Rising Light

Chapter 5: The Not So Big Easy

Kate hummed as she and Chas flitted about the kitchen, preparing dinner. She'd been trying to keep herself busy, especially while inside the house. She could have sworn that she could still occasionally hear Gary; as if the house were keeping hold of the memory, unable to release it just yet.

She shook the memory from her mind, thought instead about the way neither she nor Chas needed to talk as they prepared the meal. They knew what the other was up to and how it was going to work out in the end. It was, in its own right, like some kind of mini-dance that they had rehearsed well over the years, that didn't seem to have slipped away from either of them in their time apart.

In the living room she could hear Zed complaining to John, knew that he wasn't being very sympathetic of the time that she had spent poring over the map for him. There were times when she was beginning to question if he even appreciated it. After all, it was the reason that he had invited the woman to help them in the first place.

"Pain's good," she heard John say as she picked up two plates, let Chas carry in the dinners for the others. "It's how you build muscles. Just find something that just guts you and do it over and over again. That's how Chas learned how to cook, innit, Chas?"

"I've got the burn marks to prove it... well, metaphorically," noted Chas.

"And they're not all from my cooking lessons," Kate added hastily, spotting the joke a mile off from John.

"What is that thing anyway?" asked Zed, looking towards the device that John had been working on for the better part of the evening. Kate vaguely recognized it from old books, from times spent doing research into it all with Ben. She hastily shook the memory away, focused herself on the present, on the dinner that she had prepared.

"A zoetrope. Belonged to Queen Victoria. Her court magician used to use it on his séance guests to induce a hypnotic state," explained John as Chas lent forwards. Kate moved to sit on the other chair as John twisted the main body of the device, as if testing that it actually turned.

"Does it work?" queried Zed.

"Uh, the wheel was stuck, but... Ah. Result. Gather round, it's story time," noted John, spinning the thing as soon as Zed had joined them.

"I was expecting a waving mouse rather than –" Kate started to joke, watching as the bear appeared to walk around the thing, but John's attention had slipped towards the other woman.

"Zed?" he whispered, as if afraid of pulling her out of the trance too quickly. "Zed? Are you in there?"

Zed gasped, practically dropped to the floor as if to avoid something. Kate was up in an instant, but John raised a pacifying hand.

"This is weird," said Zed simply.

Kate moved to crouch beside her, ready to jump at the slightest sign of anything going wrong. Not that she knew what she was looking for; she just assumed that she'd know it when she saw it.

"What was it? What did you see?" John asked when it seemed that Zed was back with them, her eyes a little clearer.

"I was... out in a field, and... there was a woman teaching a boy how to shoot a gun."

"Hang on," announced Chas, moving towards the map. "Incoming."

"Back in business. I was worried Old Faithful had dried up on us," noted John as Zed joined Chas at the other table. Kate shot him a questioning look.

"Are you talking about the map?" asked Zed.

"Maybe. But no matter."

"John!" reprimanded Kate, but he kept talking as if she hadn't interrupted his monologue at all.