Mortem Obire

Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The joys of mist, sunshine and the inexplicable mysteries that follow

Harriet swung her legs back and forth, the few truths she knew ringing about in her head as she sat at the table, eating her usual fare of porridge. She had inherited abilities from her father, rare and powerful as they were, and her mother was lying about how very ordinary her father was. The strange being in her dreams was probably related somehow to her father, and was all too happy with her odd, unlucky existence there. In fact, that being was probably one of the reasons she had been dragged to that world.

All in all, Harriet still wasn't completely certain of her thoughts and feelings on the matter. Like everything, acceptance took time, and she was fairly sure she had that in spades, what with how she was six-years-old with the rest of her life lain out before her.

"Harriet!" her mother called, a smile on her face as she came back from the front door. "There's a surprise waiting for you at the front door," she said cryptically. "Get dressed once you're finished," she said, turning to head back towards the entranceway. "We're going out for a walk now that things are opening up again!"

She tilted her head at that, curious as to what exactly the surprise was. Humming to herself, she finished her breakfast, put her bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, and scrambled into her room to get ready. Everything was slowly going back to normal after the pandemic which she didn't want to think about all that much. That was her fault after all, thanks to her anger and the lack of control she seemed to have over the not-quite-magic which bubbled in her chest.

People in hospitals had been getting better, the mortality and hospitalisation rates on a steady downward curve, a vaccine had been created in record time and distributed just as swiftly, and Harriet had the sneakiest of suspicions that it had something to do with her wayward father who was never really named. Fred seemed like an all too ordinary and mundane name for the powers her father apparently possessed. A pseudonym.

Her vision swam with gold, the sight of her two friends standing outside her door with their mother greeting her. Harriet blinked, the gold tinge disappearing, and she smiled somewhat sombrely at that. There was one thing about seeing which was perhaps both an upside and a downside – it was a bit hard to surprise her, especially as she started seeing more and more of the futures of those around her. Though admittedly there were all too many downsides to what she saw, and every next vision of hers all too often brought her back to the death and despair which seemed to consume the world.

"You cannot save them all, little hero." The words of her dreamtime stalker rang in her ears at that, and Harriet almost thought she heard the faint chiming sound of laughter ghosting in her ears. Her stomach twisted at that, thinking then on all those gory, brutal deaths which all too often awaited those strange children who seemed to wield power beyond that of a normal human. They were strange and varied, yet more often than not there seemed to be a set power for each child – a concept which was just a bit too odd to a girl who had grown up in a world where magic made many a things possible. Yet therein lay the problem.

It wasn't like her magic could explain things, what with the apparent lack of it in the world around her. Instead, the power which bubbled in her chest was something different. Something which gave her plague and prophecy powers, though neither were on the scale of anything she had seen before.

"The weight of what you see would drive an ordinary mortal's mind mad." That smile of his cropped up in her memories, the glint in those terrifying eyes forever haunting her the longer she thought of him and his strangeness, and the many, many dreams he had intruded upon. Though she had more nightmares than dreams those days. It couldn't be helped, what with how much death she saw.