❝𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧'𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡
𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐝𝐞❞
↳ james camden was cursed with a fate equal to death. battered and bruised, with one foot already in the grave, she was nothing but persistent.
...but death was a...
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James had heard once before that you always meet twice in life.
It was a german proverb she had picked up from her dad on the day of her mother's funeral.
He was a strange man, so of course, he'd made a strange choice of first words towards the daughter he had never known of. That's just the way her dad was. A bloke who never quite knew what to say to her. Always speaking in riddles. Using foreign proverbs he probably didn't know the meaning of.
James had asked him what it meant then. She had stared up at the man she's never seen before, funny looking with his moustache and wearing a suit that had been way too big on him. She had told him that, too. The funny-looking part.
There was nothing like the boldness of a 7-year-old girl.
He had laughed, given her a crooked smile and told her it had no deeper meaning. Like most other times he was wrong, but James didn't know that back then.
Those words were what she was thinking of as she walked through the station on her way to work on Monday — feet surprisingly light as they hit the cement — and caught sight of a familiar face. The face of a person she's hoped to never see again in her short life.
She stopped abruptly, the man walking behind her barely able to swerve past before they could collide, glaring at her and telling her to be more careful before he waltzed off. James only gave him a half-hearted nod, her head dizzy and spinning and suddenly she felt set back to three years ago.
To a time when hope was still clinging to her ankle — like a foot shackle — holding her down and slowing her steps. To a time when she said the name of Ammit and wouldn't hear the lullaby of death.
It felt like she was 27 again, light-footed and naive, right before her whole world came crashing down and James realised what she'd been mixed up in. Who she's been mixed up with.
The woman's grip around her gym bag tightened as her eyes darted across the station, searching for more familiar faces and signs of a trap, but she found none. Settling back on the man she's last seen three years ago, standing close to one of the small shops selling baked goods and leaning forward on his cane, her eyes narrowed.
He hadn't noticed her yet, wasn't even looking in her direction, instead, he was holding a newspaper, skimming over the title page with a bored expression. With a look behind him, James noticed a plump man and a woman with a ponytail, who may have had stood a few metres to his side but undoubtedly belonged to him.
She recognised the look in their eyes. Full of hope and righteousness, the belief for a cause they deemed good, a shadow of fear looming there.
James gulped as she sidled more to the side of the crowd, eyes never leaving the man with the cane and she couldn't help but wonder...
