Page 212 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Divine Spark Rising
on wall. Serpa. Alive. Thinner. Eyes bright with the
kind of attention that makes strangers cry.
He wrote the line again with patience born of
bone:
CHOICE IS NOT SAFE.
Sera stepped to the dais’s edge and did not
speak. She placed the journals box down on the
stone with both hands. She lifted Notebook 19 and
20, held them where the mirror’s non-light could
taste paper, and bowed.
Carolina set the J-0 reader upright, pressed play
for a half-second, then stopped. A pulse flattened
the space between the rooms.
Henry traced the little hand-alphabet on the
dais: press-pause-press-long-press, rest. He did it
without style. Only sincerity. “For you,” he said,
and the Mirror couldn’t store the tone.
Serpa’s hand paused over the chalk. His head
tilted — the way people move when a memory
they don’t own tries to stand up in their chest. He
looked toward nothing in his room that
corresponded to anything in theirs. He smiled, a
fraction.
He wrote the line again, and below it, smaller, as
if betraying himself kindly:
HOLD.
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