Twice Lived, Twice Loved

Chapter Three

On her way back from Ariana's place, she had found herself steering her car decisively not in the direction of her home. Morguitta, Ari had said. It is not too impossible to get to from her current destination. Morguitta is located in a place that is not as upscale as where she and Ari live. It is in a more average place with average-payed people. She is just grateful she will not have to go to the more seedier places of town.

As she ambles down the road, her mind is a whirr of white noise. She had not planned to come this way, so what does she think she is doing? They say that a person is not truly mad until they begin to give credit to their hallucinations so the best thing for her to do is to probably ignore all of these sudden thoughts and hope for the best. So why is she still not turning her car around?

Despite sound arguments from the logical side of her brain, she does not stop nor she does not pull over. Finally, she pulls up in front of the building called Morguitta and kills the engine. She sits there with her hands on the steering wheel, commending the madness that had brought her all the way here. It is a busy place, with people moving up and down in all directions. Most of the people walk in duos and they all seem to be engrossed in important conversations. The time is nearly four, they should be rounding off on their respective jobs but it seems that the people here have to work late hours. Morguitta is a large complex on this side of town, with different sections designed for nearly about every aspect of life.

Apart from the residential area at the back, the front is comprised of rows upon rows of supermarkets offering just about anything one would want to buy. The complex has a small children's school in one wing, and even has an arena designated for football situated somewhere inside. The people on this side of town really needed an innovation like this and since the first day that Morguitta started running, the standard of living here has risen considerably.

Elizabeth sighs and unhooks her seatbelt. Might as well, she has already come all the way here. Inside the complex is alot less glamorous than the exterior due to years of wear by the occupants. The tired looking receptionist had looked at her like she had missed her road when she had asked of a psychic. Even though Elizabeth has a feeling that the woman knows exactly who she is talking about, she had still made her jump through hoops to try to locate the woman. It is not until a man had come in from behind her and his eyes had bugged out when he had recognised her and he had begged for an autograph for his seven year old daughter who apparently adored her that the receptionist figured that perhaps it is high time she stopped toying with her.

Finally, without a prior appointment, she stands in front of the psychic's room which doubles as her office and she questions whether she is really doing this. But she has come all the way here, and indecisiveness is everyone's worst mistake so she raises a hand to the door and knocks.

A minute later, the door is thrown open to reveal a woman. She is incredibly small, tiny even. She stands somewhere close to four foot five at the most, and even though her body is covered a thick woolen coat, she is obviously whip-thin beneath. Elizabeth would have mistaken her for a child if her face did not tell the tales of the many long years she has spent in life.

"Miss Brown?" She asks.

The woman smiles wide when she sees her, revealing two cracked teeth in front of her mouth.

"Miss Sanders. It is such a pleasure to meet you in person. I have seen so many videos of you before." She says. Her voice is thin and scratchy and she has t strain to hear her words.

"Thank you. It is a pleasure to meet you too. I am sorry for not making an appointment earlier, this has been rather rushed." She says, stretching out an arm which the other woman shakes vigorously.

"A celebrity in my crib. My dear, feel free to barge in here whenever you want." She says in her high, nearly singsong voice. "Do come in please."

Elizabeth follows her into her room and she thinks that Miss Brown's use of the word "crib" is apt and specific in relation to the size of the room. It is about ten foot wide to each side. A thin bed rests on dull-looking wood to one side and a small square table and a chair takes up another side.

"Welcome to my humble abode." She says and folds her legs beneath her on the bed. "Please. Take a seat." She says and gestures to the empty chair. Elizabeth's perches on it, tensing when the chair creaks beneath her weight.

"Don't you worry, it is sturdy as a horse." Miss Brown says cheerfully.

Elizabeth clears her throat and goes straight to the point.

"I heard from someone that you are a psychic." She says.

"Psychic, clairvoyant, third-eye. You name it." Miss Brown says and throws a hand out. "I have been called many things. It all means that I have a greater intuition than the rest of the world."

"Right." Elizabeth says and cannot help but look around. It seems to her that if she had such an edge over the rest of humanity, she should at least have a better abode than this. "I have a question." She says.

"Hit me." Miss Brown says and gets more comfortable on the bed. "Is it about your lover? Your boss? Your future children?"

"In your experience, do you think that reincarnation is real?" She asks.

"Reincarnation huh?" She says with a knowing smile. "It most surely exists. In fact, half of us are walking around the world unaware that we have lived a number of life before."

"Really? Why do you say so? Have you met someone that has genuinely been reincarnated before? Did they retain their memories?" She asks.

