Chapter 16 - How Do You Go Back To Normal When Normal Is Gone

Mira made breakfast.

That was the first thing. She came out of her bedroom at half past eight in an oversized hoodie and mismatched socks, hair pulled into something that was attempting to be a bun and not quite succeeding, and walked directly to the kitchen like the previous night had not happened at all.

Because for her, it hadn't.

"Nobody better have touched my eggs," she announced to the room.

Caelith was sitting on the couch with a cup of tea she had been holding long enough for it to go cold. Elias was at the kitchen counter with his phone face down and the expression of someone who had decided very carefully what his face was going to do this morning. Zara was near the glass doors looking out at the ocean, arms crossed, saying nothing as usual.

"Your eggs are fine," Elias said.

"Good." Mira opened the refrigerator. "Because I had a dream about an omelette and I intend to honour it."

Nobody said anything.

Mira pulled out eggs, cheese, something green she had packed with the particular optimism of someone who intended to eat healthily on a trip and usually didn't.

"You're all very quiet," she observed, not turning around.

"We're tired," Elias said.

"Mm." She cracked an egg against the bowl. "Late night?"

"Something like that."

Caelith watched her friend move around the kitchen with the easy familiarity of someone who had slept well and woken up hungry and had absolutely no weight on her shoulders. The particular lightness of a person who did not know what had used her body the night before and set it down when it was done.

She pressed her cold mug against her palms and said nothing.

Zara had disappeared before breakfast was ready.

Not dramatically. She simply was there and then was not, the way she tended to move through spaces without announcing herself in either direction. Caelith noticed the glass door slightly ajar and didn't ask.

Elias ate his omelette with the focused attention of someone who had decided that food was a safe thing to concentrate on.

Mira talked.

About the drive back. About an assignment she had been putting off. About a girl in her seminar who had said something impressively wrong about postcolonial theory and hadn't noticed. About whether the weather would hold long enough for a walk on the beach before they left.

Normal things. Ordinary things.

The kind of things that had made up the entire texture of Caelith's life three weeks ago.

She listened from what felt like a very long distance.

"You're doing that thing," Mira said.

Caelith looked up. "What thing."

"Where you're present but not present. Like you're watching everything through glass." Mira pointed her fork at her. "You've been doing it for weeks. I thought the trip would help."

"It did," Caelith said. Which was technically true.

Mira studied her for a moment with those warm sharp eyes that noticed things and remembered them.

"Did something happen last night? After I went to sleep?"

The question landed in the room like something dropped from a height.

Elias reached for his juice.

"No," Caelith said. Evenly and without hesitation. "Quiet night."

Mira looked at her for one second longer than comfortable. Then she went back to her omelette.

"Okay," she said simply.

She didn't believe it. Caelith could see that clearly. But Mira had always known the difference between a secret someone wasn't ready to share and a lie meant to protect her. She had always chosen to let those go.

That kindness sat in Caelith's chest like something that ached.

She found Zara outside after breakfast.

The beach in the morning was a different thing entirely from the beach at night. Wide and pale and honest, the kind of light that left nothing to shadow. The ocean was grey-green and restless, the wind off it cold enough to mean it.

Zara was standing at the edge of the deck with a cigarette she was mostly just holding.

Caelith stood beside her without saying anything for a moment.

"She doesn't remember," Caelith said finally.

"No."

"Is that normal. After something like that."

Zara took a slow drag. "Depends on how completely it took over. If it suppressed her fully she wouldn't have access to anything from that window." A pause. "Which means she was completely gone while it was using her."

Caelith looked at the water.

"That should make me feel better?" she said.

"Does it?"

"No."

Zara said nothing. She looked out at the horizon with the expression of someone who had long ago made peace with the fact that most things didn't make you feel better when you looked at them directly.

"I feel like we should tell her, incase…”

“No”. Zara cut her off. “You agreed earlier that it was best not to drag more people into your world “. Caelith sighs.

“Elias…”

A pause.

"He already knows more than he's said," Zara said quietly.

"I know." Caelith's jaw tightened slightly. "And he's going to tell me what that is. Eventually “

The wind moved between them.

Somewhere behind the glass doors Mira laughed at something, the sound of it bright and carrying, entirely herself.

Caelith closed her eyes briefly.

Then opened them and looked at the ocean and tried to figure out how you go back to a life that has stopped fitting you while the people you love are still living comfortably inside theirs.

They left the beach house at noon.

Mira drove the first half, music up, window cracked despite the cold, singing along badly and argued about twenty minutes with Elias before quietly starting to mouth the words himself. Caelith sat in the back and watched the coastline give way to roads and then to the city's familiar edges rising in the distance.

Her campus. Her bookshop. Her apartment ceiling she had stared at for three years.

Her life.

She looked out the window at her city passing by and tried to find the version of herself that had walked to the bookshop four weeks ago with her earbuds in and her head full of an overdue essay.

She couldn't find her.

Not because that girl was gone exactly.

But because everything around her had changed shape and the girl she had been didn't know how to stand in it yet.

Yet.

That was the word she held onto as the city closed around the car and Mira sang badly and Elias gave up pretending he wasn't singing along.

Not gone.

Just not arrived yet either.

Somewhere in between. Standing in a doorway that only went one direction.

She pressed her palm flat against the cool glass of the window.

Somewhere beneath the skin, something shifted. Quietly. Like something agreeing with her.