Aura Photography

[jack]

I barely had to try, the photos fell magically into place. The orange red sky quickly grew to overwhelm the image, until I had bold streaks of colour sliding across it, toward a small, bold silhouette of her head and shoulders.

Then the streaks of gold began to congeal into shapes, and one vast shape screaming down across the picture to envelope her. Different angles and different pictures showed the shape as different things. A broad ship, bucking wildly as streaks of canon-light fled sideways from its ports, blurry sails twisting in the sun rays above it.

An orange golden dragon, long as a street, bulky and elegant, made of thousands of parallel streaks… a splodge here were claws, and a stroke here wings, and here the silhouette of a head, mawing down to engulf the black silhouette of the woman.

A train, an old fashioned brass locomotive streaked with metallic pipes and golden piping, spewing hot plasma ash from two chimneys, and a couple of flares suggesting many many wheels stretching into the distance, and at the front a pointed cow-catcher driving hard towards…

I shuddered. But I still didn't know what this thing was. Maura might have sensed it, before asking me for a reading, but it might be something new coming, or something that had been with her all her life, she had never yet admitted. I liked her, and didn't know if I hoped this showed some long-standing tragedy in her own personality — which would be sad, but probably seem normal — or a disaster approaching, which would vindicate my positive impression of the lady, but I did not relish admitting to her…

xxx.