Chester tapped on the door-frame to the little storefront. A hooded figure, face invisible, opened it, did not move for a moment, and then opened it wider. Chester slipped inside. The room was low, and dark, typical of most buildings in the Pit, the poorest and most pathetic sector in West Clocktown, where the people loved lace, spoons, and spitting at the poor.
Chester, as a general rule, never spit. It was not gentlemanly, regardless of how loosely he defined the term.
“Mister Chester, been a while,” the figure said. The voice was distinctly female, but everything else about it was indefinite, shifting. It sometimes seemed higher, then lower, sounded like an old woman’s rasp, then like a young woman’s titter. The figure herself was thin, waif-like, with tiny hands protruding from the sleeves of an oversized black cloak. Of her face, only her lips, a small pink line, were visible beneath the overlarge hood. It would have been mysterious if it were not so dreadfully mundane.
“I am an important political figure,” Chester replied. He sat on a chair on one side of a rough wooden table.  
“More like the only,” the woman in the cloak replied.
“Quite so.”
“Well, you only come to see me when things are gettin’ bad. How bad?”
She sat at the other side of the table. Chester started pulling at the joints of his fingers.
“I think the answer to that is fairly obvious,” he said evenly.
The woman in the cloak looked at him. Chester was a beautiful man, there was no way around that. He had a feminine sort of face, and a lean, if slightly too tall body, and long hair that he kept in a braid wrapped about his left arm. Ladies did not mind looking at him, though they were often jealous of how effortlessly beautiful he looked at almost all times. Today could be considered an exception. He had not become ugly overnight, that sort of thing would be impossible for a man like him. There was however, something hideous about him, hanging around him like an aura. His pale hair was getting coarse, and his large grey eyes were hooded. There were lines trying to plant themselves deeply on his face. It was clear to an observant eye that something was desperately wrong with the man. The woman in the cloak’s hidden eyes were very observant.
“Oh, I see,” she said carefully.
She stood and looked about the recesses of the low ceilings, where herbs and odd empty cages hung. From one cage she took out a handful of something. She piled them out on the table in front of Chester.
“Do you have any idea what these are?”
He stared at them. “Bird bones.”
Her lips formed an unhappy smile. “From a robin. Would you do me the honor?”
Chester held his hand above the bones, and twisted his fingers so that they were almost at angles to one another. The woman in the cloak’s mouth was a line. A tiny robin stood bobbing where the bones had been. It cocked its head and looked at Chester. Then it fluttered to the woman in the cloak’s shoulder and twittered.
“Hmm,” she mumbled.
She carefully picked up the bird and held her hand out to Chester. It hopped to Chester’s palm and stood uneasily, blinking. Then Chester closed his hand into a fist. There was a wet crunching sound. He opened his palm.
The woman’s lips formed a frown.
“That was a little uncalled for,” she said.
“I agree. It was also less fulfilling than I had initially hoped.” Chester popped his neck. The remains transformed into a flurry of snowflakes, which he blew at the woman in the cloak. She waved her hand at them. Chester then splayed his fingers out again, and the pile of old bones fell back to the table.
“I don’t like theatrics, please,” the woman said.
He sat back in his chair. Dust moats floated through the air.
“You want to know what it said?” The woman in the cloak asked after a long moment.
“I suppose that was the whole purpose in this.”
“It’s killing you.”
Chester fiddled with his braid. “There is quite the observation. I have known that for a while, now.”
“Well, the problem is, it’s killing you, but you aren’t dying. You have any ideas why that is?”
“As far as I can tell, it still needs me. When I cease to be useful to it, it will kill me, I assume.”
She pressed her lips, then said, “It must be an awful way to die.”
“You get accustomed to it after a while.”
“If you already knew all of this, then why come see me, Mister Chester?”
He studied the cloak, noting where it fell, as if it were a face itself. He leaned forward.
“I suppose because you are the closest thing I have ever had to a real mother.”
“Yeah, ole Tabitha just pushed you out of her birth canal,” the woman replied.  
“There is an image I shall treasure forever.”  
“See, you say things like that, but I never know with you, you’ve got so many problems.”
“That offends me deeply,” Chester said, leaning back in the chair. He gave a strange grin though.
“But thank you, Mister Chester. I’m not anything like your mother was to you.”