"I told you, child, half of us have lived many many lives before. I have met many of them. Many that remember things about their past life. Their favorite food, their favorite spot, favorite song, you name it. Now I'm not saying that everyone who claims to remember a thing or two or a dejá vu here and there is genuinely remembering their past life, don't get me wrong, some people are just on c***k. But I am alot more interested in why you would be asking these type of questions in the first place. Is it you that thinks they are reincarnated? Somebody you know? Do they remember their past life?"

"So, these memories," Elizabeth continues instead of answering the questions. "what are they like? Do they just wake up and get the memories or are they something that they've always remembered since they were small?"

"Hmm, I suppose they start to remember them after a while. Something triggers the remembrance before they do." She says.

"Suppose?" Elizabeth asks. "How about using one of the people that you have seen reincarnated as reference?" She asks.

Miss Brown shifts on her chair, and her hand goes up to twirl her brunette hair.

"Oh yes, you are right. I remember one of them, Mary Cannister." She says and Elizabeth's eyes narrow on hers.

"She did not remember a thing, at all. Until she went on this merry-go-round with her kids and suddenly she could see herself clear as day, in another life, with other people, screaming as she shot down the rail on the merry-go-round." Miss Brown says.

"So when she remembered, what did she do?" She asks.

"Well, she was frightened at first, but she knew deep down that she is the same person in her memory." She says.

"So she came to peace with her awareness of her past life in record time." Elizabeth queries further.

Miss Brown nods enthusiastically. "Yes, she had to. She had kids to think of you know, so she could not afford a mental breakdown like that."

"The means she never had to bring the issue to your table." She states.

"Yes..." Miss Brown replies more cautiously, sensing a trap. Her hand twirls harder at her hair, nearly yanking it off at the roots.

"So how did you come to know of the story if it was not a case you helped her with?" She asks.

Miss Brown hesitates for a second before she beams. "That is because the tale is that of my sister!" She says, visibly relieved because of her quick thinking.

"Her name was Mary Cannister. You are a Brown." Elizabeth says.

"Oh yes, my father is Brown." Miss Brown says. "But my sister is married, remember? She had her surname changed from Brown to Cannister, her husband's name."

Elizabeth sighs and leans back. Everything about the woman's tale seems spun somehow to fit into the answers that she wants. Or perhaps she is just suspicious of things going so smoothly without a hitch. Maybe so, but she knows what a fickle b***h fate can be, it has never laid everything she wants at her feet like this.

She would bet all of her money Miss Brown has no such sister as a Mary Cannister. And she would bet that this pretty tale that she just spun is handcrafted. At least she can give the woman points for a healthy imagination, and some thinking on her feet. Miss Brown is still saying something when she rises and the woman rises with her.

"Thank you." She says. "The session with you has been really informative." She digs a few bills from her purse.

"Are you sure that is all you want to know? I can see your future, I can tell you how your career is going to go, what your husband is going to be like, your kids." She says.

"I think I'll pass." Elizabeth says and hands out the cash. The woman's eyes bug out on seeing them and her hand dashes out to snatch them, quickly retreating into the folds of her coat.

"Are you sure? I see love in your future, the brightest, purest love this world can ever offer." She says and Elizabeth lets out a sardonic laugh.

"You got the wrong girl." She says. Those words would have been enough to get Ariana hook, line and sinker but not her. Dance is her one passionate lover and she is not the type to cheat.

###

Back in her house, she finishes taking a shower and perches on her bed. A good portion of her day has been wasted chasing frivolous thoughts but she should have known better. She should have know better than to let a mere dream take up her mind and invade her waking moments like this. It was just a dream that affected her because of the hyper-realism but she will go to sleep to tonight and dream about other sweet things such as dancing. When she wakes, she would have forgotten all about the whole unfortunate ordeal.

When she had gotten back from the psychic's, the first thing she had done was to make a beeline for her studio to clear her head. With the music blasting on high within her soundproof walls, she danced one ballet dance after another until her toes had felt like they were burning and her body felt like it was being shredded by saws.

When she had finally collapsed onto the floor in front of the mirror, panting and trying to catch her breath, she had stared hard at herself in the mirror and dared whatever demons had chased her from her dream into her waking moments to make an appearance. But it was just her, the same her that it has always been. Content, she had picked herself up from the floor and come here to take a shower.

Now, she feels hopeful, happy even. Dancing has cleared her head and the shower had cleared the grime. The perfect recipe for a clear, unproblematic night.

