exnihilo | 10. reacclimate

[Public video, but filtered away from Harvey, David, and Iris]

[It might not be immediately obvious, between the low light and the strange angle, but Mira is lying on top of the unadorned altar in the nondenominational chapel on deck, some of her hair hanging over the side, comm held above her.]

Do you ever feel like you aren't real?

[Private to David 8]

How long was I asleep?

[Text private to Cassel]

Thank you again for the journal. It helped.

[She doesn't say with what.]

[Private to Harvey]

How was death?

[Private to Helena]

Iris says you watched me.

[Spam for Iris]

[One of so many pieces of paper Iris left in Mira's room, is slipped back under her door. It was disorienting at first, the colors and obtrusive scatter of trinkets, the scalding proof that time lost her for a little while, changed around her. She thought, of course she thought, it was her own memory that had failed, that had lost its mess of contents at least, but the notes, pieced together, gradually righted her assumption, twisting it upside-down like a flipped kayak. The page she returns is a poem, one of many Iris left in between more informative updates and sentimental messages. Beneath the attribution, Mira has scrawled in rough, childlike handwriting - the mark of a post-penmanship age - This one is my favorite.]

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[She wakes and she's terrified; there's this pulsing sickly red light inside her mind and she shrinks from it. The message makes no sense to her when she sees it first, shortly after waking to find herself in a room that seems unreal. Finally, the words twist themselves into something that seems more ordered but when she opens her mouth and replies it doesn't come out in English.]

Vy spaly protyahom tryvaloho chasu, sestra. [You slept for a long time, sister. There's still fear in her voice, a weakness and a vulnerability.]

Edited 2014-09-17 04:03 (UTC)

[Fortunately, Mira knows Ukranian - Mira herself barely knows how many languages she does speak, only that it's in the hundreds. She answers in the same tongue, her accent a little odd, but the words recognizable.]

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.

Edited 2014-09-17 13:46 (UTC)

[It surprises her, dully, that answer in the same language. Her sister should know, but they didn't grow up together. She was in England, in North America, while Helena was left behind with the nuns in Ukraine. They were torn apart.]

I missed you. [Almost sulky.] I always missed you.

Iris said you were here with me, sometimes.

I've never been watched over, before. Not by someone who understands.

[Understands what she doesn't specify, perhaps not even to herself. It doesn't matter. They're - alike. Alike enough.

I never have either. [It's a weary acknowledgement and there's a pause for a moment, as she tries to force her thoughts into some kind of order. Everything is moving chaotically in her head and it's hard to focus.]

I combed your hair.