Or perhaps it was the -dol- stuck in the middle. Sadness? No, that wasn’t it. Pain? Dolorimetry, yes. The measure of pain. Was that a science? A sub-field, perhaps. Not hers, not as a botanist. Not Aaron’s.
The God-stone: amber of the highest quality, embedded in which is a kernel of pain.
Here the Aaron was, doing his physics, doing his job, describing measurements and chromatic aberrations and spherical lenses and timed strobes and…
-And all she could think was would I know the God-stone if I saw it? If I touched it?
+And all she could think was would I know the God-stone if I saw it? If I touched it? Doubt like dry bread stuck in her throat.
“Hey.”
Jude jerked upright. She had been crouched. Or hunched. A near feral wariness had overtaken her and formed her body into a bow. Taut, ready. She put forth a conscious effort to straighten up, square her shoulders, let them relax.
“You okay?”
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@Elanna’s voice broke through the compulsion. “You okay?”
The botanist frowned, the tension draining from her as a blanket settled over her unsettled mind. Turned, abashed, back toward camp. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
The hand of God had loosened its grip around her mind and here she was, back at camp, back by the barrel cactus and saguaro, back beyond the trees, where ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.
-It did not last.
+It did not last. Doubt clouded her vision once more. Doubt of this place, doubt of herself, of her worth.
The camp grew quiet once more. Sarai handed her bookmark back and she fingered it, book forgotten. She felt the letters etched into the thin brass, felt the words there, proven now to be incorrect, felt the shapes telling lies against her skin. She felt the weight of that hand, at once comforting and threatening, settle once more against her brain-stem, compressing, caressing, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing…
The quiet grew thick. The air grew heavy. The light failed.
And one by one, they went to bed. The physicist. The linguist. The archaeologist. The botanist.