Loss could describe me.
But loss didn’t have todefineme.
I could be a phoenix. I could rise from the ashes.
Icouldfind meaning and a purpose in my existence, even if I remained unchanged for eternity.
Though even there I had that tiny glimmer of hope. I channeled my energy, pushing my finger into reality.
Push. Pain. Bounce.
Push. Pain. Bounce.
The light from the tall windows to the left of the room rimmed Tennyson in glowing sun, his hands still kneading his sore upper thigh. “Uffa!The leg is hurting today.”
Tennyson sat back with a huff, flinging his arms along the back of the sofa. Like a helium-filled balloon, the scar rippled in reaction to the movement, drifting to the side of the sofa. If the scar wasn’t fully in reality, why did it react to Tennyson?
I wandered closer to it.
The strange scar didn’t react to me. It didn’t eddy around my presence like it did for Tennyson. I had no mass, even to it. Since its appearance, the scar had grown in periodic spurts and pulsed like a beating heart every now and again.
It was odd.
The closer I got to it, the more . . . stretched I felt. It was as if the scar were denser matter somehow. I didn’t think I could walk through it. Today, in particular, it felt more potent. The closer I came, the more pressure I felt, like it wanted to repel me. There was no other way to describe it. The scar was dissonance.
Every now and again, I encountered a place in this world that felt . . . different. Like reality was heavier or denser in that place.
For example, a ruined tower lay behind the villa, just opposite the large terrace off the back of the drawing room where I stood. The tower ruins had an odd darkness around them. Like reality dimmed just in that spot.
It made a sort of random sense. Our world was hardly a seamless plane. It had ups and downs and hills and valleys. So the in-between world that I inhabited probably had areas where the divisions between the physical world and the shadow world varied. And as I was the only resident of this space, the variations would only be noticeable to me.
Carefully, I moved to an opposite chair and sat down, keeping the entire length of the sofa between me and the scar. Though I didn’t have any mass, I could hold myself in a position in the world. So I could sit in a chair or stand on a floor without sinking through it.
Suddenly Tennyson’s body tensed. His eyes snapped to the side, staring at something only he could see, following it beyond me.
A vision.
Not good.
They had been happening more of late.
Worse, Tennyson often seemed more fractured after one.
Something flickered in my peripheral vision. I whipped my head toward it. The scar pulsed, rippling and glowing.
“Tennyson.” I stood up, keeping my eyes on the scar. “Can you hear me? Can you fight the vision?”
Tennyson continued to move his head, tracking things I couldn’t see. His mouth moved, no words coming out.
The scar jerked, growing larger. Its edges bulged, like something was pushing on it from behind.
“Tennyson.” I clapped my hands.
Stupid me. That made no sound.
“Tenn!” I yelled, waving my arms, trying to snatch his attention.
Tennyson remained locked in his trance.
