This was a great question.
And hopefully Harmony journaled and didn’t destroy her letters from my great-grandfather, so we might find out.
Prudence shot me an impish look. “Shall we?”
I grinned at her. “We shall.”
And with that, we stepped onto the parquet.
Instantly, my world turned blue, then green, then purple, the kaleidoscope of colors all a haze as I found myself among couples twirling around the floor in a waltz. I could hear the muted conversation, the orchestra playing, even the wisp of slippers and hems of ballgowns sweeping the wood.
Prudence’s arm in mine guided me into the miasma swirling around me as women’s feather-bearing heads turned this way and that, men’s coattails fluttered, jewels glowed murkily.
I heard a giggle, a low chuckle, a whispered insult.
We kept walking.
And the view changed.
The colors were gone, it was all in a mist of blue that I saw the lines of beds, the privacy screens, the old fashioned IV stands, nurses wandering, doctors reading charts, patients hobbling.
A woman sat by a man in bed, and I listened to him dictating a letter to her as she carefully scribbled.
He did this because he had no hands.
To my darling Jane…
My attention shifted to a set of double French doors at the end of the room as I saw the back of a man with a crutch under one arm, his other arm busy with the woman at his side clutching his other arm at his elbow.
He was smiling down at her as he led her out into a blinding blue sunshine.
“Vivi?” I heard Prudence call as I pulled from her hold to go after them. “Vivi!”
I hit the doors; they were closed.
I tried to open them; they were locked.
The key was in the lock.
I turned it and stepped out onto the terrace.
And it all faded away.
“Vivi!” Prudence cried again as she grabbed my hand.
I looked down at her vaguely, then turned my attention to the ballroom, which was just an empty ballroom.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Holy hell.
What the fuck just happened?
“Are you all right?” Prudence asked, pumping her fingers around my hand.
