We are more easily led part by part to an understanding of the whole (Seneca)
Completion Date: April 2, 2004 (prt. 1b)
Dedication: Once so strong now held together by comfort. Do I yearn to be free or am I just foolishly yearning? I am still trying to define “meant to be”.
Rememory, part two
The white moon maintains a goddess-like stance against a canvas of varying degrees of cobalt, detail of topography determined by moonlight.
Logan is not alone by the lake before him. The waters, once so still, now rolls a queasy dance, as if a stone was tossed to disturb its previous peace. The visual distortion of his best friend’s “Bright Lady” wobbles disoriented. Logan sadly cringes at Ororo’s now ironic concept as he glances at his companion. Two moons before them: one full and round, one marred and damaged. One in the heavens, one on earth. Their resemblance to each other, right now incidental. But their relation to him and his world more fundamental than life and death. One tangible, the other a shadow, a memory.
He again regards paradox, winces deeply at the endless possibilities of fate. His purpose here tonight… incomplete.
Silence weaves between the two companions like an annoying, uninvited mime. In their communal air, there was so much to say with no ability or attempt to articulate. Hand gestures, stuttered sentences, extraneous. What there was to say and the time when it was to say it was in their shared past. Opportunity gone forever.
The wake of their mutual “rememory”, as his wanted and welcome visitor beside him would so innocently label, left a reopened wound.
The passion they once shared, it bled so deep. The passion of want, the passion of need, the passion of anger, the passion of sadness, the passion of loss, the passion of gain, the passion of desperation, the passion of a pleaded promise… left everything exhausted. Too much done. Too little completed. The passion now, as was eventually then, was bled dry. Rememories were the only products of what existed between the two of them.
At one time, in another life, Logan asked the woman who loved him to go against her better judgment and wait.
Logan’s stomach twists tight as he looks over to his guest, bent over on her knees like a flattened Z. Thick white hair hung over her head and dark brown face as she concentrated on her entangled fingertips. The hurt from their past still tangible. He is now remembering what he put her through.
With a single tear she promised she would wait.
During the rolling silence, he contemplates whether it is a woman’s plight for her happiness to be determined by the whims and wants of the man whom she loved. To hold one hand in front of her face unable to bear the pain. To hold him closer with her other hand unable to bear the loss.
And she waited, as she promised.
Or perhaps it was him. What he demanded as love from a woman. Using her up, sucking all her emotions dry until only a shell is left if she so chose. But he knew she had no choice in the matter, he would never have let her go.
Leave your home, leave your family. Be with him and accept whatever unreasonableness his life has to offer. His wanting it all with no movement from him outside of what’s necessary. That was his all or nothing. So she left her world for him. But he would not leave his. And he had it all. The woman he loved plus the action he craved.
And she waited, until she could wait no longer.
Perhaps now, years later, he can find the words to explain how he couldn’t be Regular Joe. Midnight Foreman. Mr. Nine-to-Five. Big Man Overtime. Captain Paystub. He just wasn’t built for that, literally. Artificially. Genetically.
And so she stopped waiting.
Or perhaps they were all just excuses. Excuses still. Because he knows now he could have stopped. She asked… he could have stayed. He should of. Yet here he is, decades later �“ decades, he sees that now �“ with nothing to offer but excuses. An excuse doesn’t warm the bed. An excuse does not hold you tightly while watching the ever-changing colors of sunrises, each different by the seasons. An excuse is not an emotion, it’s the absence of reason.
He knows now he had no reason.
But she did.
Logan takes a deep breath to prepare himself. He still had so many questions. He knew his visitor had much more to reveal about him. He only had minute details he needed to have strung together. But he wants to know more about her. To remember why she loved him. To remember why she stopped. He had to go there.
“Did you love him… more?” Logan asks quietly, but with an obvious intent.
Her brow furrows in part annoyance. She has her own set of topics she wants to avoid. Her look then softens. Still, there was a purpose to her visit. How can he understand her lesson if she evaded his questions? She rose slightly and slowly exhaled through her nose as she gazed at the waters. She is thinking of him. Another man.
