Emilie

She came to an recumbent quiet under the sounds seeping away from her, away with the room. Her waking world was at an end where her senses sought no more. A mere blanket sheet of nirvana. Nothing at all all over her senses, and a sense of...then a sense of.....white...bright light washing over all she had to say and do...all was left but to lie down and be at peace. It didn't matter. How could it possibly matter, being so vulgar, and material, and...then a whisper...

"Times I see someone silhouetted where there's windows..." right in one of her ears...an ear...what was it ears were, she wondered, and then there was more there "Where the eyes go..." His voice said "I don't know..."

It was a hiss. It was a rumble that began before she felt the cold and wet push on the soles of her bare feet, splaying out of between her toes. She worried about the blankets and sheets until she simply did not remember where she had been moments ago at all.

She lay in wet, growing use to the cold coming up behind, and the cold breeze caught up in time to see the water retreat. It made her feel as though it were her moving, eyes closed against the light.

So much to say. She still had so much to say, she did not remember. Her faith moved. A comma there, and emphasis stained--would her faith move her. Would it have the words she hoped she might have said--the words she hoped she might say?

"I still don't know...I...I don't.." It is not sure she can be said to have said it at all. Here was a half an hour of words, but what was mostly no words at all. Silence she spoke. Silence and a few syllables here and there within the wiggling of her jaw, and her lips. They moved. They moved within these aforementioned syllables of her diminishing lisps.

"You are not alone" she felt His arms around her ribs the where she always use to love feeling them. No pain of joint. No priceless reunion yet either. There was dreamstate, and there was sensation, distinct, debatable..."We have much for you to learn" He said. "There is no rush...there is all the time in the world..." and then she felt a kiss. It was planted upon her cheek bone, just in front of her ear, not far, and there lips lingered long enough to suggest they did not want to leave.

"You've been such..." How was it He could make such simple words as such wait, and charge, and feel like words of good mixed up into regular sentences...? "...a good girl..." Only a pause, and a small emphasis.

"don't" she managed. She did not manage to make it sound sincere, she did not think. "don't" she said it again, somewhat similar, in fact entirely similar. "What do you want?"

If she can have whipped her hands and nails at the air before her face she might have. Her body felt so heavy though. Her hands crushing into the sand. She felt something upon each arm just bellow the wrist, one hand lifted like something light and lain upon her chest. The other lain atop, and something cool touched each eyelid, making the bright white dim.

"Promise is as promise does, popette." He talked like they were alone, although the feel of sheet and blanket lifting up over her face, fading soon after she felt it, was not by His hand, she knew. "The road was long and winding, with pain and joy, now here's the end, and the toll to pay..."

He gave a short quiet groan of the kind a grown man might when Her fingertips felt almost like they were open the way they had pruned.

"Your sister had not suffered before you asked she be revived." Images crossed her mind of the lifeless girl in the sand. She was so pale, and lips of blue. "Well...frightening for a little sister, but drowning itself is otherwise among the less unpleasant ways to die."

She felt so cold now. She felt remorse she had not in decades, coiling up irretrievably tight round her heart, and choking her from inside her throat. She could not sob. The sensation simply hung there, on a verge that only lingered--a fall where the ground did not come and did not come.

"Emilie..." wetted cheek, then two, felt warmer, and then the breeze made them cold. "A bright star in your discerning eye" He continued her thought outloud "even now tasting the richness you chose to share of your fortunes. Nothing of you in her but fond memory, and lessons learned."

Her eyes snapped open. The sky was overcast, and there He was standing over her, hand held out, a dim shape against the dimming sky. All was blue and darkening.

"Times I see someone silhouetted where there's windows." She blinked at His skin, paler than her sister's had been.

"Where the eyes go...I don't know..." She blinked at where His eyes should be, nothing there but blackness.

Accepting His hand, He hoisted her to her feet, and turned her towards the way down the beach. They both began to walk "My garden awaits you. You will adore it there, of this I can be certain..."

The beach was growing darker and colder as they walked. "Words in the day." She continued not quite under her breath. The scent on the wind threatened rain. "Whispers in the night..."

Feeling no frailty in her bones, or weakness in her body any more, she looked down to see her bosom pert within the one piece swimming suit she wore that day He had approached her sobbing over her sister. Stomach flat with her late teenage metabolism, legs and arms interesting of texture with the swimmer's build she once maintained for years at a time. The pride she had had... "Words in the day..." Even now the sobs would not come... "Breathing in the dark..."

"Tell Me about..." His pause seemed pregnant, as though He were making a show of finding the words, or as though He might say never mind instead of whatever it was He wished to inquire after "...your visit with Brit..."

