Star-Crossed

Relax.

This would be easy.  Super-easy, even.  Nothing to it.  Just one vial into the other, no drips, nice and quick, like a bandage.  She checked the time.  It was still five minutes until it would be ready, about five seconds since the last time she'd checked.  Muscles clenched in her back, persistently reminding her that for the past hour, she had been sitting straight-backed in a wooden chair, huddled over a desk, watching two vials for the slightest hint of a color change.  Vial still clutched in hand, she rubbed the haze from her eyes before continuing her vigil.  Stilll blue..a little patch of sky in a bottle.  They looked almost pretty, illuminated by the lamp light.  If only the job that involved them wasn't so important.  She frowned at the little blue vials, accusingly.  So pleasant in its looks, but deep down, not nearly so good, like the sparkly city of Silvermoon or the stars who could afford houses named after seasons.  It made sense, that term, stars.  High, lofty, beautiful, sparkling, always looking down on everyone and nothing to give but their shine.  Tiavara decided then that she hated stars.

Purple!

A spark of purple in one of the vials!  The reaction!  She opened each vial gently, unscrewing the tops as if too much movement would cause the contents to explode.  The purple quickly spread through the blue like wildfire, almost consuming the prior shade completely.  The mouth of the unchanged vial kissed the other, shivering over the rim with the shaking of her hand.  She tipped - too quickly! - back down the vial went.  Again, slowly raising the vial to rest perpendicular to the other, the sky blue drip, drip, dripping into the mixture.  The drops faded into the purple, the color spreading in tendrils, then disappearing in the plum liquid.  Now...all that was left was to wait for the change to brilliant, glowing green.

Any time now...

Any second...

Fifteen minutes of staring later, the cold, creeping realization had finished the trip from her churning stomach to the brain.  It was too dark to be plum.  It was more of a black.  An onyx, really.  She blinked a moment, tapped the vial, corked it, shook the contents, stared at the vial, shook, stared, tapped, stared, held it to the light, stared, shook.

"Aaaaaagh!  Damn it!"

She looked around, waiting for the doctor to jump out of the shadows from some corner of the room, sensing her failure.  He was going to kill her.  More than that, he was going to make her buy the murder weapon, carry it to his office, and then kill her!  She backed out of her chair, pacing around the room, a whirlwind of excuses, lies, escape routes in her head, all a twisted maze leading to dead ends.  She looked at the time again.  A half an hour after the expected reaction time.  He probably already knew...Her head drooped, looking at the black spot of death that was the onyx-filled vial.  No use giving him more of a reason to kill her by being late about it.  Picking up the vials, she trudged out of the room, cursing the stars for her luck.