Graffita Neova's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

The painted fingers belonged to a woman crouched low in the dark. Graffita crawled closer. The woman did not move. Her right eye glowed neon green, the only bright thing in the passage. Her other eye was black. Black ink dripped from her chin and pooled around her boots. She had sunk into the darkness like a stone into water. Her painted hand rested on the cracked floor, but her arm would not lift. "You're one of the ones who went deeper," Graffita said. "I came to bring you out." "Hazy," the woman said. One word. Her clipped voice barely stirred the air. "Can't move. Too deep." Graffita understood. The dark held Hazy the way tar holds a foot. If Graffita brought bright color to pull her free, the light would erase her before she took a step. But without light, Hazy could not find the path back. Graffita knelt and pressed her left wrist to the floor. Her oldest blot, the darkest one, met the black ink in the cracks. Her faint thread glowed low along the stone. "Follow this," Graffita said. "It won't hurt you. It's dark, like you." Hazy's green eye tracked the line, then rose to Graffita's face. "Smoke on you," she said. "Thick. Same as the rest." Graffita did not know what the eye showed her. She knew only that Hazy would not crawl toward a stranger she distrusted. So Graffita did the one thing she trusted. She painted. From her wrist she pulled a second blot, one shade lighter than the first, and drew a short streak beside the thread. Then another, lighter still. She built the colors upward, slow, the way she had learned. Dark to less dark. Each new shade let Hazy's eyes rise a little without flinching. The streaks curved along the broken floor like a small winding road. Hazy watched the colors climb. Her breathing steadied. The black pool around her boots thinned as the darkness loosened its grip. She lifted her hand from the stone. Then her arm. Then, slowly, she crawled onto the painted trail. "It holds you," Graffita said. "Keep to the shades. Don't rush the bright part." Hazy crawled. She stayed low, one hand on the colored line, following each shade as it brightened toward the door far behind them. Graffita crawled beside her, lighting more of the path from her wrist. The two moved together through the cracked passage. Behind them, deeper in the black, other painted hands still waited. Graffita counted them with her eyes. Three shapes. Maybe four. She had freed one. The rest sat too deep to reach with the paint she had left in her wrist. "There are more back there," Graffita said. "Yes," Hazy said. She did not look back. "More than you think."