IP: 2.30.174.126
Posted on August 6, 2015 at 02:26:20 AM by aura
“Memory potions,” the man hissed, his voice like ice in a hot pan. “Jog you for a bit of colour.” Aura lifted her head from her hands and gave him a somewhat lethargic once-over, careful not to make eye contact. He was difficult to distinguish, as most people were, from the shapeless and unremarkable world they all existed in. His skin was the same ashen colour as the dusty desert beneath their feet, and his eyes were a murky grey – they’d probably been dark brown in life. He lacked hair on the top of his head, and had only a few inconsistent snowy patches on the sides and a little grey stubble. The black overcoat he wore was patched and frayed, and he clutched it too his chest as though his life depended on it. In the gaps between his arms, Aura could see small lumps which indicated filled interior pockets. “I haven’t got any colour,” she told him wearily. He edged a little closer. “You can’t be long dead,” he observed. She could feel his eyes flicking over her, searching for a hint that she might be lying. “Travellers are always fresh corpses. I’ve got the best memory potions in the zone, you know. You won’t find – ” “You won’t find any colour here,” she interrupted in a firmer tone. “I’ve been dead long enough for that.” It might have continued on that vein for some time – he certainly didn’t look like he was about to give up – when a wispy-haired young woman with wide, staring eyes glided down the steps of the bureau, apparently without noticing either of them. The man jumped at her like flies on a carcass, and accosted her all the way back towards the other end of the village. Aura put her head back into her hands and stared at the colourless ground, trying not to think about how much she could use a memory potion right now. A real one, not the bottled river water that the desperate old man was likely peddling. It was the same at every bureau. Each village, every zone change, she lost a little bit more of herself and gained only conversations like the one she’d just had. She’d stopped feeling disappointment a long time ago. It was a curious thing, disappointment; the more one expected it, the less they actually felt it. With a little sigh, she stood up, ascended the gloomy staircase and pushed open the front door. Every time she did this, Aura always had a vague memory of an old-fashioned bell ringing, although she didn’t really know why. This bureau was the same as any other: bland, quiet, and smelling faintly of books. Only one of the four desks were occupied by a Traveller; Aura made for the one in the far corner, slightly apart from the others, and boldly took a seat. The woman on the other side of the desk, middle-aged with raven hair and square glasses, didn’t even look up when she sat down. She carried on typing away on what looked like an old-fashioned typewriter. “Got colour?” The woman grunted. Aura lifted her arms up to the desk and gently rested her elbows on it. She intertwined her fingers to form a kind of hammock and placed her chin on top, her pale grey lips curling into a very small smile. In the absence of a verbal answer, the woman turned to her with a frown and an admonition on the tip of her tongue. She’d almost got the first syllable out when she paused, her mouth still open, and squinted into Aura’s face. Gradually, her dark grey eyes widened and she blinked rapidly. “Your eyes!” She gasped, her voice a little too loud for the quiet room. “They’re – ” She broke off when Aura put a finger to her lips, still smiling a little slyly. “A little bit blue, still,” she finished, setting a quiet tone for the woman to follow. “So I’m told.” “They are,” the woman breathed, leaning forward. She did, at least, moderate her voice. “So vibrant. Going grey around the edges, though.” “I haven’t got long,” Aura agreed. “Had your fix?” The woman blinked again and sat back. “Er – yes, I think so. How can I help you today?” Aura hesitated. Most Travellers struggled to find colour to pay with, especially since small items of colour were such easy pickings for thieves. She had colour – although perhaps for not much longer – but she didn’t have the other thing the bureaus demanded: memories. She leant back on her chair and pulled over her arm, which was bare. Most people in the Realm of the Dead had only the clothes they’d died in, and Aura was no different. The circumstances of her death were hazy, but she assumed she must have been somewhere warm, because she was wearing a cotton tank top and a pair of denim shorts. Her shoes were thick-soled sandals with heavy duty straps, designed for physical activities. The colours in all of her clothes had long since faded, of course – as all colour did if it was exposed to the dry, musty air. Why, nobody seemed to know. The wiser of the new arrivals quickly learned this, and bottled, boxed, or pocketed small items of colour to keep them from fading. A glimpse of colour was payment enough for travel between zones, new clothes, building materials – or even information from the record bureaus. “I’m Aura,” she stated, starting with something easy. The woman turned back to her typewriter and started swiftly hitting the keys, recording her name and physical description. After a minute, she turned back. “Planet of origin?” “Don’t know.” “Occupation?” “Don’t know.” “Any special talents or remarkable life events?” “Nope.” The woman gave her a sardonic look. Aura shrugged. In the Realm of the Dead, memories of life faded as quickly as colours did. “Who are you looking for?” The woman asked, sounding a little sharper than she had done when she was admiring Aura’s eyes. Aura laid her arm out across the desk, palm up, for the other woman to see. Inscribed in permanent black and grey inks were three, hand-drawn pictures. The simplest and easiest to recognise of these was the outline of two hearts, a smaller one seated atop a larger one. Next to