“He loved me in return,” she gently dodges. Uttering vacantly, still in her dream. A faint smile plays on her lips as she resurrects the other man in her mind. Logan feels his skin crawl, still envious after all these years.
“I loved you,” Logan growls, harsher than intended, snapping her out of her reverie of his rival. Her blue eyes shot to him immediately.
“As I did you,” she returns quickly in explanation. “But,” she searches for the words, where to start. Some way to make him understand. Her eyes creased in held in frustration. It was so difficult to love another after him. Logan looked at the visitor. His grey eyes focused on her, unmoving. She eventually let out a resigning sigh.
“It cannot be undone now, can it?” she states, sadness dripping from each vowel.
His eyes drop in sad assent. He knows too well the painful truth of that statement. Fifteen-plus years of previously established experience taught him that.
She bites her bottom lip reacting to his sullen response. Her mouth then thins in new focus. There is one thing she could try make clear to him. She leans towards him with her eyes on the apex of his crossed legs, not wanting to see the hurt in his eyes.
“I see now that some things are, perhaps, never meant to be,” she starts carefully.
His breath hitches and he shuts his eyes. The words hang in the air and float on thier own breeze, circling them and drifting over the waters, seemingly up to the moon.
She lifts her gaze to his face and moves closer to gain his attention. He finally reopens, aware there was more to the point. Light grey eyes meet her blue firm look.
“Other things…” she pauses and inhales to collect the thought properly. She wants to say it correctly, a word that he never taught her and she knows is too fitting for the lesson she came out of the ether of his mind to show him. She inhales slowly to prepare the word’s passage.
He watches her lips as they pronounce each syllable in its most basic form.
“…they are… in-eh-vit-tah-bull.”
And she waited as she had promised, and is there when he returns. Dusty bags hit the floor with an announcing thud. Embraces so deep making the spine crack. No words to speak as they rememorize features with their fingertips and lips. The world about them grows disoriented and blurred as they spin each other and fall to be cushioned by sheets. And he thanks her for her promise, for her patience, for waiting. For she waited weeks for him, as she would continue to for all the nights forthcoming.
He no longer tells her when he is leaving. The signs are there days in advance. A phone call waking her and robbing his arms from her waist. One word exchanges to answer the ring �“ When? Where? Time? Then *click*. Minutes pass as he remains seated on the bed. He will return to lying with her with no further words or sleep to be shared. The days following the call he will laugh a little less, hold her a little longer, and gaze at her endlessly. He will take her wherever she asks, buy her whatever she doesn’t, and only leave the bed when she does. And she no longer begs him to stay. The signs are there during those days in advance. He is finding it increasingly difficult to gather his gear each time he has to go. His boots are constantly in transit from the regular spot, to be found further and further from the door. His flak jacket is nomadic traveling to an unaccustomed drawer, perched high above a kitchen cabinet, finally behind the refrigerator. The keys to his bike…well. He will scour the room for his things with a faint smile on his lips. She will sit watching his progress with her knees pulled to her chest and an innocent look on her face. When he retrieves his things he holds her tightly running his face through her hair, rumbling playful endearments in her ear. She will try to return the affections but she stiffens a little more each time as their odd dance continues… every time he has to go.
She finds dried blood on her blossoms. They fall from his shirt pocket as she does the laundry. He is usually so careful to conceal all traces of his life away from her. Her hands tremble as she investigates further. There are more traces of red on his clothes. His? Whose? She finds large stained gashes on a t-shirt over where his heart would be. She lets it fall, burying her now crimson-tinted petals beneath it.
He wakes when he feels her absence in the bed. He wearily rises, aching. He had collapsed after returning from yet another endless week. He finds her sitting by herself by the drawn heavy curtains holding her face in her hands and her elbows on her knees. He smells the salt of her tears as he softly creeps closer to her. She does not answer his questions and is resigned to holding her. She stops her silent tears after a while but is still stiff under his touch.
Her goodbyes start to lose their usual flair for ceremony after a time. From long, ornate, exaggerated exhibitions of adoration prolonging his departures, to solemn, deep hugs that linger until she releases him. Soon she doesn’t even escort him to the door. He finds his things easier now. They no longer disappear. He figures she has started to accept the absences. It was only a matter of time. He waits for her to acknowledge his goodbye. Lately she remains seated with hands clasped. Her head down, she responds with barely a nod.
