The Heart Shields We Wield
I hung a tall mirror on my wall. The reflection showed me a man in a mask—one in need of an accomplice. The world had gotten crazier, and so I decided to no longer walk this road alone. With an electric pen, I set to work on my reflection.
I traced over my heart, but omitted the armor there. Love, she would have in abundance and could express it freely; I had enough armor for us both. Thoughtfulness—she needed that, too, should I want an equal. So, I drew a spider’s web that stretched out from my head. The tethers reached out and connected to all her interests—the strongest linking back to me. With that done, I could see her within me, and so my pen set to carving her free.
Soon, she stared back with blond hair and green eyes. My pen fascinated her, and so she watched it with rapt attention. To my gaze, she smiled. To my scrutiny, she blushed. And when I traced down her ribs, she squirmed and giggled.
At last, I unhung the mirror. With the base on the floor, she was a foot shorter than I.
I wrote ‘Valeria’ above her head and then dragged my pen over onto the wall. I traced across it like setting a horizon, Valeria following as I rounded the nearest corner.
On the second wall, the horizon’s line came alive like a heart monitor. As I rendered the space with rolling green hills and ready sunshine, Valeria followed with wide-eyed wonder. The wind swept through, lilies and peonies lapping like waves as dandelion seeds were harried into the sky.
I could almost feel the wind of her world as I filled in the scene around an open window.
Valeria suddenly oriented on me, her eyes welling. It seemed she understood that the flowers were meant for her.
I nodded with a smile, my heart glad. But then I started, a jolt making my arm tingle. My hand was seized around my pen.
Valeria looked on in dismay; neither of us knew what to do. Then, the pen pulled me back to the wall, and a line of tanks soon rolled out from her horizon, while a line of soldiers emerged from the foreground. That crazy world of ours... It had reached us, and the two sides were coming together like a vice.
My chest tightened. “Get out of there!”
She dashed towards the wall’s corner, my pen and I staying ahead of her. I wanted to pave her a safe path; it meant to render reality’s concrete.
By the third wall, the horizon’s heart monitor became a seismogram, a hellish cityscape springing up around her like prison bars. Concrete towers lay toppled—apartment building turned broken dreams. Fires raged. Smoke tinged the air. And an air-raid siren sounded.
Valeria rushed along a crowded street, colliding with locals, who all rushed about, each shuttling loved ones or crying out in search of those from whom they had been separated. The conflict swept in behind her. It built like a wave poised to crash down around her.
I looked across the wall. “Quick! This way!”
Ordnance screamed through the air and detonated all around her. She flinched at every impact. Got turned around by a shoulder bump. Got disoriented by the smoke. And lost my voice as panic and chaos shrouded all reason.
I fought to remove myself. To make it all stop. Yet, try as I might, I couldn’t pry my hand free of the wall. It may as well have been a sword in a stone with me a mere author rather than the Arthur that it required.
So, I stopped. I couldn’t shape the world, but I could decide who I’d be in it. Fear ruled enough; I was a reach too far. My heart steadied.
As disaster loomed, Valeria and I found one another’s gaze. The chaos stilled, cinders and ash adrift as she stood like a stone in a relentless river. She approached me, the two of us triangulating the world state relative to one another.
With her at my side, my hand came free at last. The two of us walked to the last corner. There, I stepped through a door, and it was as if we had both just stepped off a shared train.
When she took my hand, I couldn’t help noticing her heart’s armor. Life—it just didn’t seem feasible without one’s own heart shield.
Constraints:
Word Count: 747/750
Genre: Sci-Fi
Trope: Alternative Self Shipping
