She was dead without it. No seer survives without their third eye. Her pupils shifted. Left. An unravelling stitch. Right. It was rolling away from her. Left. The stitch tore as she reached for it. Right. She grazed the wet blood dripping from the optic nerve. She couldn’t reach it in time. Instead all she grasped was rotting flesh. The thin string of fibre bathed itself in red as its last row of stitching snapped. There was no time to scream. No space to writhe. The already black surroundings seemed to darken. Was night approaching? Or was pain smothering her vision? Left right left right it all looked the same. Only touch could help her now. The roots of pain were expanding, jutting branches of white-hot pricks all the way to her neck. An ugly cry begging to see sun. But to speak was to die. They’d discover she was alive, and she was only a hand’s stretch away from the end of tunnel.
Wasn’t she?
Her fingers dug into dirt, her movements haphazard. A crawling toddler reaching for her mother’s touch.
Crawling turned to dragging, her cramping hands slowing down like the last creak of a lever. Her legs were dead weight, carrying more and more dirt each time she pushed. It would be easier to die. To give up. She knew this. But the taut pull of her third eye was unbreakable. So she crawled to that invisible sun, her eyes desperately searching for its missing third.
