A Touch of Truth by Nita Round

Author:Nita Round [Round, Nita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pink Tea Books
Published: 2020-03-01T23:00:00+00:00

26

The moment the stone door closed, Lucinda almost panicked. She couldn’t see a thing. Nor could she hear much over her labored and fear-filled breathing.

Her gifts had left her. She was blind in every way, and she was as alone as any person could be. Lucinda was terrified.

Any moment now, something awful would happen. She knew it would. At the very least, the walls would close in. She would be crushed. Or the air would run out and she would suffocate. Her heart pounded away like a caged beast throwing itself at her ribs. Her knees shook—but it wasn’t just her knees. Her whole body seemed to tremble.

She reached out with tentative fingers, but only the ominous gloom met her groping touch. In front of her, behind her, and pressing down on her shoulders, the dark shrouded her with the weight of lead.

“Oh, Mother,” she cried out, and her words echoed back at her. A chamber, then. At least she wouldn’t be flattened or squashed under tons of rock. She took some reassurance in that, and her heart stopped trying to claw its way through her ribs.

“I can’t see a damned thing,” she said. She wavered and warbled, and she sounded like some timid little bird. But it was her voice, and not the roar of some beast or arcane creature. She drew a measure of solace from that, too.

Emboldened, she stared into the blackness and dared something to stare back.

Nothing did. Not that she would see much.

Lucinda scrunched her eyes together and took one shuddering breath after another. Her heart slowed. She concentrated on each of her senses, her mundane ones.

The room, or cave, was cool, but not cold. The soft touch of a breeze brushed her cheeks. She smiled at such a small thing as wind. At least if the air moved, then she would not suffocate. She drew another lung-filling gulp of air. She could just smell dry earth, not damp, and the tiniest hint of woodsmoke. Familiar smells, the aromas of the people on the plains.

Lucinda opened her eyes and glared at the dark as though she could push back the shadows with her will alone.

She shuffled her feet and moved forward. Was it forward? It was whatever way she pointed. She moved and listened. It sounded like a big room. She knelt down and touched the floor. Smooth stone. Too smooth to be natural.

Not a cave then? A room perhaps, but in the middle of natural stone.

She stood tall and reached above her head. Only air met her fingers. No worry about smacking her head against anything. Not immediately anyway.

To explore, she needed to move. She swept her right foot forward and to the side. Then followed with a small step. She repeated with her left foot and waved her hands above her head to make sure nothing changed.

Like a tentative and blind ballerina, she took more steps into the room. Nothing obstructed her; the floor remained flat.

“Progress, but it’s too damned dark to see what I’m doing,” she muttered.

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