i see things that nobody else sees

[Fenris]

Adrienne Langley was often—

No. Not that.

She was thinking something like “underestimated”, maybe, but she didn’t really know what that would mean anymore. There was a version of her that existed once that was underestimated, but she really only existed in dreams Adrienne couldn’t grasp when waking and framed photographs that lined the walls of her bedroom where they used to line the house. That wasn’t her anymore, and the now-her wasn’t underestimated, because first she would have to be… estimated? She didn’t know what that meant, either, but it sounded funny. Sometimes she liked the rhythms in words more than their meanings. The meanings were blurry a lot of the time.

What was she, often? Drunk, haha, but that wasn’t really the point. She was trying to make a point but it had slipped through her fingers like a wine glass, this morning, or maybe last week. She’d gotten some glass in her foot and one of the maids, Janine, she thought her name was, but maybe that was another one, had taken it out and bandaged her foot. There wasn’t a bandage there when she looked down now though so maybe she’d dreamt that whole thing. It was hard to tell, really. The line between sleep and wake was so tenuous and sometimes the only difference was whether her husband looked at her when he passed by, whether her daughter would stop to hug her. They both changed shape, too, memory to memory to life to dream. Had so much time passed?

In her dreams it was always a blonde little girl with pigtails and a sad smile.

In life? There was a girl, still, but not the same one, but probably the same one. She thought. Time was questionable and reality just as much so but she saw the things that stayed the same. The upturned nose, the rosy cheeks. The eyes, seafoam green, just like her own. So much like her own, all of it, enough that if the girl’s hair hadn’t turned pink one day and stayed that way it would probably get confusing. Some days it was confusing anyway. One day she’d looked in the mirror and saw her own face and it was her daughter’s face but it was marked by things that shouldn’t have been there and she’d screamed and then she didn’t remember what had happened after that. There weren’t any mirrors on the ground floor anymore.

The girl. Ivy. Christopher had picked the name. It was his mother’s name, or his sister’s, or his aunt’s, or something. He hadn’t asked her permission. She had nodded and smiled.

She wasn’t here.

Or she could be, Adrienne thought, hiding away outside her peripheral vision, holed up in her room. She missed things often, saw the girl descending the stairs without remembering her ever having climbed them. It felt like it had been longer than usual, but she could be wrong, or maybe she was just somewhere else, right now. Doing something for school. Or with friends. Or something.

The thought came to her occasionally, that it was strange, maybe. That it should bother her, perhaps. Another glass of wine and it was gone. What was strange, anyway, when everything was? She heard whispers in the corners but when she looked up they were silent. The maids were nicer than usual, she thought, but she was comparing shadows to fog.

Christopher wasn’t here yet.

There was a glass of wine in her hand. She didn’t remember how it had gotten there, but she was pleased. There was an annoying noise at her feet and she looked down to glare at it. There was a cat. She didn’t remember having a cat. Or she remembered hearing it, vaguely, from a distance, but it had never bothered her before. It yelled at her. She pushed it aside with her foot and walked back to her bedroom.

There was a framed photo on the wall of the three of them, above her bed. Ivy was just a baby. Christopher wasn’t working so hard. His face was inscrutable as ever. She had been so young.

Adrienne smiled, dreamily. She had always thought she’d make a good mother.

[Fenris]

The whispers got louder.

Not literally, not in volume, but in frequency, intensity, in the look in the maids' eyes when Adrienne's caught theirs in the halls. From curiosity to panic. Hurried footsteps, abandoned cleaning supplies. That curious sense of stumbling into a room that wasn't empty a moment before. Adrienne thought about asking, but she didn't, really, because if she asked she wouldn't remember, and then she'd ask again. Maybe she had asked. She thought not, though. They wouldn't be so afraid if she had.

It seemed easier not to think about it.

She played music. She only ever did that when she was in a good mood, and those moods were fleeting but came to her on the turn of God's dice. It never lasted long, the music or the mood, because someone would make her turn it off soon enough. Ivy, more often than not, but Ivy had been unusually quiet lately, so perhaps there was a void there she was allowed to fill. The stereo in her room had one album in it that she never switched out. She pressed play. She sang along. No one stopped her.

La la la la la la la la, your Spanish lullaby.

When the album ended, she started it over.

And over.

She thought time passed, but no one was there to tell her.

La la la.

She'd been a singer, once.