blond hair and continued moving.

As she walked she listened to the sandy wind sweep through the valley, scratching over the hardpan and crabgrass. Although her father had told her many stories of the desolate deserts of Sardorchester, she never actually thought she would see them for herself. The wind sounded like music from a flute at times, whistling through the crags and boulders on the horizon, and at other times it sounded like a witch’s cackle; hollow and desperate. To the east, a coyote or craghound howled but the woman paid no attention to the sound. She had seen far, far worse than coyotes on her journey. Her journey…it seemed so long ago when she was only a child. How had things become so complicated so fast? Life was much different for her now, but she decided to spend no time with thoughts like those. Thoughts like those will drive a person crazy in the wild. Instead, she focused on her mother.

“I will be back in time,” she whispered to herself. The wind caught her words and swirled them, tornado like, around her head and she could almost hear them echoing back to her. “I will see her again.” She continued walking.

Later, the moon at her back and silence blanketing the caked and cracking hardpan below her, the woman came at last to what she was searching for. She stared for several minutes at her destination and let out a heavy and long sigh. The ground was rough and trodden; clearly a company had been here. She could see vague footprints in the moonlight leading to a small cave entrance in the side of the mountain. Like before, Quixitix had led her to the correct destination; his science accurate as always, but not fast enough.

“The same as the others…too late again,” she said to no one.

Pulling the hood from her cloak tighter around her hair, the woman felt the long, tight braid beat upon her back as the wind picked it up. Her hair, long and messy, seemed to struggle against the braid which bound it. She longed for the days when she could afford the luxury of a proper hair cut or a long, relaxing bath…perhaps some music. She pushed these thoughts away as well. She had come here to find them…her mind doing its best work to push away the thought that she would find nothing yet again.

The structure stretching up toward the inky black sky greeted the woman with a smile full of rusted iron and baricite, copper, alumin and urah. Precious metals, long forgotten, the woman had only read about these in history books, stories of a world long past, a world of engines and steam, of metal and elaborate machinery ; the ancient days of Serafina. She found it hard to believe her world and that one were one in the same. Things were so different now; she wondered what it would have been like to grow up with little metal and iron toys, steam powered coaches and who knows what else. She allowed her mind a few moments to imagine a time before the Twinning; a time before the Order of the Fabricantresses, a time before war and turmoil and strife. Serafina had been much different then, according to myth and legend, before men and women began to draw from the Twinning and leave behind the ways of science and machines. Her own memories brought her away from her imaginings. The woman thought of her toy horses and soldiers; she longed for those things now, longed for any vestiges of that life, the life she once had, the life she enjoyed before fate thrust all of this upon her…she pushed these thoughts away.

She closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated on the sound of the wind, the sound of the valley closing in and expanding all around her, the sound of the tiny fissures and cracks of the structure before her bending and breaking in thousands of microscopic, harmonious symphonies. Opening her eyes, she pulled a small rod from her pack. It was long and grey, extendable, and, flicking her wrist, the rod grew into a small staff. She whispered a word, very softly, and the end of the staff grew bright, illuminated. The light caused the building to appear even more freakish than before in the pale and haunting moonlight. The woman approached the maw as the coarse desert winds swirled and buffeted around her. Moments later she was inside, safe from the storm and standing in a small opening at the base of the structure. She paused for a moment and caught her breath, listening to the sand skirt across the cold metal of the building around her. Her staff brightened the entry way enough for her to see a few feet ahead. The floor, littered with various pieces of debris and chunks of rock or minerals, greeted her with little compassion. Her eyes caught something skitter across the dark floor but the shadow was gone before she had time to turn her head. The only sound was the low whistle of the sandstorm in the night. Shaking off the powder from her tunic, she unlatched the hood piece and felt it fall down around her shoulders.

The woman’s dirty blond hair surged free as she shook her head in the small expanse of the entry way. Longer now and hard from days of travel, the woman’s hair still emitted a particular sheen and shimmer, like the glow of a distant star. She stretched her back, her muscles pockets of tight and aching pain, and heard a few popping noises as she released the stored calcium in her bones. Her eyes brilliantly contrasted the dark passageway before her and the light from her staff tried to find its way down the velvet tunnel of darkness.

“Hello?” she called, her voice echoing off the metallic walls and rising above the sound of the wind outside. “Is anyone here?” she called again.

No response. She waited a few more moments; waiting, perhaps for a response or perhaps for someone to come and tell her she didn’t have to go this time, she didn’t have to find yet another abandoned site, yet another remnant of something long gone, something she felt she would never catch. She sighed in the darkness.

“Bright light,” she spoke, her voice taking on the resonance and power of The Word. Her staff immediately grew brighter, the tip at the end now a fluorescent torch leading her forward. The hallway remained just as long as before and she could see no end, even with her newly illuminated torch. She moved forward.

Stepping slowly, the woman put one foot ahead of the next, taking extra care to avoid the scattered scraps on the floor. Her boots made loud clanging sounds on the metallic floor panels as she walked and she did her best to silence the noise. As she moved further into the darkness, she almost didn’t notice it but little escaped her perception these days. The shadows around her had shifted, moved; just slightly. A normal observer would have remained oblivious but this particular woman had faced far worse than whatever was about to come at her from the belly of the dark tunnel. She knew one thing for certain; she had only moments to react. When she spoke, she barely vocalized the sounds. She barely even needed to whisper these days.