Weeks later in the aftermath of the Shiverla take-down, Shiver awoke to the sound of singing: at first, she believed it to be Mist but it was clearly a woman’s voice, soft, sweet and perhaps just a tad mournful. The woman entered the room with a great, hazel-eyed smile and hair of a greying, red-gold.

  “Look what he did to my baby. My beautiful child, who would walk on hesitant steps so as not to crush an ant or even a simple seed. I can’t believe he turned you into a monster. You loved him as the kind of caring child who loved all the lost, little things. Who didn’t understand why everyone couldn’t just be happy.” She turned away an angered face.

  “We both cared for him, that ragged, strange-looking, foster-child with a face that even in mirth looked like a grinning jack-o-lantern and wondered into our lives proclaiming you the softest, loveliest creature he had ever seen. Yet this is how he repaid you. He tried to corrupt you: the good is in you still, I have always know it.”

  Shiver gazed disconcertedly into the eyes of her mother and felt her body where no-more wounding remained. “He is back,” she whispered. Mist came to see her: he was staying at Emanuel’s abandoned castle, which Emanuel donated to him and Shiver, presumed dead. Due to the defence of severe coercion and an assumption his inhumane capabilities died with Monovalent, he was allowed go free on a technicality that caused much outrage.

  Shiver presumed dead, had attempted to contact Emanuel but had -received only one devastating, final message through their covert communication line.

  “You’re safe to my everlasting gratitude but alas, you’re still not her. The glint of your eye is but a beauteous imitation and thus my love still lies somewhere you and I will probably never see: a place of lightness and sunlit fellows. A land where musical Mays are endlessly-flighted. Farewell and prosper and try to be the best creation you can be with so harsh a starting point.”

  Shiver wept, cold tears of the angered; of the anguished and aggrieved. “ You made me, you can’t blame me, you should love me, I am yours. Eventually she ran back to Mist where they made love as they often did in an act of strange narcissism and that strange, deep, beautiful comradery of two a kind.

  In the aftermath of The Shiverla Coup, as they were calling it, Simon emitted a sad little sigh. Gratified the threat had faded and saddened he had not saved Shiver, who last he heard was shot dead before Mist escaped. As he returned to his modest little apartment home, a pretty young woman with a shiniest little bounce of black curls appeared and handed him a flyer; for a faith healer of all things.

  “You have never seen miracles like this,” she explained ever-softly. Matthew is a miracle man and his assistant Ida, is just wonderful, you can feel the rush of energy when she lays her hands gently upon you. You can find out about us on the old web, now that the devil Aryan is no-more and that strange evil, entity Monovalent is gone,” she said.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Simon was surprised: he had heard whispers of a new faith healer, that was unlike any to grace God’s green earth before but hadn’t really thought much of it since he was not a religious man and even if he was, might have struggled to believe in such things. The woman made to leave then suddenly halted her springing step and smiled a little.

  “Thank-you for your time good sir. With a shiver, I say goodbye,” she said.

  Simon started but she was gone. That weekend, he went to see the healing man. He was but an ordinary man, of medium height and build with a friendly, lopsided smile and shimmering, bright, brown hair. A young lady stood behind him, her deep, misty eyes thoughtful and blue and utterly magical and the dark russet fall of hair, slightly tangled and gleaming like a great, autumn storm. The halls were packed with the sickened and sorrowed. He thought there would be more ceremony but in fact the ill just walked quietly to the stage in a little line.

  One by one people walked to the stage and were seemingly healed: no magic no mystic little tricks, as far as the eye could see. The man commandeered the healing, but it did not appear to take place until the girl laid gentle hands. The people were silent, almost reverent, but the joy in the place was immeasurable and like the golden warmth of spring itself, swelled.

  Of course, the virus that heals all her cells and connects her to other people’s bodies…Perhaps just perhaps she could use it to control and heal the cells of people as well as harm…” He thought awed. Afterwards the little auburn beauty, smiled at Simon.

  “You look well,” she remarked just as her own, darkly-lounging eyes noted, he too, seemed a little sorrowed.

  “You seem a little despairing. We all feel it, sometimes. Listen. Why don’t you go to a beautiful little concert I was planning to attend. I am far too busy, but it may lift your failing spirits.”

  That night, Simon attended the recommended pianist’s concert, where an exquisite young man was seated at the stage; his yellow-fair locks shone like great, tufted sandstone as he played, with closed and raptured eyes whilst moving the gentle white slips of his hands, the songs to haunt the vined valley of faraway heavens and to which God Himself might listen, with breath on gilded-hold.

  He stood up to take a bow, grey eyes shining with arrogance and joy in equal measure to a crowd of joyous music lovers whilst giving the only true gift to humanity, a talented man of such beastly but lofty persuasions might give. He spotted Simon and Simon swore he saw a sudden smile playing like a singing violin at the corners of his scarlet mouth.

  Past the wind and whiter harpings, of this fair, musical boy, Simon felt much joy but also sudden rushing sorrow; recalling the climate crisis and depletion of land and sea, the greed and possible nuclear war, and everything Aryan had misguidedly tried to stop. Before Simon finally, simply, allowed himself to be swept along by all the loveliness and unity and music and enjoy the breath of life wherever it might be inhaled and exhaled, and for however long it might breathe.

  Did so, just as he thought he heard a strange, metallic voice and the chilling words it spoke, “The Shiverla-tethered machinery takes its throne.”