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II
SALTING THE MINE
In the morning, Jude carried her breakfast on a black Chinese wooden tray containing a piece of painted sky and white cranes in mid-flight, straining to escape through the top left corner of the tray, out to the balcony that jutted out like an ivory tooth, its white stone balusters swathed by climbing ivy, dripping with morning glory. A round glass table was situated in the centre, and Jude took a seat there, staring out at the bustling city, listening to the early morning cacophony of traffic on the black-tar streets running like orthogonal veins between buildings, the shiny carapaces of cars glinting in the sunlight like black and silver beetles crawling forward at a snail's pace. Someone lays on their horn for a solid minute and the choleric sound slices through the air, and soon someone else starts beeping impatiently, and like a chain reaction the other cars down the line start making angry noises back.
Nursing a cup of green tea, Jude picked a purple flower off the ground and rubbed its petals between her fingers until it grew sticky, the sweet scent seeping into the air, faintly permeating the hazy miasma of Gotham. Then, she let the flower go, its broken petals cast into the air by the wind. Her fingers came away stained, and she breathed the lingering aroma in deeply.
Everyday, Jude peered down from her ivory tower and felt like a god, watching from Olympus, all the stupid little earthlings always struggling to get somewhere but never getting anywhere. Like a video played over and over on loop, the chaos is always the same, ceaseless and tireless and repetitive. Businessmen hurrying down pedestrian cross walks with the morning paper in hand, briefcases and dry-cleaned suits marching in tandem. Colourful people on frantic bikes screaming to be seen so they don't get mowed at the intersection. Little old ladies hobbling from bakery to grocer, paper bags stuffed with fruit in one gnarled arm, stinging yellow pea coats sticking out from the grey pavement like chewed-up gum. And the cars on the road, always the same, constantly in motion but unchanging.
Pulling her black silk robe around her, Jude plucked the morning paper from beside her breakfast, as she always did, and skimmed the headlines.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING RING DISMANTLED: TWENTY ARRESTS MADE OVERNIGHT.
"Not bad, Night," Jude mused under her breath, and with a bite of her avocado toast, savoured the memory of Nightwing's abject frustration with being forced to choose, pulled in two directions each with equal severity. She took a sip of her tea and appraised the pictures printed under the headlines. Bruises and blood-blackened faces, an arm in a sling, a foot lugged in a club-like cast. Wrath of the valiant vigilante resulted in violence.
Somewhere inside the apartment there was the sound of a door opening and closing, and Scout emerged from her room, one hand towing her oxygen tank to the balcony, the other furiously typing away. As per routine, she looked up from her phone at an opposing building, threw a wave, just as a red dot appeared on her forehead, flickering twice.