He loiters by the closed door listening to her non-action. Her now passive affections were once so fiery. He pauses further and further from the entrance of their room as time goes on. He leans on the doorframe leading out the building feeling the breeze on his face. The weather would have made for a nice walk in the park today. He looks down to the street at his ride. How he misses the breath of jasmine. He sits upon his bike alternating looks between his hand on the throttle to back up to the window of their room. Considering, reconsidering. The laughter, her smiles, the quiet softness. The stiff touches, the limp embraces. The silent glances from the side of her eyes. The ignition. The road ahead. The road is the only constant in his life. Never changes. Always fixed in one direction.
She sits in the dark alone, again. Where he is, what he is doing… the images and scenarios dance and taunt her mind. Where she is, obvious. Here. Where she wants to be is clear. Not here in the dark, sitting alone and waiting… forever. She cringes at the thought of red on bleached cotton and dark bruises on light tan skin. Will this be the time he won’t come back? From the outside, she hears drums in the distance. Her muscles start to relax at the bassline. She knows they’re calling to her. The drums have always provided answers in the chaos. She is wanted, she is needed, outside. She feels compelled to follow their staccato rhythms. A practice taught her from birth.
He allows himself a few more moments before returning home. This road is in one direction, back to her. He stands beside his bike alternating looks between his hand on the brake handle, ahead towards the road before him, to behind him, the roadside bar where the others have gathered after the tour. Boots scuffle while shifting direction. The collection of empty thuds caused by well-worn wood beneath his soles. Eyes adjusting to the darkness of the interior. The teasing yet knowing looks from the group - it was only a matter of time. He joins in a couple of stories and play-by-play recaps with the guys from the mission. He enjoys the talking instead of the silence and then the eventual questions that escalate at the end of that road. He agrees to at least one beer and pauses before he pops the cap off. He studies its deep brown color and its bitter taste as he runs the liquid around his mouth with his tongue. He reflects how her blue eyes are more often than not framed in red and moist with unshed tears. His throat goes dry. He lifts his hand to gain attention while another story is started. Index finger in the air. A nod of acknowledgement. He is slid another beer.
She sits in the park listening to drums. She closes her eyes and envisions the savannah she had left, the faces she had loved and the life she has left behind. These drums are a mere shadow, a weak interpretation, of the rhythms she knows so well. They have no real meaning. But the locals here play these drums with more passion and emotion than her own people, a concept she previously took for granted. These people yearn for a home they have never known but were taken from long ago. She faintly smiles sullenly at that existence. Her eyes shoot open as she hears an expletive near her. She finds deep brown eyes peering at her in amazement, growing wider as her eyes meet his. His light brown face flashes a brilliant smile as he picks up the things he dropped and introduces himself. She warily accepts his name and gives him permission to sit beside her, but not too close. She finds his velvet voice soothing; he uses clever words to make her smile. She relaxes slightly and decides, regardless of the profanity he spoke earlier, she can tell he’s a religious man. He carries the name of a biblical king and during pauses in conversation he calls out to his ‘Sweet Jesus’ while looking at her.
He allows another woman to breathe his name into his ear. Breath of tobacco, eyes of dull wood. With fourth beer in hand and eyes closed, he imagines graceful chocolate fingers trailing up his chest, tickling his neck. He envisions full, smiling lips with exhalations of interest and promise from an ivory haired angel. Course voice and slurred sibilants awaken him from his liquid induced hallucination. He recoils in disgust, more at himself, as the female with the uninteresting name and unoriginal come-ons presses closer. Rough, callused hands. Lipstick on pale yellow teeth. Pallid complexion of too much alcohol and not enough sun. He pushes her away while rising. The barstool falls with a loud complicated bang from the clumsy movements. He hears an amused chuckle and turns to find one from his group watching him and finding comedy. Thick straight hair of ebony framing her smooth tan face. Blue eyes almost impossibly darker than her locks blink at him knowingly. As she sits with the others from the mission, her own gun sitting between her legs, she gives him a thin-lipped smirk at his bar side situation. He creases his eyes at her in annoyance. She knows him and he knows her… too well.