She pulls open her laptop and replies to her private mails. The bulk of her mails are handled by her assistant, Hannah and only the private or important ones get forwarded directly to her. There is one from the care facility her grandmother resides. A reminder that the year will soon be ending and a new p*****t would be required. She forwards it to Hannah with a note that she should pay for two years in advance this time. It is such a coincidence that amid the drama her life had become, her grandmother should pop up. The situation surrounding her grandmother is mysterious at best. She had seen things and heard things that were not real. The fact is uncomfortably familiar. She flips through the rest of her emails and when she is done, she flicks her laptop closed and places it on the nightstand before crawling under the thick velvet covers with a sigh.

She is about ready to be done with today.

###

She glides through the throngs of gathered people, eyes on the lookout for him.

"Honour me with a dance?" Allincroft siddles to her front and holds out his arm, a s**t-eating grin on his face.

"I would rather not." She says bluntly and he chuckles.

"Why? Is it because of him?" He asks.

There can only be one 'him' Allincroft refers to and he might not be king but the fool would be wise to take care not to cross him.

"Oh dear. Surely that is not a challenge I hear in your voice." She says, holding a hand up to hide her own smile.

Only one person can beat Vassimidin and that is the king of the realm. Allincroft's feathers flatten at his back as he instinctively tries to make himself smaller.

"Of course not." He says calmly.

"Good. He has been in an awful mood lately. Don't be the person it all gets offloaded on." She says and circles around him to continue her search.

Majority of the elves part for her, not at all out of respect, but wariness. Many of them hate her, many others want nothing to do with her, but most of them are green with envy. She is everything they have ever wished for and more. She smiles as she passes through the path they have so helpfully paved for her, sighting the back of a head full of abundant black curls. Vassimidin.

She adjusts her course and makes a beeline for where he stands conversing with a group of people. When she gets to him, she puts a hand in the middle of his huge back, feeling the rippling movement of his muscles and stretches upwards to whisper in his ear.

Hello

He begins turning to her with what she knows will be a full-blown smile...

Elizabeth jerks awake from her bed, taking a moment to digest that she is no longer in some sort of outdoor soiree but in her room, alone and on her bed.

With rising dread, she realises that all of her hopes and her optimism were in vain. Memories that are not her own, people that she has never seen before, places that she has never been to before, dreams that she has no business having. She thought that yesterday was a one-time madness but it seems that today, the madness continues.

Feeling sick to her stomach, she staggers up and stumbles to the bathroom. Once again, she feels an unexplainable relief to find her own frazzled expression in the mirror. Her hair is wild from sleep and her eyes are red, wide and frightened. As she sort of knew that they would, more memories bombard her brain. The same curly haired man, riding away on a horse, talking to someone in the shadows. In each memory, his face is turned away from her but in one, he turns partially to look at something in the distance. The only thing that she catches is the sneer on his lips. Something about the man in her head gives her chills like nothing she has ever felt.

But worse than that, she clutches the sink hard, her fingernail cracking as she realises that there is something certified about her madness now. It is her childhood nightmare come to life.

She remembers when she used to visit her grandmother, before her sickness had gotten the better of her. The woman had been fun to be with, she was alot like her, loving the sanctuary of fantasies and the imaginary world more than the real world. She had enjoyed visiting her because her grandmother always told the most fantastic tales. They would go out to see films, not movies in theaters like she would normally see, but old plays acted out by talented actors. With the lights flashing through the stage and the scenting smoke filling up the room, it was as close to magical as she and her grandmother could get.

But then her grandmother had taken it a step further and started seeing things that were not there. She would hold entire conversations with thin air on her good days, and on her worst days, she would run screaming, breaking things all over the house, claiming to be chased by something that noone else could see or hear. Her mother had tried to handle the situation as best as she could, reluctant to let the authorities know of her, but her grandmother's case was not one that could be concealed for long. She was deemed unfit to be left alone and a threat to others and shoved into a facility for mental people. And the worst part is that in her line of ancestors, her grandmother is not the first Sander to be deemed mentally unfit.

Her heart beats against her chest painfully. She had read once, that madness runs in the blood. That she has a higher tendency than average to run mad because of her family history. What if this was how her grandmother had started? A little fantastic dream here and there, her head filled with memories she had imagined to be true, and over time she just was not able to differentiate fantasy from reality? What if that is what is happening to her? What if she is running mad?

She turns on the faucet and splashes her face with cold water. She will not let that happen.

Ever since she was small, she has struggled to find a place for herself in the world, struggled to carve it out. She has finally succeeded in doing that, all that is left is for her is to reap the fruits of her labour. She will fight to the death rather than let fate tarnish all that she has worked for. She will not be carted and shipped off to some corner of the world to rot. She refuses to let that happen.

Straightening, her heart finally slows its beating and her stomach releases it's vice-like grip. She flips a sweat-soaked strand of hair out of her face and blows out a breath. She can handle this.