Time and opportunity

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.
-Hippocrates

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June 3, 2010 -- St. James, Chicago

This is the girl who comes in with the halflight, head covered, head bent as she finds her way to the alcove.  Every day, either with the prime or in the gloaming, to light three candles at the alcove.  Her hand travels from one votive to another, lips shaping the words of a silent prayer: This is for the nameless, for the innocent, for the ones left behind.

This morning there is another, a single amber glass lifted from its weathered place.  A small, folded piece of paper slipped underneath it, down into the round groove in the wood.  This makes the glass sit slightly off level, so she presses down on it with her fingertips until it seems that it might stay.  This flame she lights without any words offered up to Him, without any plea beyond the flicker-flame's dance.

This time there are four lights dancing when Emily leaves St. James.  She will not be back for awhile.

June 4, 2004 -- Porto Cristo, Mallorca

"Emily?"

The voice on the line was barely audible above the bump of the bass line and the voices milling around her.  "I can't hear you, love.  Gimme a moment."

Emily swayed her way to the edge of the beach party, her steps almost as unsteady as the slur of accents across her tongue meddled with whatever red-flavoured beverage was disguising the taste of cheap alcohol.  She knew the voice; even well beyond tipsy she could always place Greg's voice.

"Where are you?"

"Mallorca."

"Emily, please come home."

"Mmmmmmmm," she rolled the sound thoughtfully over her tongue for an over-long moment, until it tasted funny, until it made her teeth resonate and distracted her.  The lanky teen brushed her loose curls out of her face and looked out over the dark water.  The city lights cast thin, jagged streams of color over its inscrutable face. The moon threw a brighter wake.  It was smeared and smudged by the swaying waves.  It made her laugh.

"Emily?"

"Poppet?"

"Come home."

"No."

There you are...  Someone settled on the bench behind her, wrapping warm arms around her middle and drawing her back against him.  There was the scrape of a five-o'clock-shadow on her bare neck, and the murmur of words folded into her ear, half purr and half lost sound.  She laughed again, light  and untethered, as if it wasn't quite grounded to her center somehow.  "I have to go," she said.  "I'll call you later."

June 5, 2007 -- Київ, Україна (Kyïv, Ukraïna)

The door to their third story flat opened --

"Where have you been?"

-- and closed again, a bit more solidly than she had intended.  Emily toed her shoes off in the entryway, ran her fingertips through her hair.  Her mouth pursed slightly, held that disgruntled expression for a moment before she replied.

"Out."

"With?"

"Kat."  She gestured futilely with one hand, then rammed both deep into the pockets of her leather jacket.  Her fingers were lightly curled into fists.  They didn't stay there, though.  As soon as they'd settled, one hand came back out again to reach up and rub at the back of her neck.  She couldn't stand still, stay still, be still; the girl had to fidgit with something, pace, move.

"Do you know what time it is?  Three in the morning, Emily.  Kat's been home for over an hour."

"Oh."

"Oh?  Where were you?"

"Does it even matter?" she asked, wearily.  It was an old fight, years old, and it was getting neither of them anywhere to rehash it at three in the morning.  The too-bright sheen to her eyes wasn't helping, she knew, but the girl hardly cared anymore.  The words came lazily, and it was easy to pretend they weren't barbed, weren't vicious in their nonchalance.  "It's not like you were out looking for me."

"Goddamnit, Em--"

"What? Are you going to send me home again? Go ahead. There's only two months before I leave for Uni anyway.  What makes you think I want to fill it up with moving house and Embassy dinners and arguments at three-in-the-fucking-morning?"

She shoved her feet back into her shoes, felt the pinch at her toes, the bite of bent leather at her heel.  Long fingers, deft and graceful, grasped the door handle.  Twisted.

The door to their third story flat opened --

"Don't you walk out that..."

-- and closed again, every bit as solidly as she had intended this time.

June 6, 2010 -- St. James, Chicago

The moon, a half-lit gondola sweeping her way to mid-haven, rose round about midnight and she casts weak shadows at odd angles whenever she peeks through the nigh-constant cloud cover that blankets the city.  From her placement in the sky, dawn could only be a few hours out.  The night is warm, and the city keeps that heat and humidity close, so close that Emily could believe she felt every exhalation, every sigh press against her skin.  Like a mantle she would never shirk, could not set aside.

Still, the feeling of a cold talon sliding down her spine was unmistakably imagined.  The press of unseen eyes, the anxious knowing that she is being observed, followed, watched.  It had to be the product of so many restless night, cat naps caught on park benches or in her desk chair at work.  It had started well before she'd stopped sleeping, before this backwards vigil hit a fervent pitch.  And yet it couldn't have been real, which is why she's out walking, again: to clear her head. 

The lab computer sits, disconnected from any power source, disconnected from all peripherals, with a handwritten sign in large block letters: DO NOT POWER ON. POSSESSED. EMILY WILL FIX ME.  The jury was still out on whether this "fixing" would involve exorcism by fire, or just a low level format.

The walk from the El Station to Emily's flat doesn't take her past Owen's building, doesn't take her past St. James and yet the latter is where she finds herself.  Sitting in the back row of the sanctuary, staring up at the ceiling beams and stained glass.  She'll be there when Father Benedict comes into the building in the morning to prepare for Sunday services, sitting there with her hair unbound and her head uncovered.

There's light breaking through the colored windows overhead, when the priest shows her down to the cot where another Awakened used to lay his head.  There's a phone call coming to a Lake View apartment's land line.  It will all happen in the small hours of Sunday morning, before the earliest service, while the Orphan girl tries to close her eyes and find some semblance of peace.  While, for the first time in longer than she can rightly remember just now, she doesn't have to struggle to make His home her own.