Zaar memories #5
When they came for her, there were no words.
No order. No request. Not a damn explanation.
Just two Greys stood at the entrance to the drying shed,
standing like stones with intent.
She went out without argument.
She felt that resistance here would be not strength, but foolishness.
And she hadn't allowed herself to be fooled for many years.
Not since that warehouse burned down. With those who screamed.
(She's still not sure if she set it alight. But she doesn't deny it.)
The Greys carried something in cloth sacks. One walked ahead. The other — behind.
V — in the center, like cargo, but untied.
They walked deeper in. Through narrow paths overgrown with thorny bushes,
past bales of dried herbs and metal mirrors that were installed along the ridge.
(She didn't know what they were for. She would understand later. But not with her head.)
AFTER SUNSET
It was strangely warm on the hilltop.
Not like below, where the cool air devoured the skin.
Here — like in a sauna, but dry. With a pulsation.
The Greys stood in a circle.
Five of them. All with shaved skulls and bodies smeared with something that smelled like ash, blood, and honey.
They poured black sand from the sacks.
It trembled as if it were alive.
V stood aside. No one stopped her from watching.
THAT WHICH CANNOT BE DESCRIBED
They began to move — slowly, rhythmically, each step as if you wanted to awaken the soil, not just walk on it.
Their heads bowed, their bodies bent,
and the air…
began to react.
The sand jingled like metallic dust in a magnetic field.
The taste of iron appeared on her tongue.
Her eyes moistened. But not from the wind. From pressure.
This was not magic.
This was… a redefinition of space.
As if the world around her had suddenly stopped believing in gravity.
And space, stumbling, was looking for a new rule.
V felt something arise in her gut — not in her mind —
an… answer without a question.
As if someone inside her knew,
but had always remained silent out of pity.
"They do not ask.
They activate."
ARRIVAL
When something clicked in the air,
she didn't look up —
she fell to her knees, against her will.
That's just how her nervous system reacted.
Like animals before an earthquake.
Nothing was visible in the sky.
But all the bodies in the circle trembled like antennas at peak signal.
One of the Greys raised his head.
And through clenched teeth whispered:
"He... notices."
She didn't know who he meant.
But inside her chest…
not her heart.
A crumpled knot of heat and cold.
As if she were being watched.
Not by eyes. By a presence.
When it was over — the Greys were silent.
They simply picked up the sacks with the remaining sand and went down, without looking back.
V stayed.
Sat on the hilltop for a long time.
Watched the sky die and be reborn in the same spot.
The buzzing of the black sand still echoed in her ears.
A question smoldered in her body, but the wording slipped away like water through her fingers.
And then she said aloud:
"This is not the end. This is an perception alignment."
While she slept, someone leaned over her in the dark.
But did not touch her.
Only took a pinch of her hair
and left.
The next morning, a small circle of sand lay at the entrance to her room.
And it hummed, but only when she looked at it.