The sed tool Emily had prepared was simple but effective - two rotating ders mouo a heavy metal base with a belt of abrasives looped between them. She ects the belt sao the steam line and positions the anti-gre loupe at a slight ao watch the material removal closely.

  She once again starts with the smallest gemstone; in case she damages it. The belt whirls to life as Emily’s foot slowly depresses the foot pedal. As she lowers a gem towards the belt to remove the excess metal still ging to its surface, a bright sea of sparks flies away from her, towards the wall. She slowly increases the pressure on the belt as more and more is cut away to reveal the gemstone.

  Suddenly, the spray of sparks dies as quickly as it formed, and Emily feels a strange, unnatural ck of resistance from the gem against the spinni. She quickly pulls it away in panid examihe surface that was in tact with the belt.

  Not a single scratch! The visible surface of the gem is perfeo matter what angle Emily looks at it from.

  Hmmm… Why did three of the gems crack from the metal cutting, but the sander doesn’t seem to be able to scrate? Does a certain amount of pressure o be exerted to affect it?

  Emily moves the gem back to the belt and tinues removing the metal until she is left with a perfect teardrop-shaped gemstohe size of a fingernail. Emily pushes her mask up and switches back to a clear loupe to look closer at the first fully ed gem.

  It’s gss-like and seems to fade from faint azure-ti the edges, to a deep sea of dark blue in the tre. A blue so deep it’s almost impossible to gaze past, instead drawing Emily in, forcefully holding her focus as the abyss seems to call to her.

  Deep in the abyss, strands of lightning creep out, reag for the outside world but fading away before success.

  Tearing her eyes away from the tre of the gem, Emily shudders. For a moment she had lost trol of her body, ented by the gem’s beauty - and that scares her.

  The pull she felt from the gem isn’t natural, but not dangerous. She feels this instinctively.

  The instinct she felt within herself also isn’t natural. She feels this logically.

  Emily shakes her head and chooses to ighe strange flig feelings that are starting to take root in the back of her mind. She pces the finished gem into a drawer to remove the distra as she turns her head to the rest. She slowly s off all the metal scraps from the uncracked gems, taking a break in the middle to eat lunch when Herber calls for her.

  “That’s a lot of screeg I’m hearing in there, should I be worried?” Herber asks as he takes a sip from the warm broth sitting in front of him.

  “Nah I’m fine, just doing a bit of metal work.”

  “Really? Because that’s not what your face says, you’ve been gring at that soup like it stole your wife since you came in. e on, tell me what’s wrong. I may be old, but I still be of some use you know.”

  Emily raises her eyes from her soup and turns her gre to Herber before sighing and rubbiemple as she siders how to expin her problem.

  “Say hypothetically, you found an object that doesn’t feel like it fits in the world you know. If you want to find out more about it, and you have a feeling that you should, but also a feeling that you should ig because it will invalidate what you know about the world. What should you do?”

  Herber raises a brow at Emily in amusement, but that subsides as he sees the seriousness on her face.

  “Hmm, so you’re asking if I think you should follow logic to discover more or listen to instinct to stay oblivious?”

  Emily takes a moment to sider and decides it’s close enough, nodding for Herber to tinue.

  “In that case, I say why not find out more? If you think it’s the right thing to do, to hell with your instincts! If in the end, what you find strays from the path you know, you just ig aurn to your old ways of thinking. Not all paths are for everyone. Your sister chose to bee a seamstress, I chose to bee a aker, and you… I get the feeling you haven’t quite decided yet.”

  Emily shifts unfortably at the implication of Herber’s words, but she quietly tinues listening to his advice.

  “We all follow our own path in life, what you learn from it and choose to pursue are exactly that, a choice. Whether that turns out to be the safety of ignorance, or the impossibility of your new knowledge. Whichever you choose to be your truth doesn’t matter, as long as it is your truth, and I believe you only decide that after seeing both sides of the equation.”

  Herber pauses and finishes off the broth in his bowl before standing up and ruffling Emily’s hair.

  “Of course, that is just an old man’s ramblings, and you also choose to pletely ignore me,” He chuckles as he dumps his bowl in the sink and starts walking back to his workshop.

  Emily lets Herber’s words sink in, staring at his reg back as she firms her resolve.

  Not quite what I was asking, but a choice huh? Will I really be able to ig if that gem really isn’t natural… Will I even want to? Heh, if I don’t want to, then why even worry about it, that in itself will be my choice.

  “…Hey Dad,” she calls out lightly. “Thanks.”

  Herber gnces over his shoulder as Emily’s eyes. He grins.

  “I’m gd I could help.”

  ***

  Returning to her workshop, Emily begins her work with renewed vigour. After an hour, all eight of the unblemished gems are thhly ed of all metal residue. Emily turtention to the three that are damaged.

