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The second tool Emily had prepared was simple but effective - two rotating cylinders mounted to a heavy metal base with a belt of abrasives looped between them. She connects the belt sander to the steam line and positions the anti-glare loupe at a slight angle to watch the material removal closely.

She once again starts with the smallest gemstone; in case she damages it. The belt whirls to life as Emily’s foot slowly depresses the foot pedal. As she lowers a gem towards the belt to remove the excess metal still clinging to its surface, a bright sea of sparks flies away from her, towards the wall. She slowly increases the pressure on the belt as more and more is cut away to reveal the gemstone.

Suddenly, the spray of sparks dies as quickly as it formed, and Emily feels a strange, unnatural lack of resistance from the gem against the spinning belt. She quickly pulls it away in panic and examines the surface that was in contact with the belt.

Not a single scratch! The visible surface of the gem is perfect, no matter what angle Emily looks at it from.

Hmmm… Why did three of the gems crack from the metal cutting, but the sander doesn’t seem to be able to scratch one? Does a certain amount of pressure need to be exerted to affect it?

Emily moves the gem back to the belt and continues removing the metal until she is left with a perfect teardrop-shaped gemstone, the size of a fingernail. Emily pushes her mask up and switches back to a clear loupe to look closer at the first fully cleaned gem.

It’s glass-like and seems to fade from faint azure-tinged at the edges, to a deep sea of dark blue in the centre. A blue so deep it’s almost impossible to gaze past, instead drawing Emily in, forcefully holding her focus as the abyss seems to call to her.

Deep in the abyss, strands of lightning creep out, reaching for the outside world but fading away before success.

Tearing her eyes away from the centre of the gem, Emily shudders. For a moment she had lost control of her body, enchanted by the gem’s beauty - and that scares her.

The pull she felt from the gem isn’t natural, but not dangerous. She feels this instinctively.

The instinct she felt within herself also isn’t natural. She feels this logically.

Emily shakes her head and chooses to ignore the strange conflicting feelings that are starting to take root in the back of her mind. She places the finished gem into a drawer to remove the distraction as she turns her head to the rest. She slowly cleans off all the metal scraps from the uncracked gems, taking a break in the middle to eat lunch when Herber calls for her.

“That’s a lot of screeching I’m hearing in there, should I be worried?” Herber asks as he takes a sip from the warm broth sitting in front of him.

“Nah I’m fine, just doing a bit of metal work.”

“Really? Because that’s not what your face says, you’ve been glaring at that soup like it stole your wife since you came in. Come on, tell me what’s wrong. I may be old, but I can still be of some use you know.”

Emily raises her eyes from her soup and turns her glare to Herber before sighing and rubbing her temple as she considers how to explain her problem.

“Say hypothetically, you found an object that doesn’t feel like it fits in the world you know. If you want to find out more about it, and you have a feeling that you should, but also a feeling that you should ignore it because it will invalidate what you know about the world. What should you do?”

Herber raises a brow at Emily in amusement, but that subsides as he sees the seriousness on her face.

“Hmm, so you’re asking if I think you should follow logic to discover more or listen to instinct to stay oblivious?”

Emily takes a moment to consider and decides it’s close enough, nodding for Herber to continue.

“In that case, I say why not find out more? If you think it’s the right thing to do, to hell with your instincts! If in the end, what you find strays from the path you know, you can just ignore it and return to your old ways of thinking. Not all paths are for everyone. Your sister chose to become a seamstress, I chose to become a clockmaker, and you… I get the feeling you haven’t quite decided yet.”

Emily shifts uncomfortably at the implication of Herber’s words, but she quietly continues listening to his advice.

“We all follow our own path in life, what you learn from it and choose to pursue are exactly that, a choice. Whether that turns out to be the safety of ignorance, or the impossibility of your new knowledge. Whichever you choose to be your truth doesn’t matter, as long as it is your truth, and I believe you can only decide that after seeing both sides of the equation.”

Herber pauses and finishes off the broth in his bowl before standing up and ruffling Emily’s hair.

“Of course, that is just an old man’s ramblings, and you can also choose to completely ignore me,” He chuckles as he dumps his bowl in the sink and starts walking back to his workshop.

Emily lets Herber’s words sink in, staring at his receding back as she firms her resolve.

Not quite what I was asking, but a choice huh? Will I really be able to ignore it if that gem really isn’t natural… Will I even want to? Heh, if I don’t want to, then why even worry about it, that in itself will be my choice.

“…Hey Dad,” she calls out lightly. “Thanks.”

Herber glances over his shoulder and meets Emily’s eyes. He grins.

“I’m glad I could help.”

***

Returning to her workshop, Emily begins her work with renewed vigour. After an hour, all eight of the unblemished gems are thoroughly cleaned of all metal residue. Emily turns her attention to the three that are damaged.

