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Begin: The Psychic Wakes
Previously: Next


The psychic was sleeping now. Greta watched her with the two guards.

“We're taking steps to protect her family.” She didn't look at them as she spoke; her eyes stayed on the monitors. The girl was so young, by Greta's standards; even by humans standards she was still a ways from adulthood. “If - when - things get truly bad, we'll bring them here, if we can.”

“Couldn't she go home, even for a little while?” Aury had grown very fond of the child. They both had.

Greta shook her head. “Here is the safest place for her. For all three of you.”

Aury's lip was turning red from the application of teeth. “Then what she's said... It's likely true?”

“She is the most accurate, the most specific, and the most encompassing of the psychics we've been following - but everything she's said has been verified by at least two other sources, at least in broad generalizations.”

Peri swallowed. Aury swallowed. The two of them shared a glance. “You were saying about families...?”

“This bunker can safely and comfortably hold fifty people. The two of your and the girl have priority at up to ten people each.”

“I think I need a day off...”

“Me, too.”
faeapoclive: (Default)
Begin: The Psychic Wakes
Previously: Praise Me


"What comes next?" Greta Broadleaf sat on the floor of the room they pretended wasn’t a cell. Her hand was on the psychic's knee, and she was very slowly offering the girl fresh apricots.

The girl nibbled slowly on the apricot. "More gods." She flaps her free hand. "First the pretty lady, and then some angry men. They all say something like the first one. It's tall people after tall people saying praise me, worship me." She closes her eyes, and the tone of her voice shifts, lower, ritual-like. "They come, the gods, to stand on hill. They come, demand, you love me still. They come, the gods, to stand on high, to claim their land from soil to sky."

Greta's lips tightened. "Thank you."

They come. The rest she would deal with; the rest the Council would deal with. But now they had confirmation: the gods were coming home.

Next: Safe
faeapoclive: (Default)
Begin: The Psychic Wakes
Previously: Information and Survival


"When do they first come through?" Greta Broadleaf's voice was quiet, but it did nothing to soften the urgency of her question.

The psychic whimpered. Greta tried again, lowering her voice even more. "What is the first known occurrence?"

The whimpering intensified. Greta touched the girl's shoulder, as lightly as she could, ignoring the glare the jailer gave her. "I'm sorry. Let me try one more time?"

The girl nodded, a tiny thing.

"Thank you. What is the first time one of them - one of the returned gods - made themselves known?"

The girl swallowed. "The sky is very blue, and the nights are almost as short as the days are long. The TV man is very upset. The TV man is scared and so he's angry. And the woman says..."

She swallowed again. "She says praise me. And they do."

Next: Next
faeapoclive: (Default)
Begin: The Psychic Wakes
Previously: Coming

The girl sobbed.

She couldn’t do anything but sob. She had no energy left for anything else, not even speech. She could not shut off the visions.

Her jailers, Peri and Aury had been doing their best for her, cuddling her, bringing her food and, when she could not eat, bringing her drinks. Nothing stopped the visions. Nothing stopped the horror echoing through her brain.

“Kill me,” she whimpered. “Please. Or lobotomize me. Maybe that will stop it.”

“You know we can’t.” Peri rubbed her back in slow, gentle circles. “You know we have to know.”

“I don’t want to know!”

“Unfortunately, knowing what you see is the best way to survive it.” The voice came from the doorway, causing both psychic and jailer to look up.

The door was filled with a woman, tall and broad-shouldered, her wings wide and demonic red. “And from the sounds of it, survive is going to be the best we can do.”

Peri and the psychic stared at the woman. It was Peri who first remembered words and manners. "Ah. Ah, dearheart, this is Greta Broadleaf. She works for the Council."

"The Council? Are they the ones who..." The psychic gestured around the room. "Are they? Can I go home now?"

"Not yet, I'm afraid." Greta hunkered down into a squat in front of the girl, her wings folding in until they pressed against her back. "I'm afraid we need you very, very badly. Because we need to save as much of the world as possible."

"Oh." She shrank against Peri, who might be a jailer but was at least a known quantity. "Oh. You need the visions."

"Yes. And we're going to need to make sense of the visions, which means we will bring you a teacher." The large woman spoke very softly, her words small and carefully placed.

"A teacher?" The girl perked. "I'd like that."

"I thought you might. Now... before that, dear, I need a little bit of information."

Next: Praise Me
faeapoclive: (Default)
Begin: The Psychic Wakes
Previously: Awakening

Aury cradled the girl carefully. Physical contact was discouraged, but not forbidden - it tended to mute the effects of the psychic’s visions, which were, after all, the source of her value to the Council.

Right now, the girl’s well-being and safety were more important than her visions - at least to Aury and Peri, and they were the ones who got to make the day-to-day decisions. They cuddled her, and petted her back, and whispered to her.

“We’ll keep you safe,” Aury assured her.

“We’ll be here for you,” Peri echoed.

“Nothing’s going to get to you. Not here.”

“They’re coming,” she whispered.

Next: Information and Survival
faeapoclive: (Default)
Begin: The Psychic Wakes
Previously: Drawing Circles


In a booth nearby, a small alarm woke both Peri and the night-shift, Aury, from their stolen naps. “That’s the seventh time in a row she’s woken at 2:37 a.m.” Peri stared at the screen. “And she’s not moving, but the heart rate monitor is off the scale.”

“If she were human, she’d be killing herself with that.” Aury leaned forward to run a finger over the numbers. “That should be impossible.”

“Aury... for all intents and purposes, the girl is human.”


Next: Coming
faeapoclive: (Default)
Begin: The Psychic Wakes


The psychic was drawing today.

Peri watched the girl on three monitors - every inch of the girl's suite was covered by at least two cameras - and pulled up Bing searches on a fourth screen.

She was drawing circles, more like lozenges, rimmed in blue fire and filled with swirls and spirals. She had been drawing them since she woke up this morning, the crayons and markers and colored pencils flung over the room until she found the colors she wanted.

Her eyes were the white of an old blind person right now, despite her youth, and when she looked up at the camera, Peri felt as if she was looking straight into Peri's dissolute soul.


Next: Awakening
faeapoclive: (Default)
Deep underground, in a Cold-War era bunker built by the US government and owned by the Shenera Endraae High Council, the psychic woke in the middle of the night.

She was younger than even the bunker around her, barely old enough to drink legally, and she was considered, at the moment, the most valuable person to the High Council - a Council made up of elders, many of them over a millennium old.

She did not know that; she didn't know where she was, or why she was there, or how she had come there. She knew that she was to say everything she Saw into a recorder, and she did this with quiet precision, even as her heart pounded as if trying to escape her chest.

"The sky opened," she told her recorder, not knowing that her entire suite was a recorder. "The moon was full, and the moonlight itself opened up into a doorway. I saw a foot - no, not a foot. It was a hoof."

She swallowed. This had been clearer than any of the other visions. "The hoof was big enough that it crushed the car. My car. I did not like that." She found her knees pulling up to her chest. "I would like to go home now."

Next: Drawing Circles

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