d_square | Ocuwoman

Source- Photo taken at Scarborough Fair in Waxahachie, Tx., Watercolor Self Portrait

The vision she had received several weeks ago was not a shadow. It was a sun-bleached, neon-soaked fever dream that defied the very language of the sixteenth century. She received it while giving council to the Duchess. It was brought back with the death of Silas’ son.

"You are pale, Aelina," said the Duchess as she intercepted the seer near the marble fountain. "You have been avoiding the sun. My tea has gone cold without your counsel."

Aelina bowed her head, her fingers twitching within her woolen sleeves. "The threads are tangled, Your Grace. It is a period of... static."

"Nonsense," the Duchess replied, her eyes narrowing. Ebrada was a woman of great insights into people’s emotions. "The last time we spoke, you gasped. A vision that displeased you.

Aelina felt a cold sweat prickle her neck. How could she describe the desert? She had seen a horizon of dust, a flat alkaline wasteland under a sky so blue it looked bruised. In the center of the vision, a man who bore the unmistakable high cheekbones of the Duke Earl’s line sat in the letter B , his skin painted with white clay. Over his eyes was a heavy, white object that seemed to bind his sight to another world entirely.

Somehow there stood with him an older woman, perhaps his mother, wearing the same white object about her head, but not truly with him. They weren't praying. They weren't at war. They were flying toward a colossal bird in the sky. When they entered their was a sign that read "Burning Man" that towered over a city made out of air and pulsing, impossible lights. There were no horses, only chariots of steel that glowed like fallen stars.

"I saw a desert," Aelina whispered, unable to look the Duchess in the eye.

"A crusade?" Ebrada asked, her voice lifting with hope. "A conquest in the East?"

"No," Aelina said, her voice trembling. "I saw a world where the sun never sets because men have captured lightning in bottles. I saw your bloodline wearing masks with black glass, staring into ghosts while their bodies stood in different surroundings. They were... celebrating the end of things."

"The end of what?"

"I don't know!" Aelina finally snapped, her composure breaking. "There were no crosses, Your Grace. No banners. Only the box on their faces and the fire in the sand. It was a madness I cannot name."

Aelina turned and fled toward the servant’s gate, leaving the Duchess standing among her perfectly manicured roses.

In the days that followed, Aelina took the long way through the kitchens, sleeping in the haylofts to avoid the palace's main thoroughfares. But Ebrada was relentless. She began to haunt the gardens at dawn, her silhouette appearing at the end of every path Aelina took. The Duchess didn't want a prophecy of gold or land anymore; she was obsessed with the "boxes." She wanted to know what kind of magic allowed a person to see through a wall of black glass, and why her descendants would choose a wasteland over a throne.

Aelina had no answers. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the neon lights of that distant desert flickering against the dark, and she feared that by seeing it, she had invited that strange, chaotic future to begin its long march toward them.

Source- Oculus painting