She is used to the curious attentions of others. She is found fascinating for all the wrong reasons she usually asserts. But the one before her with the confident grin looks at her differently. She chooses to ignore the change but is still intrigued and talks to him longer than she usually would another. He asks for her name. He asks if she is from the area. When he hears her accent, he asks of her country. She doesn’t mind the personal intrusion. She talks at length about the savannah, the people, the large mountain that has always loomed in the distance. She finds she may be too comfortable with this stranger and stops. She feels she may be beginning to overstep by telling this one who leans closer and closer with each question things she has not yet shared with the man who loves her. The man with the bronze skin and the sparkling eyes, a scoundrel king, continues by asking of her language. He asks of her customs. He runs a long finger across the line of his lower lip and asks of the colors of the sunsets there. Her eyebrow arches. No one has ever asked her that before. A brilliant smile to match his begins to blossom on her lips as she rests her face in her open hand. She closes her eyes and commences to paint for him the watercolors of her dreams.
His fellow operative uses the name of a clever, vicious animal. She has proven to be nothing but to him. As he heads for the door she also stands, positioning herself to not be avoided. She lights her cigarette and blows its exhaust in his direction as he stops before her. She slowly gives his body the once-over with her eyes as he continues to look at her in irritation. When their eyes meet, she faintly smiles and her eyebrows jump in silent suggestion. Leaving so soon? One more for the road. One more for old times’ sake. He gives her a disgusted snort as his feet start moving again. He doesn’t give her a second look as he maneuvers past with the slightest brush and goes out the door to his bike. A quick amused exhalation escapes through her nose before she takes another drag. He never looks back, she knows him well. She reveals the barest of a cynical smirk as she hears the engine turn over and the tires skid then tear down the road. She drops her cigarette and puts it out with the toe of her boot while in the expanding distance his grip tightens on the throttle. She shakes her head in bitter irony; some things will never change.
She has learned a new language. The language of the smiling one’s people. This language is expressed through the liberation of music, and she feels her velvet-voiced escort embodies it. So playful, so scandalous. It plays and floats within the boundaries of tempo and rhythm. So free, so unrestrained. The mind and the body are slaves to mischievous riffs. Notes are diffused like colored lights through the smoky rooms he brings her to. Competing melodies are amplified by the liquid highs in geometric containers he puts in her hand. She is amazed and entranced by this new world. She is heady and euphoric by these fresh experiences. Led by the scantly demonic tones, the hips cannot help their seductive rock. Her palm cannot hide her coy, possibly inappropriate smiles. And constantly in the background, under the structured chaos, a drumbeat keeps sanity. The scoundrel king kisses the back of her hand as she begs her departure for the night. He flashes her a quick grin with an unmistakable glint in those deep brown eyes. As he holds her hand gently and affectionately in his, so very close to his lips, he tells her with warm breath that tickles the hair on her wrist… it’s jazz, Baby.
He is finally back home. Home to her. As he takes flights of stairs two steps at a time, he looks forward to hot water, cool sheets, warm body, soft. He opens the door to find the room darkened, the air slightly stagnant. As he opens the window to let in air and streetlight, his confusion starts to elevate to alarm as he surveys the room. The room is as it was before but her clothes discarded on the bed smell smoky and sweet at the same time. Vinyl records with names he barely recognizes like Ella, Holiday, Thelonius and Miles have joined their record player. Ellington watches him with unmoving eyes as he goes to the closet to find newer clothes of hers and his shirts and slacks pushed further to the back. As he runs his fingers down the line of occupied hangers, he smells the sweetness of blossoms and pungency of cigarette smoke. Simone smiles at his discovery of bags takeout food in the fridge, remnants of half eaten meals. She usually cooks everything she eats and it is he who she dines with. His eyebrows crease. Armstrong grins as he picks up the most recent addition to the laundry. He finds her shirt stained with red where her heart would be. He lifts it closer to his nose. He smells her. He smells the faint trace of her sweat. He can never mistake the smell of red wine. By the neckline he smells deeper. He smells a cologne, not his, not hers. Beneath the musk, the faint smell of sandlewood.
