There was something afoot, something that smells of a Named One, as Johansson suspected, as he walked down the dirt path dressed in the heavy stifling coat of the academia’s uniform that mandated he must wear it when on-duty, despite all compints and protest made against it otherwise, there was no evidence that the most evil-looking uniform that had ever graced the face of Eden was non-conducive to negotiations at all.

  He was dressed in what could, passingly, be judged as non-threatening to anybody if they didn’t have basic pattern recognition, A gssed visor that conceals his vision on the off-chance that the Named might have cognitive effect’s upon recognition like the Tsar Nichos, A suit of yered cloth and folded rings that was more appropriate for a warden of their keep than any particurly well-meaning w-abiding individual, A long skirt that ties around his hip and hung low with curtains sweeping down into a bck color.

  His shoes bore the gloss of something metallic and thoroughly polished till’ shining.

  It was, very much the smell of the supervisor position that being a Auditor merited by simple virtue of position, Johansson was less expendable than the Grunt’s that followed behind him in faceless droning droves, they were dredges, hunks of flesh grafted with metal and forcefully tuned by fine-Enchantress’s to work on a schedule that can be best described as “Always”.

  Johansson walked.

  The people parted before his group, The mayor did not speak to him this morning nor yesterday, It was a simple action without much need for reasoning, He was here for one thing only, he marched in forward lock-step down the rows of streets and houses that towers over their congregation, past the shops, past the stores, past the winding alleyway’s disinfected on the daily, and Johansson stopped before the wooden house.

  It was a normal house, didn’t have the markings of a cult, did not bear the symbols of Powers, nor did it have anything particurly offensive, as purported by yesterday’s short curt interview, He knocked on the door.

  The woman greeted him, She was average, wearing a brown overalls and somewhat stained white rags that was crumpled into a presentable apparel, She spoke something or the other to him, He couldn’t be bothered to remember what she said as she said again, something, another, He walked past her after speaking equally droning words, his mind was already elsewhere.

  He was here to retrieve the quarry, nothing else.

  There was his quarry, A girl, maybe, five, or edging six years of age, A little nky and awkward in stature in that way only someone in the throes of growing up can have, limbs just a little off proportion compared to the rest of the body, the minute pauses as the child realize she can now reach that item she’s never been able to, or so he’d imagine as much, the descriptions the woman gave of her daughter painted a rather unfttering picture of someone way over-their-head with raising a special child.

  And yes, oh, oh yes indeed, this child was special.

  He can see it, The child looking at him with a metallic intelligence that didn’t belong in a child, It did not burn with smoldering resentment like a neglected child normally would, did not burn with the puttering remains of hope, that was intelligence, calcuted, precise, and she was staring at him in a manner so unlike a child.

  “Hello, child, I am Johansson, Auditor from the Schorium”

  Begin simple.

  Execute the following step’s.

  “I am here because we have belief that you, child, are Blessed by the Powers That Be”

  Hook.

  “This is a invitation, It is not a forceful choice”

  String.

  “But of course, it would make my job far easier if you accepted my proposition, and we can get started on all the work and prospects”

  The illusion of choice.

  He smiled at her, arms held beside his hip, Legs perfectly postured in a stiff straight manner that you could drive a spine through it and the scoliosis would be cured, “What is your name, Child?”

  The child stared at him with unblinking eyes of purple, and hair resembling the luscious waterfalls of Graham’s fall down out east, It was a small child, As stated before, His eyes gleamed down leeringly at the form, A small child, with all the form such a description entails, small fingers fiddling with a wooden doll of some kind.

  “Carmen, It’s Carmen”

  Named after the orchard.

  Such a stock female name, but such is the nature of one bored to the middle rung’s of society, born to a pair of average’s neither too outstanding in any regards nor measuring below standards in any manner discernible.

  “Well, Carmen, If you have any question’s, It would be best to head towards the Capital, We do have plenty of public transportation towards it”

  A long, smile, that was still on his face, spread even wider as if it could manage such without cracking his cheeks apart into bloodied torn muscles but he smiled nonetheless, with his piece spoken and words finished, he turned arou d on the ball of his heel and began walking away, leaving Carmen to stare at his reclining back away out the house.

  Carmen’s mother stepped inside the house, afterwards, A small shuddering hand close the door with a soft transparent ‘click’ as the knob slides back into pce like well-oiled gears, motions settling back down, routine reasserting itself, or trying to reassert itself, The child’s father was still nowhere to be found despite having been here yesterday for whatever’s the case.

  “Ah, Carmen, is…”

  The word died in her throat, What could she ask? What could she say? Whatever this mess of a retionship she had with her daughter only vaguely resembled the outlines of a mother and daughter, mother’s don’t bme their daughter for being abnormal, mother’s aren’t meant to be fallible human meatsack’s prone to cognitive error’s like she was, mother’s don’t fear their own daughter.

  “...everything fine?”

  She finish mely.

  Carmen peeks up from down below, staring, rge guileless blue eyes staring with a uncanny intelligence as if there was the motion of shuffling hooks and cws behind her eyes, something in her skull occupying the skin of her daughter where there was maybe normal toddling intelligence and a normal wanderlust present in every child.

  “Everything is fine, mom, How did it go at the river?”

  This type of question was not one children’s asked, children’s of her age don’t have anywhere near the articute manner of speech she was dispying, she’d find it endearing if it wasn’t so uncanny at all, Her child was waiting, Mouth closed, the upper teeth was not chewing her lower one, it did not grind, nor did it lisp, something about that act caught her attention.

  “It went…fine, Carmen”

  “Okay”

  The conversation lets out a keening whine from it’s five-meter dug grave, It did not want to be alive again, It had already been kicked several hundred times over the course of this and did not want anymore but it was dragged kicking and screaming into life.

  Carmen gets up, small legs pushing her form up, spine straightening, her small chest inhaling and exhaling air, the small pair of horns on her head undutes on the crown of her skull, unlike the drooping pair of antennae’s her mother bore behind her ears, drooping and sagging sadly like someone kicked a tree over and it never healed quite right.

  “Carmen, You know– I love you, right?”

  The word didn’t have a reason to exist, not really, but she felt it was important to be said, needed, a necessity to be thought about.

  “Of course, mom, I love you too”

  Was it truth, or lies, was it lies wearing the skin of truth? A half-aborted dead fetus resurrected back into life and screaming at this unholy justice it was gifted or was her daughter truthful?

  Either terrified her nonetheless.

  She crouched down to her child, and shudderingly held her in a hug with a grip too strong and fingers too clenched to be normal, she wasn’t a Saintess, her womb wasn’t special, she didn’t live a particurly storied life, her daughter absolutely terrified her so deeply she remains awake at night staring at the Moon and wondering whether that grooved dug hole on it’s skin was a eye ughing at her or not.

  But she can at least try, this much, and give her daughter a hug, Just, just a hug, nothing less nor more than the sum of what it is, just two people rounding arms behind each other’s back and holding tightly to not let them go quietly into the long while where only the cyclopean gaze of the moon can bear witness.

  “I’m sorry”

  She chokes out, head hung low, burying itself in a form too small to bear the brunt of a failure for a mother, she was not a paragon of a person, she was not a perfect mother, she did not give love unconditionally, It was horrifying, really, to know this thing born from her womb managed to came out with such awareness that it was uncanny.

  She chokes out again, her fingers tightens around her child’s colrbone, purple blossoms, Carmen squeaks.

  “I’m sorry”

  “I’m not a good mother”

  She wasn’t.

  Carmen hugs her back with a pair of arms bearing the wings of the world on it’s bones and she let her mother bury her head in her far-too-small pair of shoulders.