The sparrows were the first thing Charlotte noticed.
They constantly kept an eye on her.
Not in the typical manner that birds darted around anxiously. These remained. On roofs. On the windowsills. On the fence pole near the shattered barn. It was as though their dark, glassy eyes followed her every move, as if they were familiar with her. As though they were anticipating something.
She and Finn were beside the river when it first occurred. She assisted him in repairing one of his old shoes while he was piling stones. Her chalk drawings were blown off the grass by a gust of wind, and she伸手 groaning—
The pages came to a halt in mid-air.
Freezing. Like leaves trapped in honey, they are suspended.
Charlotte saw fine silver threads dangling from the sky, connected to each piece of paper like marionette strings, for one inconceivable second. The pages fluttered softly back down as though nothing had occurred when she blinked.
Finn lifted his gaze.
"Did you see that?" he said, his eyes wide.
"...No," Charlotte replied swiftly, folding the shoe leather over his toes. However, her fingers shook.
She had witnessed it. Threads. Not there physically, but there. In a manner that dreams weren't real.
It occurred again later that night.
While she was cleaning their small hearth, she sensed the air become thick, as it does just before a storm. The fire flickered in an odd way. She saw not fire but pictures in her dance: Mira's hand signing fervently in the shadows, Elias drawing his sword in front of Eladin, and her mother, the Queen, with ghost-white hair and eyes set on a city she could no longer rescue, standing at the tower window.
The embers burst.
Charlotte gasped and stumbled backward.
The threads were not only airborne.
They were within her. Remembering, twisting, and binding.
Like a tapestry, her soul seemed to bear the weight of history, slowly unraveling to expose designs that had formerly influenced empires.
Then Finn spoke once more. Silence. Drowsy.
From the nook where he had curled, he remarked, "They're still looking for us, you know, in the old world." They're constructing boats in my夢."
"Ships?" Charlotte murmured.
He nodded, seeming half asleep.
"In order to locate the girl who terrified the globe."
Charlotte observed the smoke threads twist toward the chip ceiling in silence.
She was still unsure of what was going on.
However, she was able to sense it.
The glass was breaking between lives.
And something—somebody—was coming through.