Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Dreams of Stars Part 13


            Night had fallen some time ago as Deborah lounged back on a bale of hay.  They had been going all day, and well into the night, longer than before.  It wasn't fun, as they kept up a near running pace for most of it, but it was completely necessary.  Undoubtedly the authorities would be out looking for them after what L’lorne had done inside the CDPC.

            Now, though, they could relax, just as soon as L’lorne got back from talking to the farmers about getting some blankets.  The old barn that she now laid in the upper loft of was plenty warm enough, and the nights had been very nice recently, but the main concern was the itchy hay, and their combined desire not to lie upon it.

            Warm nights.  It had been oddly warm, it finally occurred to Deborah, especially for mid March.  Hadn't the weather man mentioned something about the weather being out of season or something?  She could remember snippets of it, but it really wasn't important.  Something else about the report was important, but she couldn't lock her thoughts on what it was exactly.

            "Hey," L’lorne stopped and shook her head as Deborah giggled at the greeting.  "Ha, ha, very funny.  Here," she tossed a blanket at Deborah and it covered her head in a lump.  "We're good here until tomorrow.  We've even been invited for breakfast."

            "Sounds good," Deborah laid out her blanket against and along the hay bale and nestled into it.  Ah, not to be itchy, it felt good.  "Think we'll be able to take them up on it?"

            "Maybe, depends."

            "On whether they're still looking for us?"

            "Oh, I doubt they'll stop looking for us," L’lorne said, then started to gaze at a beam in the wall.

            Deborah picked up on it.  "What are you looking for?"

            "Police frequencies.  They may not stop looking for us, but they might move their search elsewhere."  Her face went from blank to curiously confused.  “Interesting, nothing.”

            “Eh?”

            “No police or military frequencies.  It’s as if they’re going for radio silence. . .” L’lorne trailed off.

            “What is it?”

            L’lorne looked at her and smiled.  “Oh nothing you need to worry about.”

            Deborah looked at her companion then shrugged and leaned back.  If it was important, she had decided sometime ago, L’lorne would tell her.  If it wasn't, she'd just have to ask later.  Speaking of which.  "You really beat the hell out of those guys."

            "Yeah," L’lorne responded as she shuffled her blanket around amongst the hay.  "That I did."

            "Especially since they all had guns and you didn't have anything."

            L’lorne chuckled slightly, again.  Deborah was both irritated and relieved.  Irritated every time L’lorne revealed some new trick or idea, and relieved that there was a new trick she hadn't heard about yet.  "Not exactly nothing, I used this."  With that, she tapped on a small pouch on her right hip.

            Deborah, in all the time walking with L’lorne, had never even noticed it, and this was the second time it had happened.  The first was the watch that even now she could see bobbing on the wrist that tapped on the new addition, a strange pouch with a crescent shaped bottom that stretched out slightly farther than the rest of the pouch.  "What is it, a gun?"

            "An axe." 

            Deborah looked at the pouch and thought that yes, she could see it being an axe, an axe head at least.  She wondered where the handle was, probably in another pouch that she won't notice until the last minute.  "Um, wouldn't that have left more serious injuries than simply knocking them out?"

            "I use it mostly for the weight," L’lorne closed her eyes and leaned against the wall of hay.  "That and I'm very good at using it, if I must say so myself."  Deborah chuckled with L’lorne this time at the little bit of self praise L’lorne just issued.  "But that's not what you wanted to know.  Is it?"

            The girl blinked, scratched her cheekbones lightly and almost blushed.  “Well, yeah, it’s just,” she paused again, searching for the wording she wanted.  “How did I do it?”  L’lorne looked at her and Deborah quickly added, “How did I find my mother?”

            “Ah, that’s what’s on your mind.  Alright, I’ll try to explain it.”  She moved forward so she could look Deborah right in the eyes.  “Your brain is wired differently than most other people.  You have this natural ability to see patterns in complicated things, sometimes things thought to be unpredictable.”

            “How do I do that?”

            “That requires knowing a lot about how the brain works, physics and a few other things that, to be honest, you don’t quite know enough to understand yet.”  She held up her hand trying to hold off the negative reaction she expected from Deborah.  “In time you can learn them, but until then, you’ll just have to trust that you can do it, and leave it at that.”  L’lorne leaned back against the wall again.

            Deborah could only accept this response, agreeing with L’lorne’s assessment of her education, but also knowing that she really didn’t have the time at the moment to learn it.  “Okay, but what do you mean by patterns and unpredictable things?”

            “Well, let’s try it this way.”  L’lorne twirled her fingers in the air a bit as she seemed to think of the best way to explain.  “A smart person, a very smart person, could look at a sequence of numbers and say what the next number is.  If I said ‘1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, they could probably work out the next number is 9, and later what every number in the sequence is, using a mathematical formula.”  She looked over at Deborah.  “If I said ‘1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 to you and asked for the 30th number in the sequence, you would reply. . .”

            “3329,” Deborah said without thought.  She blinked, a bit shocked at the sudden response, while L’lorne smiled, confirming it as the correct answer.  “And this helped me find mama?”

            “Indeed, but that’s only the most recent example of what you can do.  Earlier you could predict things such as the routes of police cars on the streets, knowing where the next blow from an attacker was coming from, tracking me through the city and a simple game of chess all fall within the same category.”

            “Like seeing bullets?”

            L’lorne seemed surprised at the question and looked at Deborah for a brief moment.  “You could see them?  Interesting.”

            “Interesting?”

            “Well,” L’lorne said looking up at the ceiling in thought.  “The path of a bullet isn’t exactly complicated, but under normal conditions, no, you can’t see bullets.”

            “But I did,” Deborah protested.

            “I don’t doubt that, but the conditions at the time weren’t exactly normal.”  Deborah scrunched her face in frustration.  “First, you had been using your talent quite extensively on the data stream.  At the moment, you can’t simply turn on and off your talent; it just flows from one event to another.  That would help, but in the end, you mostly saw them because you were still wearing the glasses.”

The glasses were now in her pocket, Deborah checked the pocket with a pat, but she hadn't actually taken them off until they had reached the farm.  "I don't understand."

            "Once you knew what you were doing, the glasses made an effort to help you do it.  They assisted in finding the information on your mother initially, highlighting whatever word or phrase your eyes focused on.  When we were being shot at, your eyes started looking for the routes of the bullets.  The glasses helped by filling in what you wanted to see.  The bullets."

            "The bullets."  Deborah said it nearly at the same time as L’lorne.  "I didn't realize they were so powerful."

            "Not really," L’lorne off handedly.  "Truth is they're a simple tool, nothing special, but important when you're first learning."

            "Learning what?"

            L’lorne opened her mouth to speak, but stopped and looked out the open loft door.  "We have visitors."

            Deborah turned to the door and peered out.  A truck, a big one, with military markings, rumbled down the road kicking up a mess of dust that even in the darkening evening stood out against ground.  "They found us," she said with alarm.

            "Relax.  I'll go see what's up."  L’lorne began climbing down the ladder to the barn floor.

            "Wait, I'll go with you," Deborah started.

            "You can watch, the glasses work like binoculars too."  And she was gone.

            Deborah tried to find the breath to counter the suggestion she just stay put, but gave up on it and dug the glasses out of her pocket.


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Questions

1. What kind of person is Lcorn Llorne? What does she look like (in your mind)?
2. What kind of person is the Deborah Ignigus? What does she look like (in your mind)?
3. Does the setting seem fitting? Would you like to know more?
4. Does the explanation of Deborah's ability make sense here?

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