28.2

 

And the pull becomes a direction, a pressure for release she cannot ignore; a summons to the city – one of many where such protests are occurring – toward the crowd and the moment that is seconds away from toppling the world into disaster.

She feels the urgency now, the necessity of moving quickly, determining the most favourable outcome. Once again, she gives herself to the world and the family kitchen fades. She feels no sense of movement; no sense of flying from one place to another (are they even in the same country?) but as the mantle tightens and the pull increases on her cunt she can feel the city in her head and between her eyes, growing in the void until the city exists how it has always existed, exactly in the urgence of now.

The mantle of Knowledge hums in her chest, a steady, resonant pulse that matches the rhythm of the crowd before she can even open her eyes to see it. Roisin inhales and the city hits her all at once.

The sound comes first: A roar of voices and a chant rising and breaking like waves; a thousand heartbeats pounding in overlapping rhythms. The emotional geometry of the crowd slams into her senses — not as noise, but as patterns of anger, fear, hope and desperation; shifting like the Life game they were taught to program in science class. Anger eats fear and grows; hope eats anger, desperation kills hope and fear feeds on desperation, and on and on.

The mantle sharpens her perception until she can feel the tension like a physical pressure in the air. A single spark could ignite this; a single misstep could fracture it a single moment could tilt the world.

The sight comes next. She stands at the edge of a wide city square. On one side stand the police shields up, shoulders tense, eyes darting. On the other side are the protesters – their signs raised, voices raw, bodies pressed close. In the centre is the stage, the podium, the banners, the speakers, the politician in his perfect linen suit, his supporters streaming into the square through a cordon of police officers

Between them, a thin strip of open ground and a flimsy metal fence on removable stands. This is the faultline, the place where the world is holding its breath. Roisin feels the mantle pulse. Here.

She steps forward and the imbalance sharpens, highlighted by the mantle like a ballerina during a solo. She sees it instantly; it is not the crowd, the police, the supporters or the protestors. It is not the signs or the shouting or the fluid mechanics of the crowd.

It is a child, one of the bystanders caught out on what was supposed to be a shopping outing, letting go of his mother’s hand and stepping onto the tarmac space delineated as neutral territory, closely followed by a terrified mother calling to the child, begging it to return to the safety on anonymity within the crowds. Several heads turn. It is not the child they see, but the woman, crossing no-man’s-land and clutching something in her bands. A plastic shopping bag. A weapon? A bomb.

The kicker is she isn’t white.

A security detail stands in front of the speaker to protect him while another pulls him toward the side of the stage. The supporters roar and turn. A police officer steps forward, attempting to either isolate the woman or shepherd the child away from any danger. A protester raising their hands, pointing out the shift in dynamics. Another protester misinterpreting the officer’s intent.

A ripple of fear is intersected by a ripple of anger which in turn collides with a ripple of misunderstanding. Three ripples, all converging, seconds away from a tragedy that could easily become something catastrophic.

Roisin’s breath catches as the mantle flares white-hot. This is not a domestic imbalance in a quiet kitchen on an everyday street; this is a moment that could explode into the history books, if there was anyone left to write them This could call to War, Pestilence, and Death all at once, and Famine shortly after.

Roisin shakes her head, her breath catching. “…this is too big.”

The mantle pulses again. Now.

The crowd shifts as a shout rises from somewhere near the front. A police officer flinches and a protestor steps forward. Someone else misreads the movement and brings their hand up to shoulder level. One of the private security guards raises his gun. Someone shouts a warning to the mother.

The moment is tipping. Roisin feels it like a contraction in her womb. The world is about to tilt and the Four will feel it instantly. War is already astride her horse

Roisin steps forward, filling her lungs with the web of possible outcomes, the mantle’s awareness spreading through the crowd like a silent, luminous net. It opens like a whaling ship in a sea of minnows, and Roisin steps into the future.