Mirror

Chapter 2: Blue Rose

Wandering, I found on my ruinous walk

By the dial stone, aged and green,

One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,

To mark where a garden had been.

-Campbell

Marquera gently touched the azure petal with a single slender finger, feeling chills run down her spine as she did so. An electric current was flowing through the stem, leaves and blossom, crackling slightly in the still air, an insufficient warning of the power beneath the surface.

She didn't dare touch it again.

Marquera had always had a gift for taking risks, as her father used to say.

"You're always doing exactly the opposite of what you should," he had laughed, "and that's exactly why I love you so much."

Her father was a quiet man; he did not take risks, and did not boast of his accomplishments, which were many. He was a heart doctor, he said, and refused to go by the proper name of cardiothoracic surgeon. He was a person, he said simply, not a Latin word.

He had designed a holographic heart for a patient who could not leave her bed, talked a young boy back to life by telling him that he was not injured, and, alone, cleared a blocked artery for a man at the brink of death. Yes, her father was a man to be admired.

He passed away from cardiac arrest on July 16, 2246 when the family cat startled him as she walked around the door.

Marquera hated that his death was so meaningless. But then, John Spencer had a very different view of death than she.

She remembered going to a lecture hosted by a famous philosipher, who had, after a thought-provoking speech, asked the audience the following question:

"How would you like to die?"

John and Marquera had laughed together; the answer was obvious. They said their answers simultaneously:

"At peace with myself."

"Fighting for my life."

In astonishment, they turned and gazed at each other for a full 5 seconds before getting up and leaving. They had never discussed the scene again.

Now, Marquera wished they had.

My chapters are really short, I know. I'm sorry.