T-12. The museum was silent and dark, except for the anterior storage room where Essa was putting the finishing touches on the artifacts that were going to be placed on view in the morning. Only the standing corner lamp was flicked on, but the room glowed with a bright orange burnish as the light from the Oota Dabun pushed away the late night shadows. Essa inspected its casing. A frisson ran down her spine as she ran a white gloved finger down the electrically tinted glass and searched it for cracks or signs of mistreatment.
The Oota Dabun was a legend that had recently become real. A slow burning star that had been trapped at the center of the Earth during its formation and then violently birthed through a volcano hundreds of years before Essa was born. It had been passed down through clans of native peoples all over the American continent, never housed in the same place twice. Those chosen to be caretaker for the star were blinded for the privilege, and it wasn’t lost on Essa just how incredibly lucky she was to live in a time when the star’s light could be contained and viewed by anyone. It was nothing short of a miracle, and was often billed as such in clumsy handbill copy.
Come and see the star. Confront the beauty of space.Essa completed her check of the star’s casing and pulled her hand away. There was a flare of light, suddenly. The star looked like it was bubbling at its core. She took a step back just as a wave of light stronger than any recorded in the observation of the Oota Dabun rippled outward from its core and stretched across the lab. Essa put her hands up in front of her face. She could swear that something physical hit them as the light passed her, but when she pulled them away everything was as it had been.
“Losing it, old gal,” she muttered to herself. Essa wrote up her final report and left for the evening.
T-7 The rash sent her to the emergency care center at one in the morning. She’d been out for drinks with a friend from grad school, Cara, when her palms started to itch. She scratched at them absentmindedly until Cara became annoyed by what seemed like a nervous tick and grabbed her by the wrist, inspecting Essa’s hands. They were swollen and red, creased with white where her nails were digging into the skin.
“What did you get into this time?” Cara asked, motioning to the bartender for their bill.
“I don’t know. Maybe there was some turpentine on a work station. I don’t remember catching my hands in anything though.”
“Turpentine does not do that,” Cara said, signing the bill and dragging Essa out to the car.
The emergency care center doctor was also unimpressed with the assessment. “Do you have any allergies?”
“None that I know of,” Essa said, sitting on her hands, letting the paper pulled across the bed crinkle underneath her skin and do some of the scratching for her.
The doctor left the room and returned with a tube of white cream. “I want to try this first. Hold your hands out.”
Essa did as she was told. The doctor slathered the cream over both sides of her hands and her arms up to her elbows. There was immediate relief from the itching. The redness and swelling also died down almost immediately, which seemed to perplex the doctor, but he didn’t voice his concern. He merely set his mouth at an uneven dip and told her to come back if the swelling returned.
She let Cara drive her home.
T-5 Essa woke up in the middle of the night and she was freezing, though her skin felt hot and she was drenched in sweat. Her skin felt more than hot. She felt like she was melting, and her vision was blurred. Bright, white floaters were swimming in and out of view as she dropped out of bed and crawled to the bathroom.
Once kneeling on her tattered old mat she used the edge of the tub to pull herself up and was startled almost immediately by a bright orange light appearing behind her in the full length mirror hanging on the back of the door. Her hands, still sticky from the cream, lost their purchase and she fell, knocking her head against the hard edge of her toilet. Essa closed her eyes to stop the room from swimming and pulled herself up again.
Without looking, she flicked on the bathroom light and leaned in close to the mirror above the sink. When she opened her eyes again she was confronted with the orange glow. It was coming from her. Her pupils shone as if someone had shoved fairy lights into ping pong balls, the deep red veins were visible against the sclera, and the sweat on her forehead was leaving a dusty golden sheen on her skin.
She wanted to scream. There was panic climbing up her throat. She tamped it down, deciding this was a nightmare, and turned off the bathroom light before unsteadily making her way back to bed. The bed sheets were rolled into a tight cocoon and she shoved her head under her pillow, trying to escape the frigid air.
T-1 When Essa woke again she was fine. She didn’t feel tired, her hands were their usual shape and color, and nothing about her was glowing without the aid of a good foundation. Chalking it all up to nightmares and tequila, she tried to find something in her closet suitable for unveiling a star.
T-0 She’d gotten a slower start than she’d intended, so Essa was practically sprinting across the downtown streets on her way to the museum. The signal said WALK, so she went without looking, trusting the traffic more than she would have normally.
Later she wouldn’t know how to explain what had happened. She was standing in the middle of the road when she heard the car horn blare. She looked up to see a red sports car lumbering towards her and she threw her hands up, unable to make her feet move. Right then everything around her stopped.
She blacked out for a moment, her sight going dark. Her whole body felt as if she had inhaled all of the oxygen in the city. Her lungs held on to it for a beat, making her feel impossibly dense. Then everything returned to normal speed and she felt a release. There was a woosh and a crackle in her ears and light erupted from her.
Everything was suddenly as white as it had been black just moments before. It blinded her to look at it ebbing outward, so she could only imagine what it was like for anything on the other side. She began to shiver again, as her skin crawled, impossibly hot. The front of the car started to burn away as it was stopped in its tracks centimeters from her. No one who witnessed the occurrence would allow themselves to believe it.
It would be touted as a miracle.
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