Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 237

This week's picture prompt was created by Softyrider62, a Swedish digital artist on DeviantArt. He has some incredible art, very science fiction influenced. He calls this Cocoon Worlds. 

I've gone a bit over this week, but I can't edit it anymore without it losing its essense. It's another Tricky short, exploring some ideas. It's been a few weeks since she's featured. The last time was back in Week 231.

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How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Spying on a spy

Tricky didn’t often entertain the notion of existence, it seemed a bit poncey and philosophical, something Nathan would do, but not Tricky, oh no. She was too busy being IN existence, rather than fussing about the way and what of it. But this was here in front of her and gave her pause for thought.

She wasn’t quite sure how she’d got here. She’d followed that Stanislav through into what she thought was another time. She was still baffled how someone like him even knew such things existed. She’d yet to work that out, although she was gathering her suspicions. He was one of those that liked to be all mysterious – or pretend to be. He thought of himself as Russian, being as that was his ancestry. Russia had been a particularly large area of land they called a country back before the shift had dissolved them all. Apparently people from there were all dark and dazzling and reckoned themselves. At least Stanislav did.

Him and his stupid old world costumes; he thought he could stun her and mess with her, but he didn’t fool her, she knew what he was – an arse. And unfortunately she’d met plenty of those.

But did she dare admit that he might have managed to catch her off guard? Tricky wasn’t one to admit anyone getting the better of her, but this place – if it was a place – was something she had yet to understand.

They were definitely other times, but they were encased in egg shaped bubbles. But she always thought times ran parallel or linked into other times, not separate units.

They were also transparent.

Tricky peered into one, and could clearly see the world inside: sky, bird life, clouds, landscape. Yep, they were other times. But it was like looking through one of her crystal spyglasses. Was that it? Was that what these were? Were these Stanislav’s? Had Tricky tripped into one of his stashes?

But these were huge, bigger than life size. How was that possible?

She stepped up to one and touched it. Yes, it was solid. She rested her palm on it and brought the nasty piece of work to mind; his ridiculous top hat and his pompous tails, let alone that horrible walking stick. He didn’t use it for walking, oh no, he’d found another use for that as she’d found out when they had held her in those tunnels. Ugh, how she hated him!

The egg responded and the world inside swirled, tinting everything red to reflect her anger. And there he was bigger than life with that grubby little attempt at a beard on his chin, the tuft of it sticking out like a twat.

He was laughing, but she couldn’t see at what. It was hard to see him properly, being that he was blown up to about ten times his normal size. How did he use these things? If they were his things.

Then she heard the laughter and spun round. There he was just a few feet away. She glanced back at the egg shaped crystal glass, which had returned to its original image. Had it just been some kind of reflection? She didn’t know.

‘Clever lady, you worked it out.’ His patronising tones irked her.

‘Doesn’t take much to get the better of you.’ She grinned a fake smile at him.

‘But what do you plan to do now we are here?’

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’

‘Is it now? I think not.’ He laughed again, spun and vanished.

Shit! How the hell did he do that so fast?

Tricky took a breath and blew out hard, snapping her fingers. She caught a trace of his energy before it passed through. She reached out her own to coil round it, gathering it in. She took another breath and hummed. It was enough to enlarge it. She shivered as it covered her; its turquoise colouring giving her a chill.

Then she took out a piece of obsidian, germwort and creasy, and placed them one by one in her palm. She closed her fingers over them. They crackled, and the air moved around her. She gently blew across her fist and the sound increased until she saw a split in the air. She moved her body sideways against it and blew on her knuckles again, feeling it give, letting her through into bright sunlight.

She saw a road in front of her. It was familiar. She’d run down it not long ago. Then it had been to get away from him, now she needed to catch him.

But if she knew where she was, it wouldn’t take much to know where he was.

It was time to get stealthy – and tricky. Oh yes, she’d show him a whole new meaning to her name.