(no subject)

[freosan]

“Ma’am? Ma’am? Wake up, please.”
She blinked in the light, then sprung out of bed, almost knocking over the – nurse, she’d learned to call these women, the ones whose faces were the only sign of colour on their bodies. At least the doctors had blue; it was something; but the nurses were pure white and painful.
“It’s almost ten – oh, you’re bleeding!”
She put her hand up to her face. Wet. Yes, that was blood. She’d thought that scar was healed.
The nurse cleaned it with alcohol and put a bandage over it, which was unnerving, since the bandage went over her eye.
“How did that happen? You were asleep, weren’t you? Maybe you hit your head on something…”
Perhaps. It was taken care of now – no point in worrying about it. She did wonder, though, in the context of the dream.
“Well. You remember, we made an appointment for you with Dr. McClintock, yes?”
She nodded. Of course she did. She hadn’t forgotten a single thing since waking up in this hospital, she’d just lost everything before then.
She’d learned that she was in her early twenties, probably of Irish descent, in peak physical condition, and unable to give birth. These things the doctors had told her. When they’d finally given her a mirror, she’d learned that she had black hair and green eyes, and two vivid scars on her face.
Then she’d stared at her reflection for a while, and the mirror had spontaneously cracked. She hadn’t told anyone about it. It had gone back to normal a few minutes later. She wondered about that, but was more concerned with the scars.
She couldn’t remember getting them but tracing them with her finger was familiar. She’d known about the hair, of course, because it came almost to her ankles – she’d found that it felt most right to keep it in a braid at all times, but she hadn’t figured out what to do with the bangs. She’d discovered, when they’d finally trusted her to stand alone in the shower, that she had burn and cut scars over most of her body. Most of them were well healed, a few were still in the process, and the newest ones, the ones they said were from the car accident, were in eight parallel slashes along her shoulder blades. She’d wondered about that, and heard words like ‘attack’ and ‘gang violence’ being murmured among the doctors, but they had not told her these things directly.
She’d also learned that it was unusual for recovering patients to run laps around the hospital when they were outside, so she’d stopped and switched to push- ups and sit- ups in her room. Then at least she didn’t attract attention.
She could read but not write in English. When she tried, her hand obstinately tried to spell everything with more e’s than necessary and make each letter decorative. She had tried other languages, and found the most success with Arabic; this had confused the doctors. They thought she could speak about thirty languages, though she hadn’t had the opportunity to make sure.
They couldn’t tell her her name, and that worried them, almost as much as it worried them that she didn’t seem to care.
In the words of the doctors, she was exceptional. In her own words, she felt that one worked just fine. Given what she’d seen of the other people here.
“Get dressed, please. The appointment is at ten thirty, and you shouldn’t be late. He’s in the east wing; I think you’ve visited the office before.”
She nodded. Yes, with the doctor she’d first met, the one with the grey eyes. She could find it again.
She showered, dressed, braided her hair, and slipped out the door. No one noticed when she left. She hadn’t been told she needed to be escorted, so she wasn’t going to give them the chance to change their minds.
The hospital wings were confusing, but refreshingly busy, so that she didn’t need to avoid looking at people. She watched with interest when a loaded stretcher and a squad of nurses rushed by. Had she come in like that?
The soul- studier’s office was the sort of hushed place whose walls absorbed noise, filled with books and overstuffed leather furniture. His secretary knew her, so she was motioned right in – she was exactly on time.
The psychologist was bent over the desk, shuffling through a few papers, when she entered. She let the door click closed and stood in the doorway, waiting for him to notice her. He was very still, but for some reason that didn’t bother her like it did with other people. His clothing was dark brown – textured enough not to hurt – and purple, which sat right somehow, and his hair was blond and very short.
He looked up a few moments after she’d come in. His eyes were dark blue, almost black, and she locked eyes with him trying to remember where she’d seen that particular colour before.

