Visitation

“All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right”
--Alexander Pope

*** *** ***

There is a rush of air, a flurry of something unseen and barely felt, and the oppressive feeling of drowning in her sleep.  It is as if a great weight has settled on her chest, too heavy to lift, rendering her unable to inhale.  Emily's lungs burn and her tongue feels fat and lazy in her throat.  Frantic, she claws her way toward consciousness, cresting into wakefulness with a gasp and a start.  Her heartbeat pounds in her ears and her eyes water.

Again, the soft and unnatural draught brushes against her shoulders.  It is too directed to be a breeze, too cold to be the air inside the (un)familiar apartment.  She pulls the borrowed blanket closer around her, runs her fingertips over the cushion of the couch.  It is not bright, but the lights from the city offer a faint illumination.  She has not woken up here, on this couch before; she tells herself it has been a long time (not that long) since she woke up on someone else's couch.

A rustle. Flutter? The down-soft drag of something imagined across her skin.

"Hello?" she calls out, quietly.  Quietly enough to keep from waking the woman with indigo eyes and silk-soft hair asleep in the other room.  Quietly enough that the tentativeness in her voice is cautionary, not worrisome.

A bell-like voice, laughing, light and familiar. Mei-mei, it calls.  Mei-mei, again.  First from over here, then from across the room.  Mei-mei, in the voice of a friend last heard across the telephone line.  Mei-mei. Over. Mei-mei, and over. Until the repeition becomes disorienting, mocking, abstract.

"Hello?" she calls out, again.  Emily wraps the blanket around her, pushes herself to standing, looks around the room for the source of the sound.  But there are only shadows, and the immobile silhouettes of furniture, the smear of reflected light.  "Who's there?"

Cedric had such high hopes for you.  Another familiar voice.  Brother. Warder. Friend. Tinged with sadness, a gentle regret.  What happened to you, Emily?

"This is not funny."  Her voice wis low, tightly controlled and thinly irritated.  Whatever this is -- a bad dream, hallucinations, the onset of insanity -- she is not enjoying it.  Her mouth sets into a thin line, and crossed arms hug the blanket to her more firmly.

"I'm talking to myself," she says, to no one in particular.

Then talk to me, Emily, said the old man's voice, the voice that spoke to her of Faith and Reverence long before she'd learn to set such things apart, aside.

"You're not Gregory, and you are not Cedric.  And I do not want to talk to you."  She exhales, reaches up with one hand to run her fingers through her hair.  Emily folds herself into a corner of the couch, drawing her knees up as she sits.  She is a tight, intertwined ball of blankets and limbs, of confusion and sleeplessness.

Another voice comes, one from closer nights, one from more immediate memories. Do you think it means I was fated to sweep you off your feet and welcome you into a world of mystery and intrigue? His voice is wry, teasing in an understated sort of way.

Emily bows her head, reaches up and around it to cradle the back of her neck with her hands.  She doesn't respond this time, not to Jarod's voice.  Not here, not after the night she's had.

You're...wondering why these funny little coincidences keep happening to you? Why you're meeting the same people over and over again.  The warm eyed man from the park.  Chess.  The game that was a foil for another game altogether.  His voice floods her mind, now, borrowed like all of the others. You may think its just stress. Its not. You may think you're going crazy. You're not.

"Please stop..." She mutters into the fold of the blanket.  Emily's eyes are damp, her fingers hold tight to the tiny curls at the nape of her next.  "Please..."

Gregory, again: Why is it that when I talk to you about believing, you always assume that I'm talking about God?
Emily's own voice: I never said I've stopped believing.
Gregory: But you know you are lost?
Emily: I just can't seem to find my way home anymore.

Emily presses her eyes shut and waits for it to pass. Whatever this is, it cannot last forever.  Whatever storm has found her, it cannot rage on endlessly.  She rocks a little, on the couch, curled into a tight ball, and waits. (This too shall pass.)

The air around her stirs again, impatient eddies and whorls brush up against her, buffet against her like the sea worrying an outcropping of stone.  It is unnatural; there should be no breeze her.  Again the rustle of things unseen. Tense. Angry.

The new words she has learned rush in all at once, swarm her mind in as many new voices and intonations as possible.  Traditions. Qlippothic.  Awakened. Chantry. Orphan -- this is mockingly said. (Repeated.) Maurader. Orphan. Nephandus. Orphan.  The strange sounds mingle with and abrade one another, tumult and twist until they become a singular grating voice.  This is not a voice from her memory, and it chills her to hear.

Two months.  Two months, and what have you learned?  Words.  Nothing more than words.

In a fury, the sounds and senses fade.  Silence screams in her ears, like nails on a chalkboard, and Emily is painfully aware of her own heartbeat.  Her breathing, uneven and shallowed.  Her shortcomings.  She begins to unfurl, unwind from that too tight ball on an unfamiliar couch, to pull the blanket around her as much for comfort as warmth, and to let the serenely reflected city light chase away her nerves and the lingering shadows.

Dawn is not far off as the Orphan lays her head back down to sleep.  And sleep is a long a time coming.