Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 305

This week's picture prompt is one of my own. And if this looks familiar in some way, it's because it is at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire (and I'm told by my family that live close by it's pron: lay-cock), where they filmed some of the Harry Potter movies. This room was from the scene about the Mirror of Erised - where Harry speaks to Dumbledore. I thought it would make a nice prompt. 

A Tricky snippet, which I may or may not use. It worked perfectly for where I am at. The last time I wrote a Tricky piece for Mid-Week Flash was Week 302. 

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Suspicions

Tricky waited nervously. She had no idea what was going to happen next and to put it mildly was terrified. No one seemed to know anything about what others might know and whether their knowing influenced another knowing, and if no one knew who knew, then what? A tangled web that Adric had spun, and had his father caught up in, though she knew The Baron could get himself out of it easily enough. Oh how she hated all this.

She paced the empty ancient room, which had once been furnished by the impossibly rich, the overlords of the time before the shift. Just this bare shell showed their opulence: the stonework on the floor, the arches on the walls, even the vaulted ceiling. But now it was just an anti-chamber to a larger system of rooms that made up this mangled palace. No one quite understood how the different building and landmasses had been thrown together, and why ones like these survived and remained intact, while others had fallen and crumbled. No one knew anymore, too much had been lost, they could only shore up what they had and maintain it.

Tricky looked out of the windows, which had glass intact though cracked in places – a luxury that didn’t exist anymore. She watched the river water flowing just a few feet below. How it hadn’t infected this place with its dampness she didn’t know. They had all sorts of tricks to stop it back then and clearly someone still knew how otherwise this room would be covered in mould. She’d seen it in multiple buildings on the outskirts. It depended if people valued a particular building, whether they would save it.

Tricky wanted to sniff at those living here, how they were the new overlords, but she couldn’t quite. They were trying to manage so many different aspects all running simultaneously, while trying to keep people safe, especially from the likes of the network.

Tricky shuddered. She thought the time of political and powerful threats were over for the people. The shift had seen the end of it, but here they were again, worrying what someone might be capable of, or might do just to gain … what? Control over others? Control of a landmass? What did they think it offered them? Did they see the work that went into trying to keep it going and safe? But they didn’t care about working and safe, they only cared about having possessions, about gorging themselves on objects and things that didn’t belong to them. She hated them. She felt the rage and frustration of being caught up in their road of destruction. She wanted no part of it, but they had decided she was the crux of it; they wanted to claim her knowledge and her inherited possessions for their cause. The rancid, corrupt minds of inflated egos and ugly intentions. She wanted to see them dead.

She heard footsteps outside – hard not to on the echoey stone floors that ran through this place – and took a deep breath. Who would be coming through that door, friend or foe? And would she know the difference?