She was beautiful, frightening, short, and her single visible eye had the most focused stare Keene had ever had reason to meet, even in clinic rotation with the seriously insane. She looked as if she’d spent the last several years in a stare- war with God, or possibly the universe.
“Hello, pleased to meet you. I’m Keene McClintock, but I guess you’d already know that – what should I call you?” he asked, extending his hand.
She shook it without hesitation, very firmly. She had very short fingernails, and calluses. “Don’t know.”
He stared for a second before recovering. “Ah, yes, you’re the one they brought in – a car accident, wasn’t it?” he asked, and didn’t wait for an answer. “Please, sit down, miss.” She did so, folding her legs under her on the big armchair. There was a couch, too, that faced sideways to the other chairs; he noticed her eying it suspiciously while he shuffled through his files on her at his desk. He got his notebook and sat down across from her.
“Are you alright? I didn’t think your eye had gotten hurt,” he asked, gesturing to his own right eye. She shrugged. “Happened this morning.” He wouldn’t press it; time to continue.
“Alright… miss… are you here because you want to be, or because Dr. Cooper made the appointment?”
She shrugged. “Didn’t think of it myself, don’t mind.”
Silence. Staring. He glanced away, finding it difficult to meet her gaze. “You know why you’re here, of course. I’m supposed to talk to you about this, help you understand why your memory’s gone. I’m sure you’re very confused…”
She shook her head, and he stopped. More staring. “You’re not confused?” He sure as anything would be. He was right now, actually, though he did his best not to show it.
“About that, no.”
More silence.
“Are you confused about something? Tell me about that.”
She made eye contact again; he tried to keep it this time.
“Why I’m dreaming,” she said. He raised an eyebrow.
“Tell me about your dreams.” He said it gently, but tried to put some authority into his voice. He really couldn’t let her leave until he knew something about her.
“Flying. Colours. An eagle. Fighting,” she said, slowly. Enough powerful symbols, sure, but really – anyone could have dreams about that…
“Any kind of connection, anything that stands out as the most important element?”
She cocked her head, making her look strangely young. “All important.”
He tried a new tack then. “Have you been told what happened just before you were brought to the hospital?”
She shook her head. He didn’t think they would have; the story had disturbed Keene and he wasn’t even involved. She’d broken at least two noses and someone’s arm; it was a miracle, they said, that Grisshan hadn’t been killed. Looking at her, he could hardly imagine it. She was wearing a long skirt and a turtleneck sweater, and between that and the eye patch she looked like nothing so much as a broken doll.
He remembered the things the doctors had said about the cuts on her back; how regular they were, how the skin was ripped off, and the word ‘angel’ danced around the periphery of his mind. Ridiculous. He pulled his mind back to the task at hand.
Maybe if he tried again, from another way. The memories had to be there somewhere. They’d come back. “Tell me the first thing you remember.”
“White.”
What kind of memory was white? “Explain that?”
“Room. It’s white. Hurts.”
“The colour hurts you?” He tried to keep his voice neutral, though there was a lot of skepticism going on in his brain.
She shook her head. “Lack of it. Nothing is – real.”
He jotted down ‘head trauma – dissociative fugue?’ in his notebook, a long shot but the closest thing he could think of.
“What is fugue?”
He looked up, surprised. “You can read this? …It’s a technical term.”
She stared at him until he broke contact again. “I’m just trying to figure out why you’ve forgotten things. It’s nothing negative.”
“Didn’t ask that.”
He paused again, then explained, “When someone suffers head trauma or severe stress – both of which you’ve experienced – that person can go into a fugue state. You’d act completely normal, as you would outside the state, but you feel as if you’re disassociated from reality. That’s all.” He tried to look reassuring, though he didn’t know if he’d succeeded.
She nodded, and waited for him to continue.
“…Explain what you mean by nothing being real.”
She spent a while thinking about that, and when she started explaining he felt he could understand why. Whatever she was describing sounded like nothing he’d ever had words for, and he had almost thirty years of experience to compare with her ten days.
“When things don’t move – someone stands still– nothing living’s around – like nothing exists. Emptiness. Especially in people.”
He wrote down ‘synaesthesia’ – another long shot, but with the colour obsession, maybe – and continued. “Emptiness? As if you don’t see them, or…?”
She shook her head again. “They aren’t there. But they are. Wrong – something off.”
‘Dissociation between experience and perception’ went into the notebook. He figured she could still read the notes, but he didn’t mind explaining, if she asked.
“So the first thing you remember is ‘white’. Nothing before that?”
“There is a person.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know. Thought I did.”
“Tell me about that person.”
She explained meeting ‘the green- and- black boy’, whose name Keene seemed to remember was Solan, and how she was sure she’d fought against him before, but he denied meeting her.
“Also says I tried to kill. Wouldn’t have – I think,” she said. “Apologized anyway.”
He didn’t think she would either, but again, she apparently had a history of violence. He had to stop making snap judgments about his patients – he was very good at not letting them affect things, but he was still afraid it would get him one day.
“Do you remember fighting, outside of fighting him?” he asked.
She shook her head; apparently not. “Only when dreaming.”
“Do the dreams bother you?”
“No.”
Fair enough. “Is there anything else bothering you?”
She considered for a moment. “Broken mirror.”

