Of Silver Cruets and Little Spoons

Part 3

This was a dicey thing, Nessay thought, as she wormed her way around the domes. Then she said it aloud, a whisper just to hear her voice, just to know mere breath was not a phantom reflex. “Dicey.” A gripping fear took her then, and Nessay leaned tight against one of the homes, hidden by shadows. Something was different about her surroundings. It was slight, but noticeable, now that she was still. The air felt odd, perhaps it was the smell. She sniffed, and that wasn’t enough so she inhaled deeply, then stifled a cough. Stupid, stupid. Be careful, she thought. “Why,” she mumbled. Why am I doing this? But she was, and slowly Nessay proceeded.

 Getting back to where you once were is the first obstacle, but once achieved is the most mundane. Going beyond, well, that’s the real trick. Learning that the game is constantly changing is another big leap, a hurtle sometimes insurmountable when your timing is in flux… always. And, that thing about Pie in the Sky? Not everything true is also believable:

                Mercifully, her demise was not a traumatic one. She didn’t linger on her death plane in agony, or awaken in a blank, indiscernible cloud bank with the sharp intake of antiseptic miasma. Nessay blinked twice, the international signal for “hello, this is new”, and looked both right and left. Her body seemed whole, she felt alive, and she flexed her fingers. Her joints didn’t creak and there was no dirt beneath her fingernails. Blood. There was no blood! Nessay nibbled tentatively on her lip. Her surroundings were somewhat hazy, if not colorful and chaotic, but the air began to clear and Nessay saw she was in a formal living room, sitting straight backed on a Victorian divan, with a silver service laid out on the ornately carved coffee table at her knees.

                There seemed to be no one else around. The room was rather larger than her entire dwelling space, back… wherever.  Large and square, the room was all wood and cloth and leather, and a whole lot of books lined the oaken bookcases from floor to ceiling. There were oil paintings on the walls and shelves, of faces and dogs and places Nessay didn’t know of. She tipped a book out from a waist high location, and wondered remotely how she had come to be standing here, and not sitting there. Now, sitting back there, and with a ‘make yourself at home’ sensibility, Nessey lifted the decanter, she felt the warmth of the hot liquid through the shiny handle, and poured pitch black coffee into her cup. She lifted the pearly white cup to her lips, but the drink was too black, so black it seemed empty and just the thought of drinking sent her a tremor of loss. The starless, shadowless void in the cup clouded her soul and Nessay feared the liquid would fill her veins like hot lead, or priceless fluid gold that would leave her desirable, but otherwise lifeless.

                Nessay drank it instead with cream that she poured from a cruet, and she stirred it in with a little spoon while her finger traced the raised letters on the leather covered book she had retrieved from the bookcase. Jumping from one feeling to the next, being here then there, Nessay felt somewhat in control, but her steps were out of joint with this new, strange existence. She reasoned, reasonably, she must be in a waystation, awaiting transport to the next reality. In the meantime, she was here in a room taken from an image in her head. Her body was the same. Her clothing was no different, and bloodless. Nessay again found herself standing, on a rug in the room, and she unzipped then reached into her pocket. The little, hard ball was not there. All was not the same.

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