She comes home humming a tune she learned earlier and finds him sitting in the dark by the drawn heavy curtains with his jacket still on. The sight of him after so much time startles her and she almost drops her keys and purse. She squints in the darkness and calls his name. He doesn’t answer and remains seated partially concealed by shadows, just watching her. She places her bag, keys and jacket on the bed and slowly walks towards him alarmed there might be something wrong. He watches her movements and the way the hem of the elegant skirt she is wearing sways with the motion of her hips. It swishes lightly against her knees as she steps closer. She lowers herself to be face to face with him grasping his cheeks with her hands. He sees she is wearing makeup. His eyes are dark and do not leave her face as she asks him what is the matter. He watches every muscle movement of her expression as if he’s trying to read something she’s not saying. She figures he is exhausted again. She is happy he is home. She wants to hold him; she has so much she wants to share with him.
He breathes deep to smell her when her hands leave his face to wrap around and gather around his neck for an embrace. He grimaces as he gets a whiff of more smoke, more cologne mixed in with her scent. His fists clench in anger as his mind races with the thoughts of others being in her presence, wanting her company. Trying to take what’s his. Then he remembers the feel of rancid breath by his ear and unwanted suggestive glares of an unworthy woman. His stomach drops at his wasting his time and his woman’s time on disgraceful distractions. He keeps his mouth and his suspicions to himself. His hands trail up her side to hold her frame closer to his. His grip strengthens as the sensation of her body against his releases all anger and uncertainty. He exhales a liberating breath. He knows he’s been away too long this time. He holds her tighter. He shouldn’t have gone, again. But this time, he knows shouldn’t let go.
She senses something different in him. His initial stiff embrace deflated into his virtually collapsing in her arms. Her innate concern for him gets the better of her as she grips him about his shoulders to hold him closer. He sucks air through clenched teeth at her touch on a sensitive area. She suddenly recoils and quickly moves away at his pain. She looks at his shoulder and the mask of agony he now wears. She closes her eyes and air blows out of her nose as she covers her face with her hands. She rubs her face a little and then runs her palms through her hair as she rises to get up. She wearily blinks at him while standing above him, her hands on her hips. He looks up at her with a half smile. She tries to reflect his amused dismissal of his pain but it only results in a forced smirk. She turns away and walks to the kitchen asking him if he is thirsty, hungry, or does he want a bath in a monotonous tone. She goes off to busy herself with her own task of duties without waiting for an answer.
He remains seated in the dark by the drawn heavy curtains with his jacket still on and watches her in constant motion. Refrigerator and cabinet doors bang a little too loudly as she goes about fixing him a drink. He watches with sad fascination as she continually gnaws on her lips and her hands wring as she maneuvers about the small area. It seems she is successful in finally distracting herself to other thoughts. She starts to hum a light yet melancholy tune he does not recognize. A faint reflective smile starts to play on her lips and her movements become more graceful as the song progresses. Perhaps it’s the song that changes her mood. Perhaps it is something else. He calls out her name to bring her back to him. She stops surprised, her song and movement interrupted. Her face falls while she wonders what he called her for. They look at each other for a moment, he still in the shadows, she framed by fluorescent light. She tilts her head still waiting. His head drops. He doesn’t want to ask questions. He, like she, does not know if he is prepared for the answers. She creases her eyes, unsure of what to make of him lately. She misses the man she used to know. As she turns back to being occupied by glasses, liquids and musical thoughts, he watches her and remembers when she would hum close to his ear, melody carried by the essence of jasmine.
He closes his eyes remembering her smile. How he misses her smile.
“It was hard for her, after I left…” she spoke vacantly. It was not quite a question, not quite a statement.
Logan turns to find his visitor now beside him. Sitting upright, knees at her chest, she is staring blankly over the waters at the reflection of the moon. Her gaze has a dreamy aspect to it, more so than before. His lips thin in empathy at her sadness over things she neither had the fortune nor the power to regret. Then his eyes crease to look at her warily, wearily. He knew where she was going with this.