Keene sighed as he shut the door. Checking his watch, he found she’d been in here for almost two hours; it had been an experience.
He looked at his notes. Complete amnesia, dissociation, audiovisual hallucinations, possible false memories… He wasn’t really sure where to start. It didn’t add up to anything in particular, except ‘messed up’. Schizotypal? She wasn’t that odd in her speech… who was he kidding, yes she was. Her mind was clearly as fractured as her body.
She’d had several very detailed hallucinations in the past few days, which she’d described to him. There was the mirror cracking, the nurse who appeared to have mouse ears and a tail – which won hands- down for the most random hallucination he’d ever heard of – a few other small things, like a flowerpot that’d been knocked over repairing itself, her reflection changing in the mirror, and haloes around some of the doctors, and of course the big one: a complete- with- kinetic- sense hallucination of having wings. She’d been very emphatic in explaining that it hadn’t happened in a dream; after all, in her dreams, everything had colours.
That was another thing – the obsession with colours. He’d given her the test, so he knew she wasn’t colourblind, but she still persisted in saying that she’d only met a few people who were the right colour, himself and Solan among them. When pressed to explain, she merely motioned to his suit, and said it fit him.
Schizotypal personality disorder, he reflected, had a list of symptoms. He pulled out his well- worn copy of the DSM- IV.
Let’s see. Constricted affect, check; unusual perceptions, check; eccentric behavior, check; unusual thinking and speech, check and double- check: even when she was speaking English, which was only about eighty percent of the time, she wasn’t speaking it in any way he’d heard before; lacks friends, check, but who knew from before this; ideas of reference, no check – at least not yet; magical thinking, check.
Definitely five symptoms, possibly more. Had she been this deep in the disease prior to the accident?
His door opened gently. “Yes, who is it?”
“It’s your secretary, oh high and mighty Doctor.”
He sighed. “Come on in, Miss Davis.”
She came in and sat in the big armchair in front of his desk; she used to sit on his desk, before she’d accidentally left a divot in the wood with her heels. Keene didn’t care, but she’d been worried about it.
“So, Keene, you’ve heard what the doctors are saying about that one?” she asked, nonchalantly.
He shook his head and finally looked up from his notes. “I try to keep from hearing rumors about my patients. That’s an interesting haircut.”
She ran her fingers through her hair to better display the asymmetrical cut. “Thank you. But this one has such interesting rumors going around. Did you know that one of the nurses who’s been spending time around her claims she speaks in the tongue of the Ancients?”
Keene gave her a blank stare which conveyed his full opinion of that particular nurse. “Ancients.”
“Yep, the same lovely people who built Atlantis and then set off in spaceships. Fascinating. And then the more sane ones say they’ve caught her staring at them, and they feel like she’s sizing them up for the kill.”
“I can see where they got that impression. She has quite the thousand- yard stare.”
“They say it’s malevolent. And the really big one – the on they’re trying not to let out? The doctors who treated her say that there’s no way she got those cuts in a car accident. They think it was methodical.”
Keene raised an eyebrow, morbidly fascinated and hating himself for it. “Torture?”
Miss Davis nodded, pressing a perfectly manicured fingernail to her perfectly made- up lips. “Don’t tell. I had to go to the source to find that one out, since I figured you could use all the help you could get.
“But the really funny thing is, the muscles around her shoulders are about five times as strong as they should be, even for someone of her exceptional strength. And they said that there was something a little off about her bone structure – some displacement of the scapula, a few indents in the ribs.”
Keene gave her another dry look. “What are you suggesting?”
She looked as perfectly innocent as she could manage, which was a surprising amount. “I’m not suggesting it. In fact I think it’s rather silly. But the word the doctor was skating around was ‘wings’.”
Wings. That was just brilliant; give her a reason for her hallucinations. “She told me she hallucinated wings. Well, she actually told me she’d momentarily developed wings, but I don’t think that’s the case…”
She tsked at him. “Violate doctor- patient confidentiality much? That aside, if she did have wings, she certainly doesn’t have them now, so it’s still a hallucination.”
Keene felt himself blushing; of course, he shouldn’t’ve told her that. She noticed and smiled at him again. “By the way, Doctor, I found a few new interviews for you. Check your private email. But you should watch yourself, if you want to keep your sterling reputation,” she warned him, as she left the room.
He sighed – again – and went to check his email.

