"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." (Psalm 147:3)

(Frank.2.0) Chapter Three - Genesis Contd.

Dannika Snow, Capitol

She washed it. Steam rose in gentle gray tendrils from the titanium sink, her diamond ring of marriage lying carefully on her windowsill. Past the barrier of glass, not a single fingerprint could muddy the Capitol skyline. The world was vast; alive beneath her feet.

A washrag made smears in the dried blood that gave the mysterious book its second coat. Cleansing it, a pinkish scarlet was soaked into the towel. A smile glistened softly over Dannika's face. Her memories drew her back into the moment. Rubble and dust was smeared like mud into the girl's blood. She had been badly beaten in a room in Thirteen. One of the nuclear facilities. It had been a search and recover mission. She picked up the old tome in shivering hands, eyes gleaming with delight - a sort of curiosity. She thought the origin of the book might have been a recent war.

All she knew now was that it was cloaked in blood. Its brown cover and the gold letters that were on it were a thing she couldn't comprehend without scrubbing it herself. Just beneath her nose, the Capitol was breathing to life behind the landscape of a gold and foggy dawn as numbers on an analog clock proclaimed 6:29 AM. She was never free on Tuesdays. Too many meetings; too many frivolous parades.

The vague idea of her grandfather's ailment was attacking her. Burdens of the mind slipped without a sound into her heart. They seemed black; aching. As the letters on the book's brown surface shone with golden glimmers, these pains struck a chord of silent, hurting sadness. The message became clear. Her sigh rose steam from the warmth of the cloth she held in her hand. The brightening sun brought along a wisp of hope that seemed to want to mend that feeling.

'Holy Bible' - and as her eyes dragged their weight over the cover of the book, she felt her mind scrape for the meaning of the second word. Bible. She tried it on her tongue. It poured over the surface like molasses and drooled its way past the lips in sort of a murmur. She liked the way it felt. Tried it again. Something light and feathery probed at the surface of the sadness she'd felt. The pages she flipped were dipped in a certain scarlet and stuck like glue together.

It was a good thing she didn't have to strain her eyes too much - too painfully - to look past that fact. It had a scent that was vaguely like the metallic fluid that'd been spilt upon it. Another half of it was an old smell like dust. Like dirt - like... history.

There was a man named Jeremiah, and oh, my, how she liked that name. It brought a smile to the crease of her lips - one that didn't ever seem that it would quite stop growing. Her mouth was plump and pale and un-made-up. She let her eyes flick to the sky and the orange that covered it. Sitting on a chair seemed like a pleasing idea right about now. When she did, it took the stress off of her back. Widened the image of her bright-colored teeth and peeled the lips farther from around them. She was grinning now. Smiling genuinely, and now it was difficult to remember, for a moment, that she'd ever felt melancholy at all.

The book peeled open readily beneath her fingers. Page one - chapter one - book one. That was an eyebrow-raiser. Her regal light brown brown curved into an upside-down 'u' above her left eye. Her smile faded into determination. Contentment. She wanted to know, for the slightest of seconds, what she was getting into.

The very first page of the Bible announced 'Genesis'.

And she tried the word once more on her tongue.

"... At the temple, he will create an abomination that causes desolation until the end that is decreed ..." (Daniel 9:27)

(Cymria.2.0)

Days had passed. The book was tucked far in the bottom of her purse, hidden beneath deep mounds of note pamphlets and run-out, drying pens she'd never need. She sank into the doctors' chair and awaited the man's arrival. Her husband had gone. Too many meetings. Too many occasions to attend.

Her entire muscular frame lightly trembled beneath the heat and the weight of the burning thoughts. Her stomach was heavy beneath her aching fingers' touch. The apprehension stung her. Drained her of the little piece of energy she required to keep her eyes wide open, and contemplation ran races within the barriers of her mind. 'What do I name it?'

Her thoughts traveled back to the Bible contained in her handbag. The stories had continued to plague her mind from the ancient publication - were the contents of the book factual or just a bunch of fairy tales? However such thoughts rapidly escaped her mind when Dr. Flackner arrived.

Dr. Flackner was a very interesting individual. He had chocolate brown skin that matched his hazel eyes perfectly, however this is where his beauty grew. His buzz-cut hair framed his square head in an attempt to make his face appear larger than it was normally. He had a very long yet flat nose and plump lips. He was also muscular enough to have been some kind of athlete if he wanted to be, however he had decided medicine was his passion so this was what he did.

Nonetheless, Dr. Flackner was the nicest doctor Dannika had ever been given. He always handled her with grace and compassion, a trait he only shared with her husband. "Mrs Snow..." he began. His voice felt like damp molasses rising above the walls of the room and choking her of her breaths. Purging her skull of its every danging, trickling thought. "You have a son now."

It was a thing she wasn't quite capable of processing. The bible was still sitting in the back of her mind like a sore - a plague. Her husband had requested the child be named Jeremiah if, indeed, it had actually been a boy, unlike what they'd planned for. The room was covered in all pink, the trim about its edges golden, and even with the velvet inflects in the metal etched in peach. Girlish. And they had prepared... wrong?

Questions charged her like rusty trains on bent and twisted metal tracks. Second thoughts. Doubts. The baby boy wouldn't be named after the tome in her bag, and actually, from point one, that idea had been poor.

So her voice cut into the air, the word that rolled over her tongue slicing like a dagger into the pink meat of her thickening tongue. It was unlike 'Genesis' or 'Bible'. It didn't bring a softness to her heat, but something like a wall of glass. Something entrapping that closed in on every inch of her frame. Her flesh was jumping now, and every plucked nerve was sensitive to each subtle movement the doctor in front of her made.

She declared something that she was born to regret. Something about as shaky as a toy boat in the mouth of an ocean storm. "Coriolanus. Coriolanus Snow."

11/7/14: (Frank.2.0) - In response to President Snowflake, thank you so much. These chapters are a little old, and after this, if we're still having to do prologues, they will be much better. Thanks again. 'Wow' to you, too!