An invitation (moodpost)

What we lose in mystery we gain in awe.
-Frances Crick

*** *** ***

Easter Sunday, 2010 -- Salford Cathedral grounds, Manchester

The rain falls down.  It pitter-patters on the wide umbrella that separates her from the weeping sky.  It drips off its points, falls in steady streams.  The dampness in the grass spreads to the trailing hem of her Easter dress, wicks up its fabric, spreads dark shadows that creep ever closer to her core. 

Emily crouches before a plain, humble headstone in the small cemetery (God's acre) on the Cathedral grounds.  She does not know what, specifically, Cedric had done in his lifetime that had his mortal body laid to rest here.  She knows, with a certainty beyond belief (Faith), that there are innumerable acts that may have accorded him that station.  That there is more to his generosity and humanitarianism, even, than she knows.

She reaches out to trace the eight-pointed star engraved on his headstone.  Her fingertips are damp, now.  Her wrist is rain-speckled, then wet, then approaching sodden.  Her heels sink into the grass.

"Come home, Emily.  I need you here with me."
"I... I can't, Gregory.  I can't be there when they bury him.  I can't walk into that Church after all this time--"
"You're all I have left, Em.  Don't make me do this on my own."
"Rhee will go with you --"
"I'm not asking Rhiannon."
"... I can't.  I can't come home, Gregory. I don't know when I'll be able to come home again."

Her weight shifts until the heel of her hand braces her against the headstone.  Her head bows.  Her eyes close.  (She is two years too late. [It has taken her two years to find her way home.])  The past echoes in her ears.  The rain falls down.

*** *** ***

7 April, 2010 -- Salford Cathedral grounds, Manchester

"Your father left this for you," Father Alden says, as he places a wooden box into Emily's hands.  The priest's study has not changed since she was very young.  Not even the armchair upholstery has yielded to the marching advance of time.  It is worn but not yet thread-bare.  There is a sense of continuity, of comfort for her here.

Emily runs her fingertips over the box lid, smooths them down its sides until her thumbs are positioned to gently open it.  She draws a small breath, bites down on a corner of her lip.  Her eyes are damp-bright.  Father Alden carries his tea with him, looks out the window.  It is a small mercy.

Here, there is no mistaking the place Cedric Prynne held in Emily Littleton's life.  He is a father, a role model, a guardian.  (He was these things; the words still catch her up.)  They do not make the pretense of naming him anything else.  Just as her grandmother was Gregory's Nana as well.  Their families are intertwined, blended without apology.

She unfolds the small note and immediately recognizes the balanced script.  If her hands tremble as she reads, there is no one watching who will notice it.  She is less guarded here; Emily is safe here.

"I do not understand," she says, when her voice is still and even once more.  Her fingertips rest on the stone beads of his rosary, now.  Trace the eight-pointed cross that decorates them in lieu of a crucifix. 

"Cedric was a Singer," Father Alden says, turning to regard her openly now.  There is no push to it, no trial, though his smile lightens a little as he notes her recognition of the term.  "I see you take my meaning.  How long have you been Awake, Emily?"

"November last," she answers.

"And have you found a Praecept?"  The question presumes she has joined her godfather's tradition.

"I have found someone that reminds me of him."  It is not an answer, directly, but in time it may become one.  "He is also a Singer," she adds, but her voice is low and clouded by emotion. 

Emily carefully nestles the note against Cedric's prayer beads, closes the lid to the box.  She sets it aside and takes up her tea, but does not drink.  Her thoughts wander, taking her momentarily back to a smaller, New World church.  To a blue-eyed, soft-spoken man.

*** *** ***

10 July, 2010 -- Chicago, Illinois

The summer afternoon swelters.  The sun is low, amber-gold and fat in the sky.  It bakes the pavement but cannot dry the sweat from her brow.  It is like every hot, humid summer day she has known; it's like none of them at all.

This is the first weekend after Edom's threat lifted from the city, pulled back like a receding veil, burned off like lingering nightfall in the wake of the prime. 

A breeze stirs the sheer panels before her dining room windows.  It pushes around the warm air in her apartment.  It reaches, even, to the living room where she is resting in Owen's rocking chair with a forgotten book in her lap and Cedric's prayer beads threaded through the fingers of one hand.  She has discovered, by now, that they still carry undertones of his resonance (Steadfast [Inspiring]).  That they are consecrated.  Her feet rest on an unpacked box, a staple of her living room decor, and she cradles her cell phone between her shoulder and ear.

The voice on the other end of the line is warm, familiar.  She would know it anywhere.  Emily has never been too sick, too drunk, too frightened, too far away to recognize Gregory's voice.

"Did you know that your father was a Singer?" she asks, in an idle manner that belies no double entendre, no ulterior motive.  It is possible that her (brother) friend is distracted by the echoed warmth in her own voice, by the ever-more-American cant to her accent, for he doesn't seem to catch the Awakened undertone.

"You mean that he sang with the church choir?"

"Mmm.  Something like that."

"For thirty-seven years.  He was a baritone, like me."

Emily shakes her head a little.  Smiles fondly.  He cannot see this from his home across the pond, but it is possible that Gregory hears it somehow.

"I love you, Gregory."

"Love you too, Emily."

"I miss you both," she says, and there is an ache to that.  A something still grief-stricken and worn that rises before she can tamp it down again.  "So much, sometimes."

"I'm not gone, love."

"But you're not here," she retorts.  It is a reflexive, wounded thing.  Not careful.  Not thoughtful.

"Is that an invitation?" he hedges, leaning forward a little in his chair.  Resting his elbows on his knees.  Waiting, oh-so-expectantly to see where this curious turn of conversation might lead.

"I think it is."  The answer surprises them both.

"Alright, then."

"Right, then."

Having reached a new accord, they each nod, in their own homes, in their separate countries.  Emily smooths her thumb over their father's rosary.  Gregory sits back in his chair once more.

"Send me some dates and I'll set up your itinerary," she says, as if this is no new thing between them.  As if it's normal, easy, unremarkable.

"Will do," he echoes, unwilling to break the illusion for either of them lest she withdraw the invitation, secret her foreign life away from him again.  Something has shifted in Gregory's sister, something he would cross oceans to see, name, understand.