Twice Lived, Twice Loved

Chapter Two

Elizabeth Sanders gasps awake in her bed, choking on imaginary smoke. Half of her torso hangs outs of the bed as she coughs and wheezes, trying to get air into her lungs. It takes her a few moments to realise that she is no longer in the burning pit of hell she had just fallen into in her dream but in her nice well-conditioned bedroom. When she does, her wheezing dies down and she collapses back onto her bed, spent.

Her throat is dry as sandpaper and she could have sworn that her eyes still water from the remnants of the smoke. She brings her arms up to her face to inspect and there is not a single blemish. The relief that rolls through her is ridiculous. That was the single most realistic dream that she has ever had and she does not even remember the details.

Smoke, fire, something about insects... But other than that, she draws a blank when she tries to remember why she had been burning in her dream like a witch in the Salem trials. After a few seconds of trying to chase the elusive thread of her lost dream to no avail, she sighs in disgust and gets out of the bed. She notes that it is covered in sweat and shakes her head. Having an active imagination is one thing, but to create monsters for herself that would be able to affect her reality so deeply? Perhaps this is her calling to step back more fully into the real world.

She pads barefoot to the huge water dispenser by her window and fills her cup with clean, refined water before peering through the window at the peach stained world beyond. It is so pretty, this moment before the sun fully rises. It is perfect, she thinks as she takes a sip of her water. With her rapidly beating heart finding its rhythm again, she admires the picture-perfect moment, feeling like an integral part of the world's material. It is at times like this that she wishes that she had an once of painting talent within her. She could just imagine everything that she would capture and bring to life on paper. She would help others to see the world as she does, not as a flat redundant canvas sucking the soul away from you but a canvas of life and magic feeding our souls as much as it takes from us. She sighs and puts her cup back down on the cup-rack, feeling much better. She does not even remember why she had panicked in her dream or why she had panicked further when she woke up. The day is beautiful and she is eager to answer the call to be immersed in it.

With springy steps, she marches towards the bathroom to take her bath, peeling off her single camisole and throwing it to the side, ready to begin her day early. She steps into the bathroom and catches her glowing, rumpled reflection in the mirror and she jerks to a stop as she stares at herself. Why, it seems for a split second, she had expected to see something else in the mirror besides her own reflection. A slight frown creases her brow as she racks her brain for a reason why the sight of a mirror should stop her in her tracks. She does not get her answer but what she does get are the strangest, most perplexing pictures in her mind.

A sky, clear and blue without the faintest trace of a cloud. A paved path, rugged in appearance, appealing in reality as just about anything glides over its surface without a hitch. Huge wild animals that she recognizes, others that she has some difficulty believing that they are real, all sauntering gently in her field of view, tamed.

Elizabeth shakes her head to dislodge the ridiculous memories but they are firmly in her head. She examines the memory deeper and there is some talk in the background, a laugh here, some male murmuring to one side while it seems that she strides forward with someone by her side. She only sees the person's boot-clad foot and what she sees of it is tremendously huge.

Confused, Elizabeth shakes her head again. Her imagination has gotten a whole lot more active between today and yesterday. She has never had such a realistic imagination as she is having right now, so realistic it is more like a memory. But a memory of what? Elizabeth has surely never been to any place with a sky so picturesque, with exotic animals roaming freely like they do in the place. A slight coil of alarm snakes around her belly as she realises that she is remembering something that she entirely made up as it is a memory. She just made up a place in her head and for those few seconds, the place had felt even more real than the world that she is in, and it still does. It is quite apparent that that way lies madness and that is a particularly scary thought for her. Her grandmother is in a facility because of her madness but Elizabeth had never imagined that she would be going down the same road.

Determinedly, she shoves the thoughts and the realistic imaginations to the back of her mind and marches to the sink to brush her teeth. She must be exhausted. She really has not given herself much recovery time from all of her dances and her practice and surely that is what is getting to her.

Perhaps a vacation somewhere? She thinks as she runs the brush over teeth. It sounds like a good plan. She has no appointments scheduled for this weekend and she can ensure that Hannah knows to free the two days. And then she could visit one of those places that she has not yet had a chance to see. She is getting excited just thinking about it, a weekend of just pampering herself and getting her head back in the right space once again.

When she rinses her mouth and gets into the shower, she has her entire plan for the weekend already figured out.

###

"No. You missed the turn again." Her partner and current choreographer sounds perplexed when she bumps into him, once again on his right instead of on his left.

"Sorry, Ri." She says with a sigh. "Let's try it again."

"No, talk to me. What's wrong? You seem quite distracted." He says.

"It's nothing." She says and grabs a water bottle, twisting the cap off.

"You sure you can do this today?" He asks. "You don't normally make this many mistakes."

"Must be old age." She says with a smirk. "Perhaps the dance is leaving my bones."

Ri scoffs and holds a hand out for the bottle and she throws it through the air. He snatches it from the air and gulps it down. "I really doubt that."

"Come on, let's try it again." She says and takes her stance.