Dearest Diary,

My My, did that say "closed for business"? Lucky it was, then, that We were there for pleasure, wouldn't You agree? Of course You would, else I'ld not have snatched You up from the fallen shelf. "Now, there", I said to Myself, as a matter of internal dialog, My constant custom on any jaunt, stroll, or meandering wayfare, I said "Now, there is a book that's obviously here at the library for pleasure, as opposed to business. Slim, smartly reductionist, smooth of line, and oh so much the superior to Derdre's dreadful rag of froof, bespangled as it was with woodland wild-life, then dipped in common banality. I'll wager this stoutly bound literary soldier could provide a steady supply of blunt trauma to the skull of more than one heavy-set security professional without the poor taste of becoming unbound, and sticky with humors...I simply must introduce Myself.", and indeed I did.

There, now: is this not more interesting than the idle pratlings of nameless forebarers, and self-named saints? New testament indeed, as I've been saying for at least an eon or two by now, same as I said not several hours hence your contents simply had to go, giving way for far more inteligable verbiage, if I do say so.

Ah, and here We are: home sweet home. Not My home, of course, or your's, surely, but someone's home, and sweet they certainly must be. To paint a house so starkly white, and frame it's eaves to bursting with fascades of green, just exactly like the two houses to either side, and the same as those across the avenue, it screams of the sweet drive to rebel by not rebelling at all. Let us rap upon the door and see if they wouldn't mind sparing some of this singularly inspirational lack of inspiration...

Dearest Diary,

I did so love our day at the park with Mr. Scruffles. It was an arborial delight. I dare say it was an omage to days at the park everywhere, firmament to fundament. Mr. Scruffles did have a time, I can tell you. In fact, (dramatic pause) if I don't miss My guess, and I most assuredly do not, I rather get the impression Mr. Scruffles has come over all weak in the knees for you, and being that his knees are stuffed with fluff of a less than adamantine nature, one must surmise that his knees have come over very weak indeed.

How can he be held accountable, I ask you? How can anyone that sees you not immediately fathom the course of his thought? Your's, My dearest Diary, are the highlights, and hyperion graphic designs and layouts of an artistic genius. Just look at all your subtleties. Fluffy bunny children with enormous eyes, looking frightened and vulnerable, huddling together in the darkened underbrush...oh, dear, they're gone. Perhaps that bobcat I added to the page went off somewhere to play with them.

Still, it's no matter. Mr. Scruffles, rest and keep him, flew off in a twirling arc towards a neatly stacked pyramid of propane tanks, along with Alice's diary, that rag of a flammable floral patterned piece of scrap, muttering something in high-pitched French about assisting with the barbeque. I imagine I shall have to keep you in trust for that dear sweet little Derdre while she gets well done with the ensuing festivities. Alas, such is the way of the generous soul.

Say, here's a larf: Let's go to the library, and see if we can't stir up a companion or two for you...

Reafirmation

Dearest diary,

there are days the question comes up and again of what it's all for. What indeed does it matter or accomplish, in the ultimate, absolutist sense of the words, whether the agoraphobic gentleman I spoke with through the door crack gets a consignment of agitated scorpions in a box as opposed to the handfuls and handfuls of deliciously crunchy, sweet carameled kettle corn kernels and nuts he had meant to purchase from Me with such giddy, directionless verbosity. What indeed is the purpose of pushing past the young wife's uncertainty of whether to wait for her hard working husband to return home, instead winning her trust and consent to demonstrate the handy-dandy wetvac with a kind smile, and jolly well winning a sale with a simple, four hour interactive demonstration of her various configurations, and little known never the less knee weakening applications and special...accessories.

Indeed, as I stepped away from a previously neglected young spouse, wondering idly whether her important husband is any good at mathematics, or child-rearing--as My thoughts led Me to wonder whether the holed-up crackerjack enthusiast had been listening carefully, and would find the anti-venom individually shrink-wrapped at the bottom of the box, I couldn't help but stop where I stood. I turned a sidelong smile skyward to give the sun a single glint from tooth then side of bright eye. I tipped My hat to the only cloud in that great big blue firmament, and asked the heavens "What was the question again?"

The cabby that squealed to a halt inches from the pleat of My slacks couldn't appreciate the gravity of the moment, oh but I could. I would have explained it to him as well, in the interest of fraternal love, but the poor man had honked and yelled until he lost focus, trailed off into sing-songy nursery rhymes, and his ears began to bleed.

It was, My dearest diary, with a heady sigh that a turned back along My way, and a heart heavy to lose yet another cabby's ear to his own high-pitched song, and bodily humors. That is, of course, when I met you, with your charming floral motif made out in pinks and pastels...well, we both know I first had to meet little Alice, but less said about the curly and precocious the better, for it was immediately after Mine eyes fell to you, and immediately there upon I could tell her idly fancies touched your pages as sand and ashes would the pallet of an empress. If you care deign to spend one wit in wondering were her words went, I sent them away. Little Alice would do better to know her audience, and I'm certain a little constructive criticism from this...Johny-Wonny person, and from this teacher of hers will set her back along that path nicely.

Meanwhile, let's you and I find a tuffet under a tree somewhere with some tea, and a well mannered teddy with good stories and excellent listening skills. Already I feel My woe in private joy falling, sinking, and fading to black, forgotten like the one puppy too many that went swimming with a pillow case and a rock...