10. reacclimate

[exnihilo]

[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.]

Comments

private

[patheticvillain]

you're welcome. I can make another one if you run out of space.

helped?

[private]

[halftheman]

Cold.

Beyond that, we have-- differing opinions.

When did you wake? [ He is a little bit frantic, a little bit nervous, a little bit more balanced then he was despite all this. ]

[private]

[sickjoke]

All the time.

Worse these days.

[ Despite it all, Jack doesn't hide his face from this relative stranger. ]

[private]

[routemistress]

You're up, you're up, eeeeee you're up! I'm -

Can I 'ave five minutes before the rest of your catching up?

[velocette]

Yes. All the time.

But the unreal is natural, so natural that it makes of unreality the most natural of anything natural.

What reality would you want to belong to?

[strangehistorian]

I've felt very insignificant before. But not unreal.

[warisart]

Felt, mostly.

Much less frequently in the present tense.

private

[secretasshole]

Since August 16th. Today is September 15th.

Welcome back.

Private

[adelphoktonos]

[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.]