Page 213 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Nicholas Boothman
Carolina’s mouth trembled. “He feels it.”
“Enough,” Sofia said softly, and her voice was
not command now. It was winter. “You have what
you came for. You can leave with your story.”
Henry looked at the black glass, at the smear
drying. He looked at Sera, at Carolina, at the lamp
that wanted to be a star and never would. He
thought of Tangier’s free tea and Berlin’s library
and Tokyo’s clapping hands and Toronto’s
paramedic who asked without words. He thought
of Aleph’s two fingers lifted in farewell.
He shook his head. “We didn’t come for a story.”
Sera stepped onto the dais and placed her palm
on the mirror’s rim — not on the glass, on the
frame — the way you touch a shoulder to say I
know you’re trying to be good and failing. She
pulsed one last stanza of the Counter-Verse into
metal:
If mercy wears a muzzle — take it off.
If truth arrives as silence — make it move.
If love demands obedience — love costs less.
The lamp steadied and dimmed, then
brightened wrong. The Curator’s four-beat lost
count. The mirror’s surface rippled and failed to
erase the mug’s thin chalk line. Somewhere deeper,
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