Page 20 - DivineSparkRisingFinal

Divine Spark Rising
In the corner of a nearby café, a muted newsfeed
played on a small TV. For a second, the closed
captions blinked in the middle of a political speech,
and three words appeared: Chega de Fingir. In his
head, he translated automatically: Pretend No
More. The words twisted into a curl of static before
vanishing. A spiral of noise.
Serpa’s old metaphor surfaced uninvited: circles
trap, spirals move. He shoved it aside. Not now.
He reached the university gates and paused. The
Universidade de Coimbra was Portugal’s oldest, a
labyrinth of gothic towers and underground
libraries. He’d spent two years here ten years ago,
studying medieval rhetoric and metaphysics. He
hadn’t planned to return. Especially not for her.
She was waiting in the courtyard: Dr. Carolina
Rodrigues, neurolinguist, cognitive scientist, and
Henry’s former colleague. And something else he
hadn’t defined yet. She wore all black, even in the
heat, her hair tied tight. Her expression gave
nothing away. It never had.
The streets of Carolina's native Angola throbbed
with language, and from childhood she questioned
its power, why some words sparked laughter and
others slammed doors.
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