Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
Nexus. Idiots were a constant factor, he thought. Proof against even Nexus
Change.
Eunni was quiet again as she felt the textures in the page before her, leaving a
trail of fingerprints on the surface. Hidden in the details was a language of sorts
but she wouldn't know that; he hadn't until today and still hadn't found a
translation. Taking a pair of cotton work gloves from his girdle, he placed them in
the path of her searching finger. She frowned when she reached them.
He didn't say anything. He liked the silences with her, even this one, and the
gentle games the silences often contained. Lunch had become a ritual, her
visiting every day and some evenings, the later times less predictable but even
more enjoyable. In those times together, he could almost see them as married a
long time and content in the rhythms of their lives. A life in a moment, as though
he were a Priest, all time and no time.
She looked up again when he chuckled but he shook his head, losing both the
moment and the humor in the instant that her soft brown eyes met his.
Everything was 'before Cassa', he thought getting up, suddenly needing the
distraction of moving.
Knee high, the balcony railing was designed to be looked over while sitting on
the cushions, not while standing. All the privacy was knee high, heads bobbed
everywhere, up and down, and the tiers of balconies were full. No one paid him
any mind, he was just another head temporarily higher than most. He felt
invisible, and happily so, the stuff of rumors nobody believed much less expected
to see. A pebble in a stream, he had a small eddy of contacts, ripples of fellow
researchers for the most part and most of those didn't know more than his name
or care if they did. A nuisance or a sounding board, a source of complements to
be gobbled up or challenges to be spat out.
On the lowest level, Cici's bright yellow hair attracted his eye. Another guard, a
match to the ones that had arrived with Eunni, was with her but standing back
discretely. Sitting on the edge of the fountain in the center, Cici was chatting with
a couple of friends. One he recognized, a junior Temple Scribe he had seen with
Cici but he didn't remember his name if he had ever known it. He leaned forward.
A human echo line, that much was obvious, from memory and from now. The
other was a Zimmer, dressed in the severely cut tunic and pants that the Station
Zimmer preferred. Dark colors, usually black.
Eunni tugged on the hem of his robe. “Sit down. You're making me dizzy and
the guards nervous.” She pushed the plate towards him, shy of two muffins
already. “Eat them before I do. Please.”
The muffins were white cake but when split showed the ti'Linn cross through
the center in a violet color with tiny seeds in a darker shade. Cinnamon flavored,
he thought, then decided it wasn't, just the closest he could come to the taste. He
broke the next muffin open to find the same design, and the next. When he
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca