Hi #FreeWriters,
A receipt started it.
A warning pulled Elijah in.
A meal called The Neeba Special pulled Neeba back.
Now this week’s #pic1000 image becomes Chapter 3, and I’m starting to think the real question is not where they are.
It’s who they are.
Follow the trail here:
Chapter 1: @wordsofwealth/the-receipt
Chapter 2: @wordsofwealth/chapter-2-the-neeba-special
What do you think is happening here…
The secret in the sausage was not paper.
Neeba had expected paper.
A strip of numbers.
A name.
A place.
Something small enough to swallow if the room turned dangerous.
Elijah had always been practical in emergencies, which was deeply irritating because he was also the sort of person who once tried to caramelise onions with a candle.
But this was not paper.
It was a petal.
Small.
White.
Too delicate to belong inside anything as ugly as a sausage.
For one ridiculous second, Neeba simply stared at it in her palm while the café moved around her.
A chair scraped.
Someone complained about milk.
The man in the grey coat stepped toward her.
Then stopped.
Because Neeba smiled.
Not kindly.
Not warmly.
The kind of smile people mistook for surrender right before learning they had misunderstood the room.
She slipped the petal into her sleeve, lifted the plate with both hands, and turned as though she had nowhere else in the world to be.
The grey coat followed.
Of course he did.
Men like that always followed.
They confused movement with control.
Neeba crossed the café, passed the counter, and dropped the entire Neeba Special into the bin.
The cashier gasped.
Neeba looked back.
“Trust me,” she said, “it was what the sausages wanted.”
Then she walked out into the rain.
By morning she had changed coats, changed shoes, changed names, and crossed into a part of the city that did not appear on tourist maps.
The petal had dried against her skin.
At first she thought it was sugar.
Then ceramic.
Then something stranger.
It was soft like icing, but it did not melt.
Thin like porcelain, but warm when held too long.
And across one side, almost invisible unless tilted toward light, were three shallow marks.
Not letters.
Fingerprints.
Someone had made this by hand.
Not printed.
Not moulded.
Made.
The address came from an old contact who owed her a favour and hated being reminded of it. He sent one line and then vanished from the network as if his phone had suddenly remembered better manners.
A flower workshop.
Third floor.
Blue door.
Do not knock twice.
Naturally, Neeba knocked twice.
Some warnings deserved to be tested.
The woman who opened the door was younger than Neeba expected.
Not young exactly, but too calm for a person who should have been afraid.
Her hair was pinned carelessly at the back of her neck. Her hands were dusted white. Behind her, round boards lay across a long table, each one covered with flowers so delicate they looked grown rather than made.
Roses.
Leaves.
Soft pink petals.
Green stems pressed into pale surfaces with the patience of someone who knew beauty could be used as a hiding place.
The woman looked at Neeba.
Then at the petal in her hand.
Then back at Neeba.
“You took longer than I thought,” she said.
Neeba hated sentences like that.
They made people sound superior without earning it.
“I was followed.”
“You are always followed.”
“That sounded personal.”
“It was observational.”
Neeba stepped inside.
The room smelled of clay, sugar, rain, and something faintly metallic.
On the table nearest the window, the woman had been working on a circular piece. A pale surface. Green leaves. A rose just beginning to form beneath the careful pressure of her tool.
Neeba moved closer.
Slowly.
There it was again.
Recognition.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just a small cold hand closing around the back of her neck.
She had seen this pattern before.
Not in a museum.
Not in a file.
Not in any of the safe houses.
On a plate.
Years ago.
A plate Elijah had broken by accident and spent three weeks trying to repair badly enough that the repair itself became the joke.
The woman watched her notice.
“You remember it,” she said.
Neeba did not answer.
The woman smiled sadly.
“Good. That means they did not take everything.”
Neeba looked at her then.
The room seemed to tilt slightly, though nothing had moved.
“Who are you?”
The woman picked up a small brush and dusted powder from the edge of a rose.
“That depends who is asking.”
“I am.”
“No,” the woman said softly. “Neeba is.”
Silence settled between them.
Outside, rain tapped against the window with patient fingers.
Neeba felt the name move through her.
Once, it had been armour.
Then a warning.
Then a target.
Now, in this woman’s mouth, it sounded like something borrowed.
The woman reached beneath the table and placed a second petal in front of her.
This one was not white.
It was red.
Deep red.
At its centre, written so finely it looked like a flaw in the glaze, was one word.
Not Elijah.
Not Neeba.
A different name.
A name Neeba knew.
A name she had not heard since childhood.
A name she had been told never to answer to.
The woman leaned closer.
Her voice dropped.
“He found the first petal. You found the second.”
Neeba stared at the red petal.
“What happens when we find the third?”
The woman looked toward the unfinished rose on the table.
Then, for the first time, her hands began to tremble.
“You remember who you were.”
