XLIX
Bean’s focus was unbreakable. The encampment and the scrub around him vanished as his sight narrowed unto one fixed point where it was that he intended each fatal blow of his weapon to land. A particular energy soared through him; the kind he had never experienced before. For the moment, it was stable but it felt as if - should his focus waver or his attention slip - it might implode and send him towards his death, in pieces.
It took a great detail of concentration and heavy breathing to keep his thoughts light and free of the self-styled fanaticizing. It was as if this energy in itself were a code that was written for heroes; or those inspired to become heroic. But the relentless daydreaming and the thoughts of being showered with deafening applause, they didn’t so much heighten his senses, as much as they did saturate them with an abusive tone and colour so that his focus was as sharp as a circle, and as witted as a drunkard whose words fall as needlessly from his mouth as do his newly broken teeth. It was hard then, to maintain a sense of balance between harnessing a power, and - in succumbing to its drunken allure of thoughtless grandeur - being the harness itself.
He managed to, though, through the control of his breathing, rein in the steed upon which his consciousness rode; keeping it primed like an archer’s bow, but not so much that it might snap or release itself pre-emptively. He maintained a state of readiness; prepared to unleash Heaven’s wrath on this discrepancy.
And just as he neared the edge of the carriage, like a punch to the chest, the blood rushed from his head down to his feet, and his state of readiness was quashed amidst a tidal wave of shock and absurdity.
From out of the darkness, there came what looked like a great hulking mass. It looked, to the untrained eye, like a small hill, draped in a summer dress. The way in which he or she walked was anything but delicate. With every step that it took, its heels caught in the dirt and conspired to have the hulking mass topple head over foot.
Bean readied his weapon. His hands, though, shook incredibly. The energy he had attained was now loose and rampant in his body. What was once a single ball of fire that he could direct and hold was now quantum-like in its physical state, and erratic and irrational in its behaviour. It rattled him from the inside out and quaked his once steady nerves. It felt like he had a hundred thousand suns inside his body; all dancing to their own fervent discord. And the echo of their insanity took centre stage in his mind. And when he saw her face in the moon’s pale glow, he dropped his weapon entirely.
It was her, he was certain of that. Still, his mind began to ponder the chance of such a thing, outside of Heaven, in the boundless probabilities of time, space, and dimension, that he should stumble upon god herself, in this dark and quiet corner of the omniverse.
Her hair was long and twisted in many coloured curls that ran the entire length of her back, almost covering the cut in her dress that was shaped like a heart. The dress pulled tight against her stomach which stuck out like a floral cliff face. But from her hips, it flowed magnificently and cast down her stubby legs like leafy shadows. Her nails were painted mauve; on her brutish hands, and her sausage-like toes. And she wore a yellow ribbon in her hair that stuck out, just above her left ear.
She inspired awe.
Bean snuck around quietly, spying as she made her way along the dirt, before stopping at the discrepancy’s door. He could barely contain his surprise and giddy disbelief. The only thing he was certain of was that the second he got a chance, he would tell everyone he knew.
As she entered the carriage and crept into the young girl’s bed, cradling her humming her favourite fables and nursery rhymes, Bean spied in stupendous wonder. Were he not here to witness it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t even believe it himself.
“It’s her,” he said, in disbelief. “God.”