“Whatever, I would not really know, now would I?”
“I guess not.”
“Bloodbirds,” the woman in the cloak mumbled.
Chester looked at her.
“You read a lot, yeah? Ever come across bloodbirds?”
“That sounds distinctly Eastern,” Chester replied. He drummed his fingers across the table. She rapped his hand sharply.  
“Well, that I am. Bloodbirds are a legend they used to tell bad kids, you know. They’d fly down and scoop up naughty children and drink their blood till they got fat, then they’d explode into flurries of demons.”
“How very quaint.”
“Well, it certainly kept me from being naughty. The point is, sometimes the demons would take people and sort of, live inside their bodies. Let the person control their own actions, unless the demon got hungry.”
Chester looked thoughtful. “It would explain a few things.”
“Yeah, but they’re only supposed to be stories. Course, with the Forest and all, you know, you never know.”
“I would not know.” Chester said. His eyes were dark.
He blinked a few times, and then looked back at her.
“I apologize.”
“What’s wrong with your eyes?”
He shook his head. His braid swayed gently.
“I am not entirely sure what you mean.”
“Your eyes are fading in and out of focus. Come closer to the light,” She stood and motioned the man over to an electric bulb hanging from the ceiling.
“I know the Eastern blood often makes eyes act strange, changing colors due to aura and stuff, but this is a little different,” she said, apparently staring up into his. She gently prodded his face with a tiny hand.
Then she gasped slightly.
“Oh.”
Chester shrugged and sank back into his chair.
“Should I bother to inquire?”
“Chester. I don’t know how to... You’re apparently, as a side effect of whatever is in you, aside from all of the other stuff...”
“You mean aside from the need for blood, the irrational apathy, and the dying without actually physically dying issues at hand, something else is taking place?”
The woman leaned against the edge of the desk. “I’m so sorry, Chester.”
He sighed heavily. “Do not spare any details. I am an avid reader, I can certainly handle the gruesome and grotesque.”
“Have you not been feeding it?” She asked, after a moment of hesitation.
“I try to avoid it when I possibly can. I’ve never been overly fond of eating.”
“It’s been trying to find an alternate food source, then,” the woman said softly.
“That sounds increasingly pleasant,” Chester put his head on his hand and looked up at the woman. “Do tell.”
“The nearest I can tell is, it’s sort of, just, eating your eyesight.”
“You mean that I am slowly going blind as a result?”
“Well, yes. That is exactly what is happening. Except with normal people, going blind will happen all at once, or gradually. This, however can strike randomly, at any time, in any level of intensity. Unpredictable blindness.”
Chester remained silent for a moment, then said, “You’re a terrible oracle.”
“I apologize. I never seem to have any good news for you, Mister Chester.”
He popped his neck.
The woman in the cloak sat down across from him again.
“Please tell Annalise.”
Chester shrugged, and grinned.
“I assume you think there would be a point to that.”
“Not a grand one, no, but she would crawl naked across broken glass for you.”
“A lovely mental image.”
“I mean, she deserves to know the man she loves is, among other things, losing his sight.”
“She would merely become emotional, and I would rather spare myself that.”
“No matter how cruel you are, she’s not gonna wake up someday and not be in love with you.”
“More is the pity for her. She could actually do something with herself.”
“It’s not like you don’t encourage her.”
“I never say anything either way with regards to her,” he said. He stared at the tabletop for a while.
The woman in the cloak was silent. Then she stretched a hand out of the recesses of her sleeve and patted Chester’s hand.
“You delight in a misery noone can save you from. I dearly wish I could, as Annalise does, as Adam did.”
Chester’s mouth formed a frown. He knit his eyebrows together.
“Thank you for your time, oracle.”
He stood.
“I am sorry, Chester. Truly,” the woman in the cloak said. “I wish I had any good news.”
He shrugged as he turned to let himself out of the building.
“I have only a world of darkness to look forward to. To be perfectly honest, nothing much has changed.”
He left.
The woman in the cloak watched him, her mouth frowning. She threw the hood back from her face, red hair flying around her. She was younger than people thought she would be, certainly than Chester thought she was. She tried to stand, and faltered a few times, before remaining seated. Rain started falling on the roof above, tapping gently, almost comfortingly. Her shoulders and back started to shake. She cried, and cried and could not stop if she had wanted to.