Mirrors & Shadows

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝐈𝐗

յօ 𝔪𝔬𝔫𝔱𝔥𝔰 𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔬𝔯 ~ 𝔦𝔩𝔩-𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔡 𝔠𝔯𝔬𝔴𝔰

    "Therefore light is both a wave and a particle." Luna concluded.
She paused. Not in hesitation. Silence spread out across the place. She took this instant to sweep the vast room. Her gaze climbed the sumptuous walls, up to the high ceiling. She hadn't really payed such close attention to the rich and beautiful ornementation before. Her gaze returned to the assembly of students. "However, in a more accurate sense," Her voice resonated steadily, "light is neither a wave nor a particle." She stated although she had spent a good hour proving that it was both. She chose her next words carefully. "Let's take, as a comparison, this cylindrical pen holder. If I ask you to look at its shadow one way and guess its shape based on the shadow, you will guess it's rectangular. But if I turned it this way, the shadow would show a circle and thus you would guess the object is circular. However, the pen holder is neither rectangular nor circular."
Her gaze met his. Something indescribable flashed for a second across his eyes. Was it understanding? Or maybe agreement?
    "It is a complex three dimensional object," she pursued nonetheless, "and its shape cannot be deduced by a two dimensional collapsed representation that the shadow provides. So to say that light is both a wave and a particle is like saying a cylinder is both rectangular and circular."

Hands raised hither and thither. She answered questions somewhat absentmindedly, sending glances at him amidst the assembly. At the end of class, students herded to her desk, she pushed past them, grabbing his arm before he left the room.
   "Erm... professor? Professor De Revel?" she called. He turned, staring at her hand on his forearm. She quickly let him go. His smoky gaze turned to her.
    "Dr. Enwright?" He inquired with a pinch of surprise.
    "I have the calculations." she replied simply. They stood the both of them in the crowd of curious students. She turned to the classroom's blackboard. When she concentrated hard enough, she could see the city's lights merging to form numbers and she traced them onto the blackboard. Her words rose in speed as she explained. Often, when she was excited about something, she would talk too fast for anyone to understand. De Revel had joined her behind the desk and was now examining was she was writing.
    "So, that means you are willing to take part in my research?"
Luna closed her eyes. She couldn't believe what she was going to answer.
    "Yes." she sighed.
    "And you can reproduce all of this... by memory?"
    "Well... yes."
Truth be told she hadn't even written it down until now.

A couple minutes later, they were exiting the university and walking toward his lab.
    "Can I ask you something?" Luna inquired.
    "Yes?"
    "Why do you call me Dr. Enwright?"
Before he could reply she added.
    "I mean, I'd prefer if you called me by my first name."
She brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. If they were going to work together it was best if they could get past formalities. His silver eyes glinted.
    "Alright. Then you should call me Edmond." He smiled.

***

    "You remember Luna."
Marie-Elise looked at her brother oddly.
    "Of course." Arthur smiled.
    "She'll be working with me and Aldrich."
Edmond pushed a door to the right open revealing a man that was leaning comfortably in his chair, his shoes resting on his desk that towered with papers. Crows cawed and flew in the cloud of smoke that surrounded him.
    "Luna, this is my colleague, Dr. Aldrich Saumur. Aldrich would you be so kind as to smoke outside? Our new associate is rather sensitive."
    "I don't mind." Luna intervened quickly, not wanting to cause any quarrels.
Aldrich smiled arrogantly, lifting his eyes for the first time from the book he was reading.
    "I think he means mortal, my dear."
He looked older than Edmond and it was clear he did not like having to obey him. He pressed the cigarette against the ashtray, turning it off while glaring defiantly at Edmond. His heavy brows lifted.
    "As you wish, sire." On his lips the title sounded less like a mark of respect than a mockery.
He stood up, walking toward Luna. Edmond gave him a warning glance that he ignored.
    "You must be out of your mind." He leered. Luna jumped in surprise when he lay his hand on her shoulder.
"But what genius isn't?" He paused, sighing. "Welcome to hell, Dr. Enwright."
Then, he took a new cigarette from his pocket and lighted it. "I'll be out for a smoke." he told Edmond while carelessly stepping out of the office and closing the door behind him.
    "Don't take it personally." Edmond reassured. "I've never seen him act any differently since his rebirth in the 17th century. The crows were part of an older experiment but Aldrich insisted we keep them. They are clever animals that is."
One of the crows perched on Edmond's arm.
    "Bonjour." It welcomed.
    "Bonjour toi." Edmond answered affectionately.
    "Ta gueule." It croaked back.
Edmond frowned.
    "Did Aldrich teach you that?" It flapped its wings, muttering something that sounded awfully close to 'You dimwit.'
and chose to perch on the model of the human brain on Aldrich's desk instead.
    "Anyway, we do work on other things aside teaching crows how to swear..." he grinned.