that was a square spiral with straight lines coming out of it in all directions, and on the other side was a curious bird. Its neck was long and curved into an S-shape, and it had an elongated beak. Its body was comparatively small and duck-like, and its legs sat an angle like a ‘>’ shape. At every opportunity, as the ink had started to fade, Aura had borrowed more pens and paints and traced them over, again and again. The woman leaned across to look at them curiously. “These things are important to me,” Aura explained. “I drew them so I wouldn’t forget.” “So what do they mean?” “I forgot.” The woman rolled her eyes, the lenses of her glasses exaggerating the movement magnificently. She seemed intrigued, though, and squinted down at the sketches. A frown creased her forehead as she reached out a finger to trace the spiral. “This… ” She muttered. “I’ve seen something like this before…” “It’s the sun.” Aura pushed her arm further across the desk so that the woman could get a better look. “The sun made day and night, remember? But it was circular, and there was no spiral shape. I don’t know why I drew it as a square.” The woman traced the shape again. Aura didn’t notice the coldness of her touch; it was unremarkable in a lifeless world. “This was important to me too,” she mumbled. “Who are you?” The woman blinked, her reverie broken, and scrambled around on her desk. She expertly extracted a piece of paper from a pile without toppling it, and adjusted her glasses to read. “Maria, accountant from Earth. I had a brother. I was Spanish.” “Spanish?” Aura’s brow creased as she tried to think. That word was familiar. “It was important enough to me to write down,” Maria sighed and replaced the paper back into the pile. “Does it mean anything to you?” A gasp of dust and air escaped into the bureau as the door opened and a bedraggled, weary Traveller stumbled in. He couldn’t be newly dead: he looked too hopeless, and was entirely grey from head to toe. He staggered over to the desk nearest to Maria’s and fell into the chair, staring unseeingly at the tall, imposing grandfather clock at the back of the room. It was silent, its hands unmoving. Time didn’t pass in the Realm of the Dead. “Not a thing,” Aura replied honestly. They talked in circles for a while, but didn’t get very far. Eventually Aura remembered a name – Thoth – but nothing else. Maria logged the information and then started the long, laborious process of going through the records to try and find a match. The system was entirely paper-based. Since time didn’t pass here, there was no day or night and no need to eat or sleep, it was impossible to tell how long they spent trawling through files. As always, nothing turned up. Aura was already out of the building, her foot on the bottom step, when she heard someone hailing her name. She turned back to see Maria half in, half out of the door, her glasses slipping down her nose, waving a piece of paper. “Hold on,” she said breathlessly, as Aura hopped back up the steps with a rare flame of hope lighting in her chest. “This one slipped down the back.” It took every ounce of Aura’s willpower not to snatch the paper. Her shaking, white-grey fingers closed eagerly around it and she pulled it up close to her face as though afraid it might disappear. The document described a small, lithe man with sharp features and dark, focused eyes. A note had been added underneath which read probably a fresh corpse, although there was no explanation as to why the bureau worker had thought that. In the second half of the document, where the bureau worker had recorded what or who the man had been looking for, there was just one name: Aura. Underneath the name was a hand-drawn picture which reminded her, inexplicably, of the drawings on her arm. She felt like she ought to know what the shape was called, but couldn’t name it: it had a small circular centre and eight points, two of which were horizontal, two vertical and four at the diagonals. The diagonals were shorter than the other points and the lower vertical point was significantly longer than the other seven. “I remember this man.” Maria looked genuinely excited. Aura didn’t doubt that however long Maria had been working at the bureau, she had probably never found a match before. Travellers almost never found who they were looking for. “He had shapes on his arm, like you. He drew that.” She indicated the drawing. “Does any of it speak to you?” Aura frowned at the image. It did speak to her. It was important; she knew it. How, she had no idea. “I don’t remember a – ” she checked the name at the top “ – a Kahl. But I’ve seen this before.” She traced the unusual shape. “Can I take a copy of this?” Some time later, she boarded the river barge to the next zone with a new ink doodle on her arm. The boat man did a double take when he looked into her face. “Bloomin’ ’eck,” he muttered. His jowels wobbled as he talked. “Blue eyes.” Aura put a finger to her lips to quiet him and stepped to the side so that she wasn’t blocking the entrance way. “Only around the pupils. The edge of the iris is grey now. “Nope,” the man shook his head and peered down at her. “All blue. Bright blue.” After staring for a moment, he moved away to untie the ropes. Aura turned to face the river to avoid other people noticing, and gripped the railings with her ghostly, white-grey fingers. They were still grey. Her clothes were still grey. The world around her was nothing but greyscale. And the man on the boat was the first person in two zones and fourteen bureaus to not see the partial grey in her eyes. After a moment, she released the railing with one hand and turned it over to display the four shapes tattooed onto her arm. The newest one, its black ink deeper than the others, seemed to smile up at her. It looked like it should be blue. The colour blue, Aura decided, was important to her too. |
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