Her Grace

Three

Her abdomen twitched in a funny way when it felt the cold dampness on the front of her shirt. There were still tiny drops of water between her fingers from washing the dishes, as the tips of her braid still dripped with warm water onto the towel around her neck, from the hot bath she took after lunch. Grace didn't care. Not even when her phone fell from the edge of the bed and made a loud thud on the ground. Grandmother must have returned back to her room to rest.

   The only source of light was from the screen of her laptop, which held on it, words and highlights of research. Grace had dropped the curtains and sealed her door with a lock, blocking every hole at the edge with a blanket. She held the paper in hand as her desk lamp came on with a flick of the switch, illuminating the room further, but she didn't mind. It was the sun that wasn't needed at that point.
   Grace then placed herself on her knees, between the rough torn up seams of fabric she had been experimenting on the day before, and a pile of clothes that poured from every angle of her room, including the bed. A low screech fell from the lamp as Grace slowly unscrewed the transparent cap, leaving the light bulb bare to the darkness of the room as a puff of dust danced furtively beneath the yellow glow. Although Grace's heart beat loudly in her chest, almost like she could feel it at the tip of her fingers as she held onto Tara's letter, she felt stupid nonetheless. And a little restless.

   Google had said enough about invisible ink and heat, but to Grace and a few others who could be like her, those things only existed in movies. Or so she thought. Her laptop played a video on a low volume, the voice of whoever spoke, filling the air in a faint hushed whisper and even fainter to Grace's ears as she laid on her back, face up, and hands up, placing the paper directly beneath the ray of light from the lamp.
   The science is simple according to Google. 'The heat from a light bulb breaks down the compound, and releases the carbon, which oxidizes and turns brown when in contact with air'. Grace was merely a senior in the world of journalism and while her work stood on a thick line of research, science was the last thing she would have imagined to make her mind understand.

It was a miracle the exposed needle on the ground didn't pierce her skin from where she laid and even if it did, Grace would probably have ignored it.
   Nothing happened at first, her eyes squinting in pain as the light pierced deep into her sight, almost filling her mind with heat but in an attempt to move her head away, to free her eyes from the bright torture, her hands had moved up further a bit, letting the heat of the bulb hit the paper directly. It was slow, something Grace didn't catch until she looked back with her hands still raised.

       "Grace?" Her grandmother called from the other side of the door, filling the quiet and fully occupied space of her room.

Grace didn't answer, her eyes widened at the magic-like form that unfolded before her. It wasn't her heart she felt this time, but her pulse. It beat against her flesh as the blood flowed a different way down her arm with how it was raised. Her arms shook as the pressure spread through her veins and into her chest.

   Grace's mind fell back to the present, and with a sharp invasion, grandmother's knock on her door jolted her to the side, causing her body to collide with the lamp as the paper fell from her hand. The lamp came upon her laptop, causing both to crash, but thankfully not making a loud noise as they fell onto a pile of clothes.

       "Grace?! Are you inside there?!" Grandmother asked loudly through the door, her knocks growing harder and louder. She stood to her feet and ran to pull the door open.

       "Yes? I'm fine," Grace said after unlocking the door, causing the blanket she placed on top of it, to fall. Grandmother opened her mouth to speak, but the heat from within brushed onto her face, and caused her to pause as her sight took in Grace's room.

       "W..."
Grace looked behind her, where the eyes of her grandmother were pinned on. The sight was concerning, but Grace only looked back at her grandmother with a smile.

       "I was trying something," Grace merely said. "Is everything okay?"

       "I'm stepping out for a while. Is there anything you need me to get for you?" Grandmother asked, a frown on her face as her eyes went from the room to her granddaughter, then back to the room.

       "Aren’t you supposed to be resting?" Grace said, widening the door further as she stepped out. She felt the air in the corridor, soon realizing her room was in fact, deprived of air.

       "Just for a while. It's not like I broke a bone,"

       "You will if you don't rest," Grace said. Grandmother only hissed as she muttered to herself in her language, why she bothered asking what her granddaughter wanted. Grace only watched the woman carefully walk down the stairs, obviously tired of the pestering about her leg. She felt the need to annoy her grandmother further. "Take one step at a time okay?"

   Grace laughed at the louder hiss from her grandmother, the smile on her face only falling when she pulled the curtains aside, letting light and air pour into the room at the same time. The light bulb of the lamp was off due to the plug pulling out of the socket with force as it fell, but Grace's eyes stayed glued to the paper. She saw her name, but the usual blankness wasn't blank any more. She could see the silhouette of words on the back, literally daring her to pick the paper up and read the words that had appeared. Grace did.

   This exactly, is Tara's handwriting, Grace thought to herself. The alphabets weren't joined in anyway as her own written words would have, standing gauntly on its own, but neatly, and free of any spill of ink. Google did list out the things needed for such experiment. Ink wasn't involved. Tara was someone Grace usually referred to as a 'guru', but still, it was weird to finally realize the extent of it. The letter didn't have up to a hundred words but to Grace, it was enough.