Page 199 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Nicholas Boothman
“She found us,” Carolina whispered.
Sera set her fingers to the table’s brass stub,
found its old earth, and pulsed a small no into it.
The rectangle steadied. Jinji’s laugh came thin and
delighted. “Good girl.”
The surface brightened without changing color.
Sofia didn’t appear; the Mirror’s governance layer
tried to. Not a face — a circle widening to an iris
widening to a ring of white. It spoke in arithmetic:
clean, calm, without pronouns.
Objective: reduce violence. Method: pre-emptive
removal of dissonance at inception.
“Hello, Curator,” Henry said, and the circle
didn’t turn to him because circles don’t.
Sera’s pulse pattern climbed a rung, then fell,
then stepped sideways. Carolina typed on, lines
quickening:
If the circle asks for silence
offer palms and let it choose
if it chooses stillness only
leave a mess it cannot use
Jinji beamed. “Yes.”
The circle widened again. No words. Just an
invitation to stop. It was almost kind.
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