Harper stood perfectly still on the curb for a long moment. Panic, cold and sharp as broken glass, fluttered at the base of her throat. “Shrinking.” Arthur’s voice whispered in her memory, vibrating with that familiar, unforgiving disappointment. “You are shrinking, Harper. Fear makes you small. Stop looking for the things you lost. Use the things you have.” She closed her eyes behind her dark glasses. She took a slow, deliberate breath, letting the icy, exhaust-tainted air fill her lungs entirely. She forced the panic down, packing it into a tight, dense box in the center of her chest.
She raised her hands. She held her arms slightly away from her body, hands open, fingers slightly curled, hovering just above waist height. It was a protective guard, a modified grappling stance designed not to fight, but to absorb a blunt-force impact before it crushed her torso. She took her first step. It felt incredibly, profoundly dangerous. To a sighted person, walking is a subconscious act. To Harper, right now, every single stride was a blind trust fall into an abyss. Her sneaker touched down. Solid concrete. Step two. Step three. She walked slowly, sliding her feet forward rather than picking them up, using the thin rubber soles of her cheap shoes as rudimentary, desperate sensors. The concrete felt rough, gritty with sand, wet leaves, and urban grime.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Her toes snagged on something heavy. A sharp pain shot through her big toe. A metallic rattle echoed in front of her. A trash can blown out of position by the wind. She sidestepped it, her hands brushing the wet, freezing metal. She kept going. She felt the air current shift against her wet cheek. A sudden draft of wind pulled at her jacket from the right side. The building line had ended. She was at the corner. She stopped, turning her head slightly toward the street. She listened, straining her ears past the hiss of the rain. She could hear the rhythmic swish-swish of tires on wet asphalt. The traffic on 7th Street was moving left to right. That meant the parallel light was green. The pedestrian signal would be chirping, but the crosswalk speaker at this intersection had been broken since August. She had to cross now.
She stepped off the curb. The transition from the sidewalk to the street was jarring. The asphalt was slicker, deeply crowned in the middle to allow runoff. She picked up her pace, forced to trust her internal metronome. She counted her steps across the crosswalk, praying she was walking in a perfectly straight line. The geometry of the void is unforgiving. If she veered even three degrees too far left, she would wander into the active intersection. Three degrees too far right, and she would walk blindly into the rear bumper of a parked car. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Her lead foot slammed violently into the opposite curb. She hadn’t lifted her leg high enough. The impact sent a sharp, agonizing jolt of pain straight up her shinbone. She stumbled hard, pitching forward, her hands instinctively flying out to break her fall. Her bare palms slapped against cold, wet, abrasive brick. She gasped, catching her balance just in time, pressing her forehead against the rough masonry of the pharmacy wall. Her heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her knees shook. She had made it across the first street. She still had two more blocks to go.