***

'Hell' wasn't the right word to describe working alongside vampires. Actually, Luna wasn't sure if there was a right word. Every so often, you'd hear Arthur curse: "Bloody machine! Where are the keys for the screenshot?!" Squawking would erupt from Aldrich's office, meaning the birds were startled. And Marie-Élise would answer with an exasperated sigh: "You're such an old man." Edmond didn't seem bothered in the least and continued his work, uninterrupted.

But lunch breaks were the most peculiar. Luna was the only one that ate. Henry Ferrow came over and the group of vampires would compete at chess. Henry always won though. Marie-Élise had to convince Edmond to join them. Edmond was the only one that had a chance of beating Henry. They would play for an hour and most of the time neither won or if one did, it was very close.

Henry Ferrow would appear, to the ordinary person, like a blind thirty year old man (when you played chess with him, you always had to state your chesspiece's position and Luna was amazed how he could memorize and visualize the board) his hair was a chestnut brown and his intense amber eyes saw straight through you. To add to this description he was closely followed around by a dog he called Cerberus. Though Luna wasn't sure the name quite fit. Cerberus was a big black poodle with a pink ribbon tied to its neck. This was a prank Arthur was proud of.

The first time she met Henry, no one warned her about Cerberus. So it was somewhat of a shock when he pounced on her and overwhelmed her with welcoming licks. After, Edmond apologetically handed her a handkerchief to wipe her slobber-covered glasses.

She worked in Edmond's office. It was plain. White walls. Window to the left. Two neat wooden desks that faced each other. A whiteboard was set up for her to work there. But as days went past, and her small scraggly writing filled the first board making it more black than white, they had to add another one and then another one until she stood in a circle of whiteboards.

She had a singular feeling about all this like she was plummeting slowly into a dark world and she was seeing everything from the other side, seeing the surface from in the water.
Counting pills
Same dream
Stop lights and metro stations
The light was red then it was green. She had ups then downs. And then turn arounds. Her metro came. And she watched it leave. Another one would come just as the other one had left.

She started buying editions of different newspapers and magazines in order to cling to the world she used to belong to. But the headlines now sounded banal and out of place.
Celebrities getting married
Athletes breaking records
Movie awards and actors' debts
Top models and latest iPhones
Politicians to famous singers

Henry's eyes stared straight through her and she was scared of what he saw. Every night, she saw the rose. Every night, before falling to sleep she was scared of it. However, once in the forest she was obsessed with finding it. Her blood dripped from her fist clenched around the rose's stem. But in the morning, no cuts bore witness to it.

The more she resolved the mysteries tied to Edmond's work, to consciousness, the more it seemed to contradict everything she had learnt, everything she thought she knew. However, it all made sense. It was as if telling someone that the upturned reflection of the city in the puddles was reality and you were the one that had been living in the puddle version of the world this whole time.

A/N
I'll probably change this part of the story later on. I have trouble creating transitions between chapters and sometimes I kinda lump scenes I had previously written together and I don't know how to add fluidity argh... x,) I'm open to suggestions 🤗 Plus I don't like the part where they call each other by their names... I find that it's out of place 😑

Otherwise, the end is supposed to be detached to show how disrupted Luna's vision of everything she thought she knew is... how do you like it? Oh and what do you think about Aldrich and Henry? Tell me in the comments! 😋

2Step by Ed Sheeran ft. Lil Baby

Ps: what Luna explains about light being neither a wave nor a particle with the example of a cylinder's shadow, I took from here:
https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/01/16/is-light-a-particle-or-a-wave/
+ yes, crows are capable of speech