“I-” Rachel said, frowning. She felt like something important was slipping out of her fingers. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember breaking her arm, lying on the floor, her mother just one wall away but unable to get out of bed, her brother singing to her. “Feel like I should have? Feel like the memory is there, but-” But remembering her brother made her feel sick, sick in her stomach like she needed to scratch it out. She stopped, fixing her eyes on the ceiling.
The first time she and Cai tried to have a vision together, he'd warned her that she, like Danny, might be sucked into the vision with him. But, he'd added, that might just be because they were brothers. It had been different with different people: Once after he'd had a vision with Nonnie, she'd described the feeling as a kind of 'emotional echo'. Once, when he'd had the vision of Faye and Rowe on the ship, that image had found its way into Faye's dreams.
There were no hard and fast rules - or, there probably were, but it was all so new. Magic's just science you don't understand yet, right?
Rachel, for her part, was left with a hollow feeling of loss, settling deep in her stomach. The memory had come back to her slowly – starting with the emotions, and the pictures following.
Some of Rachel's memories were like Tarot cards - face down, but there. Cai had reached into her mind and flipped this one over, and even if she did put if back, face down as it had been, she'd still know what this one was.
Yes, she remembered that day. The day she broke her arm and her mother lay in the next room, ignoring her. That was the day she gave up, the first day she thought about dying.
But that couldn’t be right – she’d thought about dying before her mother tried to kill her? That didn’t fit into Rachel’s timeline of events at all. In Rachel's timeline, the depression set in after the trip to the river. Not before it.
But it felt right. Lying on the floor, wanting to be dead. It felt true.
"This was a dumb idea," Rachel said, to no one in particular.
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The first time she and Cai tried to have a vision together, he'd warned her that she, like Danny, might be sucked into the vision with him. But, he'd added, that might just be because they were brothers. It had been different with different people: Once after he'd had a vision with Nonnie, she'd described the feeling as a kind of 'emotional echo'. Once, when he'd had the vision of Faye and Rowe on the ship, that image had found its way into Faye's dreams.
There were no hard and fast rules - or, there probably were, but it was all so new. Magic's just science you don't understand yet, right?
Rachel, for her part, was left with a hollow feeling of loss, settling deep in her stomach. The memory had come back to her slowly – starting with the emotions, and the pictures following.
Some of Rachel's memories were like Tarot cards - face down, but there. Cai had reached into her mind and flipped this one over, and even if she did put if back, face down as it had been, she'd still know what this one was.
Yes, she remembered that day. The day she broke her arm and her mother lay in the next room, ignoring her. That was the day she gave up, the first day she thought about dying.
But that couldn’t be right – she’d thought about dying before her mother tried to kill her? That didn’t fit into Rachel’s timeline of events at all. In Rachel's timeline, the depression set in after the trip to the river. Not before it.
But it felt right. Lying on the floor, wanting to be dead. It felt true.
"This was a dumb idea," Rachel said, to no one in particular.