I don’t really want to try sanding those, it looks like a little pressure will break them… Well, I guess we’ll see what happens if I’m right and decide what to do with the rest after.

Decision made, Emily moves the two larger cracked gems to the drawer with the finished ones and places the remaining fingernail-sized gem in the centre of the workbench. She grabs a small hammer and chisel, placing the chisel’s blade at the point of the cracks’ convergence. With a swift flick of her wrist, a high note rings out followed by a cracking sound. Emily withdraws her hands and watches with rapt attention.

The hairline cracks slowly spread across the surface of the gem, more cracking sounds ring out as some fractures meet forming junctions that quickly burst into life, creating an intricate pattern around the gem. Before the cracks completely engulf the gem, Emily sees the lightning within converging on the junctions before spreading out to the workbench.

Oh shi-

The world goes white.

Emily is sent toppling backwards off her chair as a strong force pushes against her face. Her ears ring with the crackling of lightning as she slowly looks around from the floor, letting her eyes adjust to the brightness.

As she looks at her workbench, she sees a crackling construct of lightning in a shape strangely reminiscent of the gem she just shattered. Swirling in the air around it is a small cloud of metal filings.

“Woah…” Emily’s mouth drops open, as she is mesmerised by the dance of blue and black.

As quickly as it appeared, the lightning fades, and the metal drops to the desk. Emily remains sat on the floor for a few seconds to process what she just saw.

Damn it, that’s just given me more questions than I started with…

Emily groans as she stands up, rubbing her neck. Taking her facemask off, she cautiously approaches her workbench and gazes at the scorch marks etched into the wood. Tracing her finger along the marks, she notices a stark similarity between the marks on the desk and the cracks on the gem before it burst.

Furrowing her brow, Emily takes out a pen and some paper to make notes.

Why did the (lightning?) retain the shape of the gem once it was destroyed?

Why did the (lightning?) only go towards the (junctions?) of cracks, not the other gaps?

Why did I only feel the explosion on my head?

Why did that metal start floating?!

“Hmm, well this can be split into three main issues,” Emily began saying to herself. “The first two questions are on the strange persistence of that pattern. The force against my face is weird but not related to the patterns at all. The metal floating is also strange, maybe a strange reaction between lighting and metal? Wait, my face mask is metal! Maybe the force on my face was from that. Okay, so only two major issues then.”

Emily’s ruminations are interrupted by a thumping on her door.

“Hey Emi! Everything all right? What was that noise?” Herber calls through the door.

“I’m fine, messing about with black powder again!” Emily panics and calls the first excuse that comes to mind. Herber opens the door and sticks his head in. He takes in the scorch marks across the workbench and Emily’s apron, then frowns then sighs exasperatedly.

“Please be more careful when working with explosives, I thought you said you learned your lesson already…”

“Sorry,” she offers weakly while looking away and refusing to meet his eyes.

“At least warn me when you’re going to be working with anything dangerous in the future, please? I almost threw the watch I was working on when I heard that bang.”

“Okay, will do,” Emily replies, finally turning to look at him.

“Honestly,” Herber continues, cracking a grin. “When you started asking me philosophical questions, I thought you’d be doing something more profound than just trying to blow yourself up again.”

Emily glares at him as he chuckles lightly while leaving the room. She turns back to her workbench, letting out a sigh as she looks back at her sheet of questions.

Right, let’s start with the easiest of these to work out. The metal movement can’t be investigated without more lightning, so ignore that for now. The lightning retaining the gem’s shape can’t be looked at without breaking another gem, and I don’t want Dad to think I’m getting into a habit of blowing myself up too much, so ignore that for now too. That leaves you.

She taps the second question on the list with her pen for a few seconds, then opens the drawer and looks at her collection of gems. She picks out the biggest cracked gem and the most similar clean gem, mounting the two side by side on mechanical arms.

She grabs a few more sheets of paper and moves the loupe to look into the cracked gem. Watching closely for the threads of lightning, Emily begins drawing the gem and tracing the paths the lightning follows.

After half an hour of meticulous drawing, Emily has three perspectives of the gem on her paper. The pathways displayed across the page are an intertwined mess. They twist and turn, crossing and petering off at random intervals. But a smile grows on Emily’s face as she gazes at them.

Six points… The ‘lightning’ only ever touches the edge of the gem at these same six points, and a vast majority of it goes to one of these points, with more going to the cracked one. Hmmm, they gather the ‘lightning’ so we’ll call them ‘focal points’ for now.

Nodding at her great naming sense, she calms her excitement and turns to the clean gem. She looked at a cracked gem first to use the crack as an external reference point and now must prove her theory of focal points' existence on an unblemished gem.

An hour later, having lost track of the rotation of the gem midway through her first attempt and having to restart, Emily is sat with another finished diagram of a gem's internal pathways.

Curious, this gem’s the same size as the other but has seven focal points, does that make a difference?

She questions while grinning madly at her confirmed theory.