The Daughter Of Light
258 Words
The silence that followed was profound. Then, a tiny, sharp wail broke the air.
The midwife held up a small, squirming bundle. The Physician backed away, hissing a prayer.
The baby wasn't just a child. As she opened her eyes, a shockwave of violet light rippled through the hut, extinguishing every candle and freezing the falling rain outside the door for exactly one second.
She was a daughter. Her eyes were the supernova purple of Kaelen’s old world, but her skin bore the faint, glowing silver circuits of her mother.
Kaelen took the baby and placed her on Elara’s exhausted chest. Elara, covered in sweat and blood, her voice gone, simply sobbed as she touched the tiny, glowing fingers.
"We did it," Kaelen whispered, kissing Elara’s forehead. "She’s here. She’s real."
"What... what is her name?" the midwife asked, trembling in the corner.
Elara looked at her daughter, who was currently staring at a wooden stool, making it hover an inch off the ground with a subconscious thought.
"Her name is Friction," Elara whispered. "Because she’s the only thing the world can’t smooth over."
Outside the hut, in the deep mud of the 14th century, a single, metallic spider-drone pulled itself out of the earth. Its red eye flickered to life. It had survived the jump.
It didn't attack. It simply began to broadcast.
The hunt had followed them into the past. But as Kaelen looked at his daughter, he knew one thing: the medieval world was about to learn that some variables were meant to be infinite.
- Writer
