—GODSOURCE—
CHAPTER ONE (v1.02)
Before God
Above the French countryside hung the great red moon, filling nearly a quarter of the cloudless sky, now that she was full. Her crystalline halo girdled the celestial body in a calm orbit.
Three figures knee-deep in fen mist made haste across the earth below. The two on horseback kept their mounts at a canter. The third held pace on foot with her eye on Monaco’s glow just past the horizon, kissing the darkness, unmistakable, even at a distance. The lead rider raised a finger to the halo around the moon, sighting something.
They halted. The second rider rifled through the baggage weighing down his wheezing horse to pass the runner a collapsed gold and limestone device. She drew alongside the first rider, his arm still raised.
“If my mother only knew what I was spending her loans on,” she said to him. He grunted. She sighted the gold and limestone instrument. Her fingers laid on the gears and made small touches to the focus. She set beside his aim, feeling the earthy heat coming off him from the long ride.
She put her eye against the skyglass’s small end. What she saw was bright, and blurry, and deep red. She made a delicate adjustment to the largest lens while the first rider held his arm steady so she could see.
The skyglass focused. Out there in the moon’s rings, among the masonry fragments, shattered archways, hovering cathedral steeples, and jagged ice were angels. The first rider squinted, straining to see something he never could.