Truth is that the night before, her awful burning dream, the morning after, those damn images in her head of an unknown place, they are getting to her more than she wants to admit. Try as she might to get her mind away from it and into the present, the images flip through her mind like a persistent film roll, and with them comes a breathless feeling of nostalgia that she cannot make sense of. She is surely running mad. And her reality is taking a kick because of it.

The steps that she is botching are pretty simple steps. They should not require a second thought from her. She has been contracted to dance at a Russian princess's wedding and she had wanted to go with something that the family and the guests would be able to relate to. A tale of a Russian princess who had been kidnapped to be held against her father, but had shocked the kidnappers and everyone else by single-handedly taking out the notorious gang is popular among them and she had chosen to reenact the story as a dance. While the general act has been laid, her solo part is the most integral part of the dance and if she does not get her head back into the game, then she is single-handedly going to botch it all. The show is in two days.

Ri is a professional Russian dancer and her long-time acquaintance. They have done a gig or two together before but they mostly come together for fun or to teach each other a few steps when it is needed. The studio they are practicing in is large, airy and spacious, empty but for the three huge speakers taking up each corner of the room and the wall-sized mirror opposite them. Ri is utilitarian at best and his studio reflects the thorough kind of person that he is. It is empty because he is the type of person that is firmly grounded in reality and practicing in chaos would distract him from his dance which is very much unlike her. She can dance anywhere, in a crowd, in a tomb, with loud music, or to silence, in a bare room or one borne of chaos. The world around her is insignificant when she begins moving. Today, however, everything distracts her, she does not seem to be able to get her head into the space of mind that she needs and her dance is definitely telling the change.

The dance starts off slow, then slowly increases in tempo and just learning the new steps should make her feel euphoric but what she feels is a slight fuzzy excitement at best. She manages to get the steps right this time and at the end of it, Ri claps dramatically.

"Finally. I thought we would never be able to finish one round." He says and she punches his arm playfully. "You sure you don't wanna talk about it? I'm here for you, you know." He says and she smiles.

"I know." She says.

Her mother had not been wrong when she had said that she is nearly anti-social, and it is not because she does not enjoy the company of others, she only enjoys hers more. She had found out that to cultivate and maintain a friendship is alot more demanding than she is willing to do and so, she had logically kept to herself.

Ri had been the one to befriend her many years ago and despite that she is not as consistent a friend as she should be, rarely checking in on him half as much he does her, he has remained a steadfast friend, letting her know at every opportunity that he is here for her if she needs him. She truly does not deserve a friend like him.

"Come on, we have to perfect this today and I will do the finishing touches by myself." She tells him and he shrugs.

"Whatever you say, boss." He says and takes his stance.

She begins to dance once again, and if there is anything that she wishes most for in that moment, it would be that dancing had the same therapeutic effect that it had always had on her.

##

"Well, what do you think?" Ariana asks, holding up an outfit against her chest.

"Hmm?" Elizabeth says, focusing on her friend once again.

"Where is your head at?" Ariana asks with a groan. "I need to pick an outfit before this evening." She says and dumps the mini-gown on the bed before rummaging in her closet for more dresses.

"I don't know why you are asking for my input. You will end up picking what you want." Elizabeth says and shovels some spongy chocolate cake into her mouth.

"I know. But I need you to make some noise anyway, it will guide me into making my final choice." She says, shoving rack after rack to the side, her head practically whirring audibly.

"I also don't know why you bother at all. This is your what, eighteenth date in the last two months?" She asks sardonically.

"Thereabout." Ariana says, turning to grin at her. "But my motto is to never give up. It might take long, but I will find that love." She says and Elizabeth shakes her head.

Ariana is her closest friend, has been since she was five. They had met in church one time, when Elizabeth had snuck out of the pew to the sanctuary of the back of the room. There, away from the pastor's long boring sermon, she had closed her eyes and hummed one of her favorite choir songs. That was where Ariana had met her, having been exploring the church by herself too. They had connected instantly, a first time for five year old Elizabeth and the two of them have been fast friends ever since.

That being said, she and Ariana have very different views in life. Where she is dreamy and obnoxious when triggered, Ariana is logical and easy going, only wanting to go through life achieving her three great goals, love, money, and more money. Nobody loves money more than Ariana does which probably has something to do with the way she had been raised. Her family had been struggling during the early years of their friendship, only getting back on their feet about a decade later. It has made money quite a priority in Ariana's life and as far as Elizabeth knows, her friend has the healthiest vice there is. People say that chasing the bag is a long continuous road full of yawning need and discontent but Elizabeth would say that they just have not managed to catch the bag they seek.

Ariana has worked up quite a huge sum to her name in the last few years with her whip-smart brain and even though she is focused on making more, it has brought her all of the happiness and peace of mind that she had expected that it would. Elizabeth could not have been prouder of her. If only she would stop setting herself up for disappointments by meeting up with random men that she finds on Tinder, perhaps that happiness would actually have space to expand.

"I just don't think Tinder is it." She says for what seems like the umpteenth time.

