Somnium Evigilantis

[Thalia]

She was content with the quiet; let the sound of the water take the edge from her nerves, waiting for the breeze to lift her consciousness away. At first Thalia continued to stare out across the river as he spoke, but her attention soon hooked on the honesty in his words. Her gaze turned slowly to watch his face. Rapt. Large grey eyes drank in the strangeness of his story, and it was not disbelief that rose in her chest, but a kind of wonder. For a moment, at least; then she thought of her sketches, the many wolves, a grave in the woods, and a creature. Her fingers brushed her throat, then lower; an absent rake of three fingers. She shivered and folded her hands back in her lap.

"It does sound crazy,"
she murmured as he spoke. And yet he was not the only one to have called her that name. A face flashed through her mind, and she looked away, troubled; unwilling to accept the connections. But she could no longer ignore them, either. She knows you haven't been sleeping. Those words chilled her, and she realised she didn't know how to process it; an added layer of inexplicable to burden her already buckling shoulders. Even her confusion retreated. Thalia's knees drew a little closer to her chest, like she might fold up and disappear, but the earnest of his kindness unravelled her.

If he hadn't been honest with his own secrets, maybe she could have walled him out; braved a stoic face, and insisted that nothing was wrong. Or at least nothing fit so share with a stranger. But the catharsis of his disclosure lingered, and the openness touched something soft in her.

Tears pricked her eyes, and she pressed her head to her knees again when they began to roll down her cheeks. The quiet sobbing only lasted a few moments before she gathered herself; she pressed her hands to her face, ashamed and apologetic. "Someone broke into my apartment,"
she said, scouring her cheeks with her palms. She found she couldn't look at him. Concentrated instead on the water. "That's how it started again. The light is there all the time now."
Admitting it made it more real; it pulsed and shifted within, just like the eddying flow of the river. "I registered this morning."
Her voice lowered, a pained whisper. "Calvin, I am so scared."