Solan woke to find himself on Brian’s couch, rather than in the four- poster bed he’d randomly been dreaming about. The clock blinked ‘1:55’ at him incessantly. He looked out the window; if the clock was anywhere near right, it was AM rather than PM. Virginia was asleep on the floor beside the couch, and Coco was sprawled over a chair and a footstool. Brian had probably escaped to his own bed.
Oh yeah, Virginia didn’t have school tomorrow… today… whatever. They’d been practicing ‘til that clock read 1:00, which meant he’d barely had an hour’s sleep, but he was wide awake. Possibly it’d been the dream.
Oh yes. The dream. The dream that had involved really insane flying and also sharp pointed things being rammed into his shoulder. Actually, his shoulder hurt – he must’ve slept on it wrong, or something. He put a hand up to rub the stiffness out, and froze.
His shoulder was damp, touching it had hurt, and when he pulled his hand away and held it up to the light coming through the window, it was covered in dark liquid. He ran to the bathroom, jumping over Virginia very gracefully under the circumstances, and flicked on the light.
The shoulder was soaked in blood. He stood in shock, for a moment, staring at his reflection and then trying to look directly at his own shoulder. The blood was definitely real.
It turned out his shirt was stuck to it, and when he tried to get it off the blood started welling up again. He clamped a towel over the cut – how hard were bloodstains to get off of terrycloth? – and sat down on the toilet until he felt less dizzy.
So what’d he cut himself on, then? The shirt was still intact. He didn’t think anything had broken – he flexed his arm just to be sure, and though it hurt, everything still worked okay. There was no reason his arm would randomly break, anyway. But there was less reason his shoulder would randomly get sliced open.
There was the dream. This’d definitely happened in the dream. Solan was firmly of the opinion that the injury in the real world had caused the perception of injury in the dream, because the alternative didn’t bear thinking about. He leaned back against the wall and gently banged his head against it.
Okay. Okay, had to deal with this, ‘cause Virginia would flip and Coco would think he was lying no matter what he said, and Brian would be very quiet about being annoyed about the blood all over the place, and also believe he was lying. He filled the sink with warm water and started trying to clean himself up.
By the time he’d gotten the blood off, the cut was gone. He stared at the mirror again, and his shoulder. He flexed the arm – nothing. He looked at his t- shirt – completely clean, if a little wrinkled. The towel… the last bits of blood disappeared as he looked, washing off in the water like they’d never been.
That was even more disturbing than the cut itself had been. Hallucination? Like with that girl…? But she’d at least left marks of her passing. There was nothing, absolutely fucking nothing, to prove he’d ever been injured. Why would he think something like that?
He put the shirt back on and staggered out to the couch, trying to look half- asleep. Maybe he was still asleep. Dreaming? Maybe. Could happen. Didn’t feel like a dream, but he usually didn’t know when he was dreaming… but he usually didn’t think about whether he was dreaming or not, either.
The clock was right. He looked at his hands – solid, right number of fingers. Probably not a dream. He didn’t think he had enough imagination to get this much detail in. On the other hand, he didn’t think he had enough imagination to hallucinate bleeding, either, so he was wrong either way.
He couldn’t sleep. No way. He got up, found his pants, and walked out of the house.
Full moon tonight. Last time he’d looked up at the moon he’d had an insane woman practically drop on him. He was afraid to keep looking, but more afraid to stop. What if something even weirder happened?
Maybe he’d hallucinated her, too. Hell, maybe she’d somehow made him imagine all this. Keep going down that path, though, and then you were into reality by perception, and philosophy always made his head hurt. No. If he saw it, it damn well happened, whatever anyone else said.
He sat on the porch and pressed a hand to his head. Serious headache. Something was going on, that was for sure. Something really weird.
In front of him, the sidewalk was turning blue and cloudy.