“…when we died, yes?” she finished her thought turning to meet his eyes. Aquamarine starts to liquefy in emotion and question. He breathes slowly out his nose. He could never deny those blue eyes anything. She did not come all this way to not know. After all his evading, she did want an answer finally.
From across the waters, another female voice carries towards them as if with the waves. Playful rich chattering, deep-chested laughter, calming to a hum of a random tune. One of many sung during a task or chore enjoyed. Her. The sound of the other voice calms him so familiarly, so utterly. So much so it disturbs him. Alto, reserved, often bursting out in uncontainable laughter, often in private, and only when he presses. His guest’s daughter.
Logan blinks back the vision as he looks down in thought, trying to find a way to proceed gently. Her daughter. There was so much this woman beside him has also missed.
He can avoid reality no longer. He lets out a resigning breath.
And so it goes.
“Yeah,” he starts.
Her daughter, his best friend �“ damn near like brothers. Her insistence to share; her refusal to take. In their many late night discussions, his confidant doesn’t speak of the loss of her mother, of both parents, at such a young age. But he knows, every day, she feels the loss, the emptiness.
“Yeah, it was hard for her,” he glumly continues.
Ironically, he thinks to himself, both of their pain, his and her daughter’s, came from the same source. The hole created by this woman before him now. The endless possibilities of how their lives would have been different, completely altered, if his visitor did not leave them. If she never died. The ultimate “What If?” that has haunted his best friend forever and now torments him. He smirks at yet another paradox. They have so much more common than they even began to realize.
Logan freely allows images of the daughter of the woman he loved, the friend he knows so well, to flood his mind. Her warm, calming looks; her cold, remorseless stares. Her shining eyes, they themselves being blue and clear like her mother’s. Clear, blue, yet defiant… hard. Cerulean ice. She had seen and done so much. She had to fight every waking and oftentimes resting moment of her life, literally, since she was a child. He smiles at his friend’s complicated spirit. Her reluctance to hold a gun, her mastery when she wielded one. Weirdly enough, regardless of his mutant abilities and his fierceness, he found he felt more protected in her company than not.
“But she’s the toughest broad I know,” Logan adds lightly, trying to give the mother beside him reassurance. Her daughter was a survivor. Yet she hasn’t lost her soul. Her strength under pressure; her grace in battle. She was perhaps even stronger than he. Again, he sees that now.
“But you know otherwise, don’t you?” his guest intones knowingly. His smile drops with his thoughts interrupted and looks over to find his visitor resting her head on her knees, smiling at him with an intentional sly grin. “She shows you in her own way. She only shows you, ” she emphasizes.
“I do the same,” he says looking at his hands, uncomfortable with her implication. “We are good friends,” he tries to clarify.
His hands wring about themselves as he thinks of all those moments he and his visitor’s daughter have shared over the past few years, first as teammates then as friends. His eyes close and he sees her child now. Her cerulean eyes creasing and sparkling roguishly as the tip of her tongue and upper teeth flirt with her lower lip, trying to contain a laugh that he induced. Her soft, strong hand playfully pushes his head away in response to an off-color remark she feels he should be punished for. She chuckles at his crude mischievousness. Few in the mansion do. He smiles deep at the memory. It feels good to make his friend laugh. It feels good to be one of the precious few who can. His eyes open and he vaguely sighs at the odd feeling creeping at the center of his stomach, right at his diaphragm.
“I have only a few,” he drifts off, spoken low more to himself than to his companion.
“That fits,” the visitor returns lightly, wistfully. He quickly glances at her and finds her watching him with a knowing grin planted firmly on her face, like she was trying to get a point across. His gaze drifts away from her and back to his hands. Her mouth closes into a thin-lipped amused smirk as she regards this additional episode of his dodging. She decides to let it go for now and returns her attentions to the waters again. She falls into deep in thought of woman whose topic Logan has been so deftly trying to skirt.
