ekstasis

xi

This isn't like any of the visions I've received before. No images, no signs, not even the feeling of the damp grass and soil that I know must be beneath my palms. Not even light. All I have is the feeling of falling deep within me, a tug in the pit of my stomach as I tumble through the void.

Still, it's not the light that I miss so much as touch. Even the rush of air past my flailing limbs would mean something, but there's nothing there. It's as if the whole world has gone dead.

All I can feel is small: a lonely, insignificant thing, spinning out of control.

Every moment that goes by, I can feel my grasp on reality loosening. Remembering that my body remains in the clearing, under whispering trees and the dim pinpricks of light that make up Pegasus, isn't an easy thing when it feels so far away.

I can't touch it. Can't see it. Even the air in my lungs is starting to feel less and less real.

With every moment that passes—moments that I can only measure with the increasingly frantic beat of my heart—my breathing becomes faster, shallower, as I struggle for air.

You're having a panic attack, Sophie.

One of my clearest childhood memories: my aunt, crouched beside me in the mud, rain spotting her glasses. I'd gone to stay with my father's family just outside Derry while he put my mother's things in order and prepared for the funeral—and, I'd later realized by the glass bottles scattered around our apartment, binge drank himself into a stupor.

I'd missed him during his time away, so I insisted on going outside to wait for him, despite the bad weather. My aunt took me out to meet him at the gate, all bundled up in our winter coats and wellies. And when an hour passed with no sign of him, not even a call, she was there to comfort me in that soft, even brogue of hers.

He was probably held up at the barricades. Everything is going to be alright. Just breathe with me.

And we'd held hands, counting in-two-three, out-two-three until he finally arrived with a spare tire on the car and a face full of apologies.

I never saw my aunt after that. She was too tied up with caring for the livestock and my aging grandparents to leave the farm, and my father had left Ireland for a reason. I hadn't really understood at the time; I'd kept begging to go back and visit. But between the barricades and the shootings and his brother's internment, he'd set himself against bringing his child back there until a treaty was arranged—and it never was.

Still, I remember Derry and that day in the rain every time the fear starts to be too much. And as I breathe, slowly, metrically, the darkness seems to fade, if only a little, and I'm able to remember what brought me to this point in the first place.

The nightmares about my parents, even Holly. My losing it over the phone because my father hinted at moving on. The strange familiarity of Bragdon and my peers there, even from day one.

I have a purpose tonight. More than any of the other ceremonies, more than just making myself liked or reminding myself that I belong here.

It's like Alexei said; understanding the tangle of past and present, taking the future into your hands.

None of this is going to last if I can't go a night without nightmares and visions of snakes, or make things right with my father. Making my place here means making sense of this head of mine.

I can figure this out. I can make things right. I just need a direction.

As soon as the thought hits me, my knees slam into a hard surface. I stay there, bent over for a moment as I try to recenter myself.