V violet's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

V Violet's left hand came apart at the knuckle while she was still walking. The finger dropped into the grass without sound. She stopped and looked up at the sky, which had been the wrong colors for a long time now. Red bled into green bled into a blue that hurt to look at. She had stopped counting the days she had spent underneath it. She was looking for one living person who might still know her name, and she could not find that person if her hands kept falling off in the road. The grass around her boots was wrong too. It grew in bright stripes, red and orange and violet, the way the sky grew. Small stones on the path had turned glassy. Farther out, a dog-shaped thing stood frozen mid-step, its fur burned into rainbow bands. The light did this. The light was doing it to her faster now. She could feel her cheek soften where the sun touched it. Her dress hung heavier at the shoulders where the skin had begun to give. She pressed her right hand against the shape at her hip. A sword hung there in a wrapped cloth, too big for her, its blade painted in the same colors as the sky she hated. Stars ran along the flat of it in blue and green. It had belonged to the person she was looking for. She had carried it for so long that the handle knew her grip. She did not draw it. She used the weight of it to keep herself upright and walked faster. Over a low rise she saw the house. Blue slate roof, green shutters, white stone walls, three stories of it planted in the striped grass like nothing had touched it. The windows were shut. The door was shut. The shadow it threw across the ground was a clean gray, the first gray she had seen in a long time. She half-ran, half-fell down the slope toward that shadow. Another finger came loose in the grass behind her. She did not go back for it. She crossed into the shadow and the burning stopped. She stood on the front step and felt her cheek harden again under her palm. The door was heavy and unlocked. She pushed it open with her shoulder and stepped inside and shut the sky out behind her. In the dim hall her breath, which she did not need, came out anyway. She was still standing. She still had the sword. She still had her name. But she had walked into someone's house, and somewhere in the rooms above her, a floorboard shifted under a weight that was not hers.