The ivory haired guest joins her voice to the hummed tune of the other’s across the waters. They join in almost perfect synchronicity it seems to Logan. His visitor’s soprano to the other voice’s alto. Her melody to the other’s harmony. A tune they obviously knew during the short time they were together. Logan doesn’t know the song as well as they. But he knows it. He heard his friend hum it before, in private when gardening or while walking in the woods. During her moments of reflective solitude. He watches her during these moments; his friend does not know this. He has been watching her more and more from the shadows lately. He watches in silent awe at her face full of longing and regret yet with a slight glow to her face when she is alone. As if she exists in a different world in her head. She is remembering something pleasant but gone.
Logan swallows to relieve the constriction in his throat. The woman beside him continues to intone with the other, her face reflecting her own solemn thoughts of loss. He knows, listening to the nature of the duet, a third voice is supposed to join this song. And that voice is not his. He frowns. The loss of love is not just his affliction.
The song has ended and the voice across the waters continues with it seems another verse. His guest does not rejoin the movement but instead sighs softly, caught up in her reverie.
“She is so much her father’s child,” she says with a slight frown, contemplating the traits of the two people she spent her last moments of life with. “So guarded,” she lists with slight concern in her voice. She looks over the waters with creased eyebrows. No doubt reviewing her daughter’s life without her and how she had to adapt. His friend always had to be mindful of her constantly changing surroundings and her intensely sensitive yet powerful birth written gifts.
His visitor’s intense look then softens as she comes to a realization.
“Yet so free, ” she completes the previous thought with a wide amazed smile.
Logan looks at his companion again. Her face bright with thoughts of her daughter, her flesh and blood. Her Baby-Girl. He regards the woman’s flowing white hair, gently cascading about her face and down her back, her slight, graceful hands, so soft, always so active when in deep thought. Her daughter carries so many of her mother’s physical qualities, but yet a bit more. Which of the two is more beautiful, an unfair assessment and incidental he decides. But here, at this moment with the reflective peace in his visitor’s face, she and her daughter look so much alike that he doubts he could ever look at the younger of the two the same way ever again.
“She is so much YOUR child,” he asserts in a whisper to her. It is her turn to be interrupted from her thoughts and she faces him as she regards his statement. She smiles gently at him and tilts her head in question.
“You see her, you see me?”
He slowly, vaguely nods. She blinks her eyes sadly and looks off at nothing at particular. They sit in silence. Again the annoying mime returns. So much to say. Nowhere to begin.
*Whomp*
Logan inhales quickly through his nose in surprised reaction to the sound; it seemingly rang in both his ears. He looks towards his companion as he starts to feel a tingle starting at the base of his skull. Inside his head.
*Whomp* *Whomp*
He blinks harder as they come. Her eyes fall to him and she sees his confusion and realizes another one is coming, a rememory. But this time the rememory is induced by him. She smiles calmly to reassure him. His breathing deepens as he prepares himself for these new sensations.
*Whomp* *Whomp* *Whomp*
She holds his gaze to focus him. He sees now. She is teaching him. Teaching him to remember himself. The vibrations travel through his head like cascading water. A tingle, a release, like long rusted over gates being inched opened. As she showed him before, now he must show her. He swallows again. She shouldn’t see what he has to remember.
*Whomp* *Whomp* *Whomp* *Whomp* *Whomp*
The sound is getting louder. It is taking his mind to another place, a place he feels he doesn’t want to go. A place he was hiding from her. She doesn’t belong there. She shouldn’t see. His visiting teacher continues to smile serenely at him, showing him she is ready. His eyes furrow in concern. He should have told her the truth from the beginning. A familiar feeling of fear starts to overtake him. No. He doesn’t want to do this. His hands start to grip the hair on either side of his head, as if to stop the progression. His whole body clenches in fear and panic.
*Whomp**Whomp**Whomp**Whomp**Whomp**Whomp*
“Logan,”
The sound’s advance stops. The absence of chaos startles him and he quickly turns and looks at his companion.
She is leaning forward to look him square in the eye. She speaks as if she was supplying an answer to her previous question.
“Then you know I never left you alone.”
*Whomp**Whomp**Whomp**Whomp*
*Whomp*Whomp*Whomp*Whomp*Whomp*
*whrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*
In media res
