Jekyll's Jade - A Quaint Overture

Jekyll’s Jade

Devices Unbecoming

It had been that autumn when London had become a world of wet, mingled grays beneath grim skies; what little color there remained withering into fond memory or lingering upon the canvas of the artist determined to capture rolling blue, nodding greens and brighter seasons.

It was, too, the autumn when one Jessica Jekyll had taken to curiosity; at first distant, brief whims before more assembled thoughts led the way to the looming neighborhood of tall shelves and the aged tomes upon them. Firm fingers and firming will grasping the faded leather in search of answers to half formed, gestating questions.

Jessica Jekyll, blue eyed beneath blonde and good statured, mused and let her thoughts wander in new, odd directions; the stiff glide of her pen upon the paper and Earl Grey tending her lips as she entertained what others might disdain, consider where others might cough. It was her father, in his good mind and words, who had so kindled this direction, and the liberty of her mind’s ways, though even the aged doctor might sigh if even he thought his daughter’s musings sincere.

But, with passing months and furtive, quiet excitement, they became sincere...

Her labour had birthed much work of ink and paper; thoughts, observations and theories if ever what she had considered be made real, some way. It was not that these conclusions commanded obsession; Ms. Jekyll entertained friends, theater and rich correspondence in her learned habits, but come the quiet, her tentative desire to know more of what she had found grew louder.

It came finally with a quiet decision and secret resolve. Guided, if unsure, she saw vessels of glass assemble in rich arrays in her secretive place; their lengths and swells tangled by tubes and cradled in metal. But, this was only a glimpse, actions beholden to a deeper design.

It took time and repetition, but soon the hidden symphony bore meaning and beauty; quick eyes finding a smart of cool pleasure in the rushing, ebbing and sighing of her devices – even then, only part of a greater device in what she could only utter to herself, and her journal.

It had been almost a year since that autumn when her silent experimentation's and wrangling led her to a threshold; its approach unmistakable, though none the less ambivalent in the path beyond there.

Jessica was at once herself: the respected, considered and learned daughter of the Jekyll estate; its heiress, firm and coolly tempered mistress in all her habits. But, Jessica was again herself: frustrated, drained by the clinging of her world and wishful of some advent – some answer, some solution to the mysteries and riddles of herself.

Could she truly bring herself to plunge such places? Press forward and readily steep herself in the unformed, but tantalizing promise of what discovery may lie ahead?

It was a conflicted, painful labour of mind and soul, but this once whimsical problem was given edge that night. That night when the red had first splashed into the beaker to its last drop; more so when a hand borne spatula had scooped a measure of a certain fine and rare salt before showering it into the red.

What had proceeded was remarkable, and enticing as the theory, so long page hidden and mind veiled, was made real before her. The salt reacting with the red as a rich, thick frothing consumed what lay inside the beaker: the bubbles rising from a liquid that turned from red to rich purple and then brightened to a still dark blue before, and with a watching, memorable smile, brightening to a vivid, golden yellow as the effervescent transformation stopped.

It was here that, as the bubbles and froth parted and receded to nothing, that the golden pool was left to mirror her almost mesmerized features. The world silent and pregnant with decision, it was Jessica who stood stiffly before her creation. Caught by the inner conflict, she tentatively and coldly drew a patient confidence. Hands closing around the glass as she raised it, the young woman closed her eyes and drank until there was no more; the empty vessel meeting the desk again gently as Ms. Jekyll composed herself.

It would be only minutes before a odd, growing stirring within pulled her senses; and only moments later before, to a growing world and dwindling, wavering self that she collapsed to a cold, carpeted floor below.

Minutes would pass and the disheveled figure would awake but, before any inevitable revelations that would follow that night, it would remain that the woman wakened upon the floor would see the world with jade eyes...

Fin.