Three people sit in a small, hexagonal room. Around them, a pair of ravens and a lion inscribe lazy circles in the perimeter. A silver dolphin swims in the floor as other dolphins might swim in the ocean.
The boy has his eyes closed and his hands on opposite sides of the small round table, the entire surface of which is taken up by a silver mirror. It doesn’t reflect; instead, it shows a clouded blue sky and a small figure, flying.
A pair of black wings spreads wide in shock and that woman leans back. “That’s it! I’m exhausted. We’ve kept this up for days; we aren’t getting through.” Her ravens land on her shoulders and chitter reassuring words in her ears.

“I’m sure we will eventually. She had at least one dream. We saw her wings come back, for a second,” says the other woman. The boy lets the mirror on the table dissolve, sighing.

“You’re right, Leo. We tried. I just hope it’s enough,” he says, worried. The dolphin clicks at his feet, reproaching him for being pessimistic. Of course it’ll be enough, it tells him. He reaches down absently to pet its melon.

“I sent I don’t know how many dreams down there, and some of the things she broadcast to us when she was in danger. I’m not really sure how that’ll manifest, but it should certainly be attention- getting,” the black- winged woman says. She’s closed her eyes and her birds are softly rubbing their heads against her cheeks.

The lion pads over to the red- winged woman, and she buries her hands in its mane. It reminds all of them that they’ve been in danger before, and have gotten past it. Even something like this, it tells them, can be overcome.

“You’re right, of course,” says the red- winged woman. “We will.”

****************************************

Solan came to with the sun shining in his face. He lifted up a hand – wing? – hand, damn it – to shield his eyes, groaning.

Apparently he’d slept on the lawn. He was damp with dew, and his back hurt like hell where a rock had pressed into it. Why was he…

Oh yeah, the dream. And the bleeding. Had he woken up inside, he probably would’ve managed to convince himself it’d all been a construct of his clearly strained subconscious. Unfortunately, he hadn’t. And he was lying on a lawn that, he remembered, had hours ago looked like the sky.

Ugh. Had to get up, had to go back inside… had to hope it wasn’t all that late, though the fact that he had almost no shadow said it must be close to noon. Maybe the others would still be asleep.

The door to the house was open, which bothered him, since he must have left it open himself. He walked in, somewhat stiffly, to find his band still draped over the various bits of furniture. Well, Virginia had taken the couch at some point, but she was asleep, so that was all right then.

Caffeine, he thought, would be a really good idea right about now. He made his stiff- backed way to the kitchen and started Brian’s extremely modern shiny metal coffeepot going.

He turned his back to it while it perked, staring at the cabinets and wondering if there was anything he felt like eating. The cabinets contained some kind of cereal with ‘Heart Healthy!’ written on its side, and lots of pans. Guess not. He turned back to the coffee; possibly attempting to stare it into submission would make it work faster.

His reflection in the metal was weirdly distorted – it made his face look smaller and, for some reason, his hair look… longer?

Ohshit. That wasn’t him in his reflection. No, it was someone smaller, with long hair, and metal armor, and scars on his – no, her face.

Solan stared, horrified, at the reflection, as it changed. Suddenly, he saw something white replace most of the background, and at the same time, felt a stabbing pain in his back.

He stood up suddenly in shock, almost fell over backwards, overbalanced and ended up falling over the counter, where something white and fluffy fell over his shoulders.

He closed his eyes. He wasn’t planning on opening them until he had some assurance that his brain had not just turned perpendicular to reality.

Luckily, someone walked into the kitchen then, and he heard Coco’s voice say, “What are you doing?” She sounded annoyed and not at all like someone whose friend had just spontaneously sprouted wings. He felt the weight on his back recede, and stood up.

“Quietly going insane. Coffee?” he said, hoping to distract her. It worked. Coco was never at her best just after waking up, and she looked on tiredly as he got down the mugs and poured her a cup.

**********************

Keene’s patient finally left the room, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, willing the headache to go away. This was the one with multiple personalities; today, the most difficult personality had decided that he was going to deal with the psychologist. It had been less than easy to get him to calm down.

