Cassandra "Andie" Moriarty (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
everdreaming) wrote2012-04-16 01:34 am
everdreaming) wrote2012-04-16 01:34 am
Fragments.
She remembers rain.
Pouring rain outside her window. Unrelenting. Sadness in the hallway, but no words. No faces. Is it raining inside too? Tears hot on cheeks, sticky against her palm when she wipes it away. Silence. All this silence in the house, broken only by the pounding of rain on the roof.
She wakes but she is still dreaming. She is always dreaming. There's forever a far away feel – she left behind the harsh, cold reality for this eternal floating. The school of fish swim above her head. A tropical variety today, all vibrant colors, oranges and yellows. They are an anchor, a sign that she is safe, that all is well in the hardware of her brain.
She sits up. It is time to face the day. The face in the mirror is her own, she thinks. When she is someone else she always knows, distantly, that it isn't right. There is training for that, for Patients to recognize their own core identity so that they aren't lost to the finer points of dreaming.
Trading one thing for another. She gave away something, she knows. But if it was only rain and melancholia, she can't say she minds. She may have wanted to forget.
There is always a margin of memory loss. Each year it widens, the studies have shown. The surveys she participates in track the progress for future Patients. She is a prototype. Perhaps she should be worried – they never publish the findings, and she isn't supposed to tell anyone, even the Doctors – but she isn't. Whatever she is losing, she's happy to let it go. That she knows. She signed on a dotted line with the hope for release.
But this morning she is intact, at least to her perception. Blue eyes, a long nose, hair she'll need to straighten today, the curls are far too unkempt after tossing in the night. And the school of fish, swimming out her open bedroom door, down to the kitchen, reminding her she'll need to eat breakfast. So bright in their hues she smiles. When they are dim or black, she worries. Those days she also has no reflection, or her features are all blurred. For moments at a time she is not Cassandra Moriarty, or Andie, the simpler nickname she likes better anyway. She forgets. She drifts. She fears.
Moments can feel like years in dreams.
But today is a good day. Today Ethan may bring starfruit. Today she will build a dreamscape so beautiful she will ache. The sun will shine so yellow in the sky, warming everything. Because she doesn't like when it rains. Too wet. Too dreary. Too much was taken from her in the rain, long ago.
Pouring rain outside her window. Unrelenting. Sadness in the hallway, but no words. No faces. Is it raining inside too? Tears hot on cheeks, sticky against her palm when she wipes it away. Silence. All this silence in the house, broken only by the pounding of rain on the roof.
She wakes but she is still dreaming. She is always dreaming. There's forever a far away feel – she left behind the harsh, cold reality for this eternal floating. The school of fish swim above her head. A tropical variety today, all vibrant colors, oranges and yellows. They are an anchor, a sign that she is safe, that all is well in the hardware of her brain.
She sits up. It is time to face the day. The face in the mirror is her own, she thinks. When she is someone else she always knows, distantly, that it isn't right. There is training for that, for Patients to recognize their own core identity so that they aren't lost to the finer points of dreaming.
Trading one thing for another. She gave away something, she knows. But if it was only rain and melancholia, she can't say she minds. She may have wanted to forget.
There is always a margin of memory loss. Each year it widens, the studies have shown. The surveys she participates in track the progress for future Patients. She is a prototype. Perhaps she should be worried – they never publish the findings, and she isn't supposed to tell anyone, even the Doctors – but she isn't. Whatever she is losing, she's happy to let it go. That she knows. She signed on a dotted line with the hope for release.
But this morning she is intact, at least to her perception. Blue eyes, a long nose, hair she'll need to straighten today, the curls are far too unkempt after tossing in the night. And the school of fish, swimming out her open bedroom door, down to the kitchen, reminding her she'll need to eat breakfast. So bright in their hues she smiles. When they are dim or black, she worries. Those days she also has no reflection, or her features are all blurred. For moments at a time she is not Cassandra Moriarty, or Andie, the simpler nickname she likes better anyway. She forgets. She drifts. She fears.
Moments can feel like years in dreams.
But today is a good day. Today Ethan may bring starfruit. Today she will build a dreamscape so beautiful she will ache. The sun will shine so yellow in the sky, warming everything. Because she doesn't like when it rains. Too wet. Too dreary. Too much was taken from her in the rain, long ago.