Intersection

Stranded In Parallel [Chapter 15]

I awoke to Mom knocking on my door early the next morning. I scrambled about the covers, making sure the notebook wasn’t anywhere in view, just in time for her to poke her head in the door.

“I’m about to head off to work, Nat.”

“Okay,” I croaked, rolling over to face her.

Mom sighed, a disappointed look crawling across her face. “How are you feeling today?”

“Fine,” I lied, clearing my throat loudly. A cough crept up from my chest, but I did my best to hold it back.

“I really wish I could be here. I’ll ask to see if I can’t get off early. But in the meantime, I set up the couch downstairs with some blankets and a pillow. So you can rest without having to climb up and down the stairs to get food. Which reminds me, I made…”

“I get it,” I huffed, rolling to face away from her.

“Well, do get some food in you. And I mixed up some juice, too.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll call you on my break and lunch. But don’t feel like you have to get up to answer if you’re all cozy.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Just… focus on resting, you know?”

I jerked back to face the door. “I get it! Go to work!”

Mom frowned at me, but ducked back out regardless, clicking the door against the frame as she departed. As the stairs creaked under her feet, I shoved my face back deep into the folds of the pillow to hack my lungs out without making too much noise. I held myself there until I heard the ground shake from the door being yanked closed.

Despite my body aching and feeling weak, I couldn’t fall back asleep. Not even after burying myself under the blankets and holding my eyes shut. I forced myself up against the wall and pulled out the notebook, trying to remember the last thing I remembered reading the night before. A few notes had been added about the drawings, embellished with arrows pointing to specific elements within them.

This one goes across your chest. From arm to arm, even across the palms, connecting in the center across your heart and lungs. You can apply pressure in the center of the hand and around the breast bone to find the spots most tender. Those are your body’s vertices, the locations that the inscriptions must reach. Healers inscribe variations of these tattoos on people, depending on the duration and intensity of the sickness.

I ran my hands all over the blankets and wrenched my body over to look on the floor, but I couldn’t find the pencil I had been using. It was dull anyway, I thought to myself. With the notebook in hand, I forced myself up, hoping to carry myself downstairs and look for something to write with.

My knees nearly buckled as my feet found the carpet off the edge of my bed. It took until I was at the doorway before my legs wanted to stay beneath me. The stairs down to the first floor sucked away what little steadiness I had managed to muster up. Stumbling, the notebook fell from under my arm and down several steps as I held tight between the handrail and the opposite wall. My heart jumped as its pages flipped open, splayed open at my feet a few steps down. It took nearly the rest of my strength to shuffle down the rest of the way, plucking up the notebook in the process. I could feel the sweat gathering on my skin as I came to a rest in the kitchen.

Once I could breathe properly again, I began shuffling through the kitchen drawers to find something to write with. Many of the drawers were barely half-full, filled only with things we had packed back from our original home. I finally happened across the junk drawer, containing leftover tape and pens we had used while packing everything into boxes. I wondered if a pen would come across to Ohanzee through the notebook pages like a pencil did. When my eyes landed on the permanent marker, it somehow ended up in my grasp as well.

With writing instruments in hand, I smuggled them back to the living room and placed myself on the couch, turning on the TV simply for the background noise.

“How accurate would markings like this have to be? Would a tattoo artist have to be aware of where my heart is? Like, the different parts and stuff? Should the lines up the arms follow my veins?”

Without knowing how soon Ohanzee would respond, I traded the pen for the marker, examining its tip, then the bluish veins running parallel up past my wrist and onto my pale arm. My eyes followed them up to my elbow, where the same veins had been used plenty for the various injections and blood drawings at the hospital.

With Ohanzee’s drawings right in front of me, it was not hard to recreate them from the center of my hand to my elbow and slightly further. My palm took on something like a spiral, but with curved sections looping back on themselves before continuing up past my wrist. My forearm took on triangles and dashes perpendicular to the main line of travel.

The higher I went, the more my left hand struggled, just barely able to recreate what was drawn on the notebook pages. At the very least, I thought to myself, I could reach my sleeve and armpit before having to stand in front of a mirror to continue to doodle across my chest.

In my concentration, I barely noticed the fresh words responding to my questions.

Did you find someone to do your tattoos? This soon? I hope you’re not trying to do something unwise, if not.

As for your question… Perfection is… not required. Elohi most often finds itself in states of imperfection, honestly. The main goal is to connect your body’s vertices that I spoke of. They are points where Elohi settles within you. The lines fashioned beneath your skin allow them to connect, especially in situations where their connections may have been blocked or severed. That could be what is affecting you. Maybe. I have little way of knowing.

At the very least, I want to share as much information as I can with you. I’m going to descend to our library again today and try to copy over anything relevant I find for you.

I almost responded, but a sudden crack from the front of the apartment made me jump. Even my tired body was able to react on reflex, slamming the notebook shut and hiding away the writing instruments.

“Natalie, I’m home,” Mom called from the front room. “Are you downstairs?”

I hid myself, my freshly marked-up arm, and other contraband under the blanket there on the couch. “Just… watching some TV.”

Mom marched back there a few moments later. “Well, I was in luck. I explained things to my supervisor at work, and she let me go home right away. How about that? Have you eaten yet?”