On the other hand, dissociative identity disorder was at least easy to diagnose, if not easy to treat. He looked down at his notes – his next patient, in an hour and a half, was that nameless girl again. He sighed. Keene was hoping to get her to give herself a name this time; he’d asked her to research name meanings and see if she thought anything fit. Apparently, despite the news coverage she’d gotten, no one had come forward to claim a relationship with her.

Miss Davis walked in right then, only knocking as a formality. Keene looked up, and she smiled.

“Guess what? You have a new patient! He was a walk- in downstairs, but they sent him up here. I guess they think he’s somehow related to your amnesiac.”

She tossed a file folder on his desk. “Here’s his medical history. Mr. Carter, come in please!”

Mr. Carter turned out to be a few years younger than Keene. He was wearing Hot Topic pants, a black t- shirt with a band logo Keene didn’t recognize, and a black fishnet undershirt. Keene rolled his eyes inwardly – mall goth, lovely.

“Mr. Carter? I’m Keene McClintock. Pleased to meet you.” He stood up and shook hands with the boy, whose only response was, “Yeah.”

He motioned for the boy to sit down, and Miss Davis strolled out of the office. Keene took his usual seat across from the patient. “So, Mr. Carter, what can I help you with?” The boy was visibly edgy about being here. That was fine, Keene was used to dealing with reluctant patients.

“Uh, call me Solan. Um.” He made abortive gestures with his hands, like he was failing to describe something. “I think I’m hallucinating.”

Not another one. Keene schooled his expression into a good approximation of concern. “Is that so? Why do you think that?” Wait – Solan? Was this the one the nameless girl had talked about? It wasn’t as if it were a very common name, and he did have the black hair and green eyes…

Solan leaned back, sighing. “Probably ‘cause I woke up yesterday with blood all over my shoulder, then it disappeared. Oh, and the cloudy ground was a good one. And the wings. So unless I’ve got a ghost hanging around, I’m gonna go with hallucinations.”

Keene had to take a moment to stop, blink, rewind the sentence in his head before he registered the words. “You’re aware that most times, when someone does have hallucinations, he believes that they’ve really happened?”

Solan shrugged, completely uncaring. “The ground does not turn blue. I do not have wings. These things I know. The bloody shoulder I’d’ve bought, but it was weird enough, and then it got followed up with two weirder things in one night, so… no.”

He had to ask. “Do you know a girl who was brought here a few days ago? She doesn’t have a name – she looks a lot like you, really - ” Solan was staring at him in disbelief. Apparently, he did know her.

“That the insane one with the scars on her face and the freaky eyes?” he asked.

“I’m reasonably sure she’s not insane,” Keene began, but was cut off.

“You guys keep telling me that, but she’s nuts. She attacked an ambulance. Is that the sign of a healthy mind?” Keene couldn’t really argue with him, especially as he was coming to the same conclusion, though for different reasons.

“If we could get back to the issue at hand,” Keene muttered, shuffling through his notes. “I believe you said something about wings?”

Solan nodded. “Yes. Wings. This morning, just after I thought the ground cracked open and led to the sky. The wings were a lot more… solid, but no one else seemed to notice them, so. Oh yeah! There was also my reflection. That was all kinds of fun.”

Keene raised an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“I was making coffee, and my reflection wound up looking like that girl.”

Keene made a note on his pad to avoid having to make eye contact. “I see.”

“Is there some kind of possibility that she did something? Or is that paranoia?” the boy mused. “No, wait, it’s not paranoia if they are out to get you.”

“She claims she doesn’t remember trying to kill you, and doesn’t think it’s in her character to do so. I’m inclined to agree,” Keene said, a little more harshly than he’d intended.

Solan looked at him with near- total skepticism. “Tell that to someone who didn’t find her soaked in blood, wearing armor and carrying a pointy stick taller than she was.”

Keene shook his head, not in negation but to get the thoughts to settle. “So what happened to this armor, in any case? She didn’t have it on her when she came to the hospital.”

Solan raised both hands like he was warding something off. “Don’t give me that. I had a normal brain before she came around, and she was wearing it.” He paused to rethink that sentence. “Not the brain, the armor. Sometime between attacking the ambulance and attacking the paramedics, she wasn’t anymore.”

Another few sentences went in the notebook – the boy had a strange combination of acceptance and reluctance to admit what was going on. Keene had a strong suspicion that Solan was more disturbed than the girl; at least she had an excuse for her psychoses.