  I don’t really want to try sanding those, it looks like a little pressure will break them… Well, I guess we’ll see what happens if I’m right and decide what to do with the rest after.

  Deade, Emily moves the twer cracked gems to the drawer with the finished ones and pces the remaining fingernail-sized gem in the tre of the workbench. She grabs a small hammer and chisel, pg the chisel’s bde at the point of the cracks’ vergence. With a swift flick of her wrist, a high ns out followed by a crag sound. Emily withdraws her hands and watches with rapt attention.

  The hairline cracks slowly spread across the surface of the gem, more crag sounds ring out as some fractures meet f juns that quickly burst into life, creating an intricate pattern around the gem. Before the cracks pletely engulf the gem, Emily sees the lightning within verging on the juns before spreading out to the workbench.

  Oh shi-

  The woes white.

  Emily is sent toppling backwards off her chair as a strong force pushes against her face. Her ears ring with the crag of lightning as she slowly looks around from the floor, letting her eyes adjust to the brightness.

  As she looks at her workbench, she sees a crag struct of lightning in a shape strangely remi of the gem she just shattered. Swirling in the air around it is a small cloud of metal filings.

  “Woah…” Emily’s mouth drops open, as she is mesmerised by the dance of blue and bck.

  As quickly as it appeared, the lightning fades, and the metal drops to the desk. Emily remains sat on the floor for a few seds to process what she just saw.

  Damn it, that’s just given me more questions than I started with…

  Emily groans as she stands up, rubbing her neck. Taking her facemask off, she cautiously approaches her workbend gazes at the scorch marks etched into the wood. Trag her finger along the marks, she notices a stark simirity between the marks on the desk and the cracks on the gem before it burst.

  Furrowing her brow, Emily takes out a pen and some paper to make notes.

  Why did the (lightning?) retain the shape of the gem o was destroyed?

  Why did the (lightning?) only go towards the (juns?) of cracks, not the aps?

  Why did I only feel the explosion on my head?

  Why did that metal start floating?!

  “Hmm, well this be split into three main issues,” Emily began saying to herself. “The first two questions are orange persistence of that pattern. The force against my face is weird but not reted to the patterns at all. The metal floating is alse, maybe a strange rea between lighting aal? Wait, my face mask is metal! Maybe the fory face was from that. Okay, so only two major issues then.”

  Emily’s ruminations are interrupted by a thumping on her door.

  “Hey Emi! Everything all right? What was that noise?” Herber calls through the door.

  “I’m fine, messing about with bck pain!” Emily panid calls the first excuse that es to mind. Herber opens the door and sticks his head iakes in the scorch marks across the workbend Emily’s apron, then frowns then sighs exasperatedly.

  “Please be more careful when w with explosives, I thought you said you learned your lesson already…”

  “Sorry,” she offers weakly while looking away and refusing to meet his eyes.

  “At least warn me when yoing to be w with anything dangerous iure, please? I almost threw the watch I was w on when I heard that bang.”

  “Okay, will do,” Emily replies, finally turning to look at him.

  “Holy,” Herber tinues, crag a grin. “When you started asking me philosophical questions, I thought you’d be doing something more profound than just trying to blow yourself up again.”

  Emily gres at him as he chuckles lightly while leaving the room. She turns back to her workbench, letting out a sigh as she looks back at her sheet of questions.

  Right, let’s start with the easiest of these to work out. The metal movement ’t be iigated without more lightning, so ighat for now. The lightniaining the gem’s shape ’t be looked at without breaking anem, and I don’t want Dad to think I’m getting into a habit of blowing myself up too much, so ighat for now too. That leaves you.

  She taps the sed question on the list with her pen for a few seds, thehe drawer and looks at her colle of gems. She picks out the biggest cracked gem and the most simir gem, mounting the two side by side on meical arms.

  She grabs a few more sheets of paper and moves the loupe to look into the cracked gem. Watg closely for the threads of lightning, Emily begins drawing the gem and trag the paths the lightning follows.

  After half an hour of meticulous drawing, Emily has three perspectives of the gem on her paper. The pathways dispyed across the page are an iwined mess. They twist and turn, crossing aering off at random intervals. But a smile grows on Emily’s face as she gazes at them.

  Six points… The ‘lightning’ only ever touches the edge of the gem at these same six points, and a vast majority of it goes to one of these points, with moing to the cracked one. Hmmm, they gather the ‘lightning’ so we’ll call them ‘focal points’ for now.

  Nodding at her great naming sense, she calms her excitement and turns to the gem. She looked at a cracked gem first to use the crack as aernal reference point and now must prove her theory of focal points' existen an unblemished gem.

  An hour ter, having lost track of the rotation of the gem midway through her first attempt and having to restart, Emily is sat with another finished diagram of a gem's internal pathways.

  Curious, this gem’s the same size as the other but has seven focal points, does that make a difference?

  She questions while grinning madly at her firmed theory.