Lost

"When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:

There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
or, you will be taught how to fly"
-Patrick Overton

*** *** ***

Gregory leans against the Aga, holding the buzzing phone in his hand and staring at the caller ID with a mixture of mild disbelief and concern.  It rings once, twice, thrice, and then he accepts the call.  Dawn creeps across the sashings, working its way into the Manchester House one rosy finger at a time.

"Emily?"

"Gregory?"  Her voice is touched with relief.  It is also taut.  Foreign.  Each passing year she sounds more and more American, less and less like home.

"What hellacious hour is it where you are?" he asks, tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder so that he can remove the kettle from the heavy cast iron stove.

"I'm not in Taiwan anymore."

"I'm not sure that makes it any better,"  lightly chiding, warm, familiar.  Gregory pours hot water over coffee grounds in a french press.  He carries this across the cork-floored kitchen, to a worn table beside a frost-flecked window.  "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"I don't do much of that these days," she admits, looking out her own cold-paned window at the slender (scythe) moon.  Pained.  Thoughtful.

Gregory answers her with silence.  Presses the grounds of his coffee to the bottom of the press, watches the eddies form in the dark liquid.  Waits.

"I just can't seem to find my way home anymore."  There's no lilt to the words, no wry smile to ease the way they go down.  She lays it out bare before him, without hesitation.  

Again, her admission is met with quiet acceptance.  Gregory sits back in his chair, watches the play of light across the window sill.   His expression is distant, darkened and unguarded.  "How do you mean?"

"Oh," she says, sighing the word wearily.  "I don't know.  Delusions of grandeur, questionable new friends, irrational behavior?  Marissa thinks I'm suicidal."

"Are you?"

"No."

"But you know you are lost?"

"Are you asking as my Brother, as my Warder, or as my friend, Gregory?"

"Just a friend."  Always as a friend.  This argument, the digression from her original point, is half a decade old.

Another long pause.  Closed eyes.  Bowed heads.  There is too much distance between them (today) tonight, but it is often (always) this way.

"Come home, Emily," he says, gently.  The word is resonant, shaped like the heartbeat of the small silver oval she wears as a talisman against the lonely nights.

"I... can't," she says, softly.  "Not now."  A heartbeat, two, three.  Then, softer yet, "not yet."

Gregory's brow furrows.  He takes a moment to pour his coffee and consider the shape of her voice, the softness (insistence) to it.  His intuition outstrips her mastery of subterfuge, and for once Emily is caught out, caught unaware.  "Who?"

"I..." Her brow furrows and her mouth purses.  Irritation flashes in her dark blue eyes, then softens and fades.  Emily sighs.  "I don't know just yet."  It is not evasion.  "Though... I... think I may stay long enough to find out this time."  It is honesty.

"Good," he says, and the word speaks volumes between them.  It works its way into the unsettled (lost) and fearful places in her, uncoiled and unfettered as they are in the small hours of the morning.  It rises to meet the dawning day and pushes aside his open concerns.  Good, he says, as if she is not lost, is not struggling.  As if she is nothing more sinister than scared.

It is Emily's turn to answer with quiet.  She chews the inside of her lower lip, but doesn't ask him to elaborate.

"Sleep, Emily," he says, gently.  "We'll talk again soon."

"... Good night, then?" she asks, still uncertain as to how they've gotten back to Good after all the things she'd (confessed) told him.  But they have, and she feels better for it, so perhaps things were well enough for sleeping.

"Good night," he answers.  Greg folds his phone shut and places it on the worn table beside his coffee mug and the french press.  It is awhile before he goes back to his morning routine.  It is awhile before he puts Emily's odd call behind him.  By then, she is likely fast asleep.