She trailed her fingers over the first image chiseled into the stone: that of a man. The next depicted the planet, the next a woman holding a knife, then the fountain, a plant, a river. She struggled to understand what the images were trying to tell her. She reached the beginning again and looked around the chamber, perplexed.
The thrones caught her attention, and she crossed to them. One bore the same image of a man, the second of the woman. In the middle of the queen's throne was a low stone box she mistook at first glance to be the world's most uncomfortable lumbar support. When she saw the king's throne had no such stone structure, she returned to the woman's and touched the box.
It clicked, and she jerked back. The top opened of its own volition, revealing an aged stone dagger with dulled edges and a chipped stone hilt. She withdrew it and hefted it. It was as heavy as it looked, as long as her forearm. She held it with two hands and retreated to the fountain, unable to shake the instinct that said the dagger on the fountain was the same.
She set the knife down on the edge and circled the fountain again until she'd reviewed all three of the pictographs where the female figure held a dagger. She almost slapped herself when she realized how simple it was.
The fountain contained instructions for making it work.
"Dhjan, dhjan nishani, dagger. Nishani's blood." She looked at the stone dagger and then at the fountain uneasily. There was no way she could fill it with blood!
She looked at the instructions again and saw the queen depicted with one drop of what she assumed was blood.
Kiera stepped back and spun around, feeling overwhelmed. She felt like panicking and running to her room and never leaving! Instead, she drew a deep breath and approached the fountain. Her hands shook as she gripped the heavy stone dagger, and she leaned against the fountain. With another deep breath, she ran her thumb down the jagged edge of the dagger. Stinging made her curse, and she grimaced as she held her thumb over the fountain. She watched the crimson drop form, stretch, then fall into the fountain.
She leaned over the edge to see the stone tile at the bottom of the fountain absorb her blood. She sucked her thumb and stepped back, waiting for something to happen. According to the pictures, there would be plants. Yet there was no earth or place for them to grow around her.
A long, silent moment passed. She began to think she'd misunderstood the pictures when a green sprout appeared at the center of the fountain. It grew to her height as she watched and then bloomed into an orange-pink flower the size of her head, shriveled and died, and returned. A second flower blossomed and remained.