“Interesting. So, Solan, you believe that she might have somehow caused your current problems?” he asked.

“Ah, don’t say that, makes me sound like I’m totally paranoid,” Solan protested. “I’m just saying, she’s the one who showed in my reflection, and she’s the one that had that freaky glowing wing thing…” he trailed off. “I didn’t mention that one before, did I?”

Keene shook his head. “No, you didn’t. More wings?” What was this sudden obsession with wings everyone had?

The boy sighed, started describing the shape with his hands, scowled at them and shoved them in his pockets. “Yeah, more wings. When I found her there were these glowing things near her. Shaped like a pair of wings. Disappeared pretty quick, though, and I was too busy trying to figure out what she was to worry about it. Kinda forgot.”

“I see. Tell me, are you religious?” A long shot, but it was worth trying.

Solan gave him a blank look. “That’s got fuck- all to do with anything.”

“It might give me something. Please.”

“Fine, whatever,” Solan said. “Haven’t been Christian since I was old enough to whip up fake blood for church. Don’t believe in angels, if that’s what you’re getting at.” He sounded weirdly distant.

“Is this a touchy subject for you?” Keene felt he had to ask.

Solan shook his head. His hands came back out of the pockets and emphasized the gesture. “Nah, it isn’t, just kinda random is all.”

“I see.” Made a note. No angels involved, from this side at least. He hoped.

“Do you? Interesting.” He glanced up at the boy, who had a half- smile on his face. At least he was more comfortable now, leaning forward in the chair.

“Don’t mock the psychologist, Solan,” Keene warned.

“Yeah, ‘cause you and your scary psychological powers can throw my ass in a psych ward. Got it, got it. Chill.” He raised his hands again in a gesture of supplication.

“I won’t do it unless you prove dangerous, but you’re broadly correct. Now…” he was cut off by the grandfather clock in the corner chiming. He checked the time. “It seems we should wrap this up,” he said. Solan shrugged.

“Sure, whatever. See ya later, I guess,” he said, and walked out without so much as a backward glance.

As soon as he was sure the door had closed, Keene dropped back against the couch and groaned. How many more insane kids was he going to have to take care of?

**************************************
She was almost there. She could tell by the way the road felt familiar, and by the way the world seemed to go out of its way to give her signs. The pile of feathers at the crossroads. The wind blowing hard in exactly the right direction.

She knew the house when she saw it, though she had no memory of seeing it before. He lived here, the green- and- black boy, the only person she remembered. Here she’d stay, until she knew why she remembered him. It was only logical. He would understand.

She knew they’d miss her at noon or so, when they realized she hadn’t shown up at her appointment with the brown- and- purple one – psychologist, wasn’t it? – but no matter. They had no real hold on her, and no way to find her.

She walked up the drive and looked at the house, appraising. It shouldn’t be too hard to get in – there was a window in the top floor that was cracked open. She tucked a corner of her skirt into the waistband, to keep it out of the way, and climbed the drainpipe without much trouble.

Landing on the roof, she walked along the peak of the shingles to the open window. It was the work of a moment to jump to the windowsill and set herself down in the house.

She’d half expected something blank and white, like the inside of the hospital, or maybe something more crowded like the psychologist’s room, and she’d been mentally preparing herself for the assault on her senses. Instead, this room was painted half green and half white, with a thick green rug on the floor, and full of furniture – desks and chairs and a large comfortable bed. There were bookcases along the walls and a square plastic thing with a screen – not a television, the other one, what was it, a computer – on one of the desks. She toed her shoes off, untucked her skirt and walked delicately through the strewn- about things on the floor. It seemed that the boy didn’t care much for neatness, as more clothes than she even owned were piled up around, under, even on the bed, and at least four books were turned face- down on the floor, marking a place.

It looked remarkably right. For once, her eyes didn’t cry out for the missing colours – they all seemed to be exactly where they should be.
She wondered if he would come home soon, or if he were here already. No, he wasn’t. She could hear nothing in the rest of the house, and the window had made enough noise coming open that he would have noticed. He couldn’t still be here.

She found the staircase and made her way to the kitchen. Yes, this was a place she’d been before, even if she didn’t remember the circumstances.

She eyed the stove speculatively. Could she cook? She thought so. Perhaps if she made something for him, he’d be more receptive to her suggestion. She began looking through the cabinets.