"And your opinion is noted." She says and whips out another dress. It is a black short piece with one arm hanging off the shoulder. Elizabeth squeezes her face in response, it would not be her first choice. Ariana throws the dress on top of the first one and continues her search. "And discarded. Tinder can do it. It has done it for thousands of people all over the world. The statistics are mind-boggling to be honest." She says.

"Life is not always about statistics you know." She tells her friend, even though she does not know what life is about herself. Perhaps it is good that Ari does not listen to her, perhaps life is about statistics.

As she waits for Ariana to pull out her next choice of dress, her mind wanders yet again, also for the umpteenth time for the day. The sight of Ariana flipping through racks and racks of dresses pulls a memory to the forefront of her mind. Another closet, a lot bigger, taking up a room large enough to be her dance studio in fact, a lot more extravagant with a thousand different dresses in a thousand different colours. A pale slim hand, flipping through the rows and rows of dresses searching for the perfect outfit.

A frown mars Elizabeth's forehead as she chases the thought. What are these thoughts taking up her head? What are these images? Why is she imagining things so hyper realistic it is as if they happened when they never did? What form of madness has descended on her? A headache blossoms and spreads at the front of her head as she tries her very hardest to get to the root of her thoughts.

"Liz!" Ariana's voice jerks her back to reality and she blinks at her friend who hovers over her with a frown on her forehead and worry in her eyes. "I've been calling you for ages." She says and sits next to her.

"Sorry, I didn't hear anything." Elizabeth says with a grimace.

"I know, and this is third time today that you are zoning out like that. Talk to me, what is bothering you? Is it work? Someone?" Ariana asks and she shakes her head.

"Do you think reincarnations are real?" She blurts out. She does not even know where the question had come from. It had not been fully formed in her mind when she had blurted it out. Reincarnation? She wants to scoff at herself. What an outlandish thought. More like madness.

"Reincarnation?" Ariana asks, blinking slowly.

"Forget it." She says and is about to stand when Ariana puts out a hand to stay her.

"Wait." She says, looking like she is thinking hard. "My instinctive reaction is to say no, that it is a ridiculous idea constructed by people who fear death so much that they let it control them. That it is their last line of hope that the absolute idea of death is not so absolute afterall."

"But..?" Elizabeth probes, sensing a but.

"But I have seen videos, questioning in their authenticity but there are people all over the world claiming to have had a significant past life or the other. You know, kids remembering entire episodes that happened decades back with chilling accuracy. They do not prove the idea, but they do not disprove it either. The idea of reincarnation is a vague, unintelligible term that I am not sure can ever be completely refuted or absolved. Why do you ask?" She says.

Elizabeth could hug her. She knows what her friend's take on it is most likely is but because the question seems important to her, she had taken the time to think on it and even though the answer doesn't leave her any clearer on her dilemma, she is glad that her friend had tried. But despite that, she still cannot bring herself to tell her that she is hearing things, seeing things in her mind's eye that never happened but that yet feel much more real than even her reality. Her logical friend would never understand and she would only burden and worry her more.

"It's nothing, just thinking on something someone mentioned at the studio." She says instead. Ariana nods slowly.

"Well, don't let anyone get to you so much." She says. "Look at you, you cannot even finish your thin slice of cake." She says and motions to her plate strewn with bits of cake. That is strange indeed, because it is no hidden thing how much she loves chocolate cakes. She loves it to the extent that Ariana started keeping a cache of chocolate cake in her deep freezer for whenever she is here. She is very much responsible for any untoward weight that Elizabeth puts on.

"You are right." She says and motions to the dress. "Let me have a look at that." She says and Ariana gets up to draw the dress up to her chest. The expression on her face is still thoughtful.

"If this reincarnation thought is still in your mind, I know a way that could possibly clear it up or maybe not at all. But it won't hurt to try." She says.

"What way is that?" Elizabeth asks, eyeing the dress. "And I think this is it." She says. The dress she holds up is a deep wine colour that would do wonders for her tanned skin. It hits mid-thigh with a plunging neckline down to her bust level and a cinching waist to highlight Ariana's good figure. It speaks of promise but is not garish or untoward.

"I coincidentally, happened to overhear these two ladies behind me on the line to Starbucks today. They were talking of a psychic downtown. In Morguitta or something. I'm not even sure what a psychic does per se but she sounds like someone who would know these kinda mojo stuff. You can try it out. If it however turns out to be a waste of your time, don't come at me." She says and Elizabeth shakes her head with a smile.

"I think I'll pass." She says. "It's just a passing curiosity." She says and Ariana shrugs and examines the dress she has chosen.

"Yeah this does have an element of intrigue to it." She says, holding it out to the light.

She had meant what she said to her friend, she did not intend on entertaining her potential madness any further. She is a busy woman, with a lot of responsibilities with hardly any time to be gallivanting around town chasing her ridiculous fancies. She had meant it when she had said that she would prefer not to investigate the thought further, but it is only the beginning of things spinning out of her control and her decision is soon revised.