There was roughly one week in the summer when the wind was warm, but not suffocating, and the sand shone just the right color. Water frothed like a well-drawn bath, breaking over the rocks. Plant matter draped over the craggy shores like a dark green wig. It crawled with crabs.

The memory was perfect, repeating. The same waves broke over the static rocks. Until something changed. Though memories changed all the time. You heard it often. People see things in past differently as they grew older. But the event was supposed to stay the same.

A ringed glow had imposed itself on the cliff overlooking the beach. The skin of the unreal broke. The surrounding woodlands, earth, and rocks pulled towards some point of bias, as if a pink-tinted lens had been etched on the precipice. Then the memory repaired and the aberration stopped.

“Is this it?”

“Hm…” Chesed sat in a cross-legged stance on a low boulder. She did not turn around to greet the invader.

“I’m speaking to you.”

That roused Chesed, but not out of intimidation. Her eyes focused, finally realizing she had a guest.

“Who are you?” She asked.

“I’m me.”

“What do I call you?”

“I suppose if I say ‘Lyssa’ it would be confusing.”

“How about the Lady of the Lake?”

Lyssa’s expression hardened. “So you are aware of me,” she said.

“Yes,” Chesed answered. “We all are, I suspect. We’re cut from the same cloth.”

“I am not one of you.”

“Sure you are. Depends on how you see things.”

Lyssa frowned, then decided to let it go. They watched the waves break for a period of time. Clouds like small puffs of cotton crawled across the sky so very far away, always and forever unreachable. It was difficult to tell when they looped; their movements were so small.

“I don’t remember this,” Lyssa said.

“I do,” Chesed said. “It’s a memory of peace.”

“I should remember. This is my brain.”

“This is my memory.”

Lyssa smiled dangerously.

“You know I usually don’t meddle in her affairs,” she said. “But ever since she took up the Primum mantle, this place has been a bed of chaos. Things like you have been cropping up left and right. I figured I should start vetting you Selves.”

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“For what?” Chesed asked. She returned to the view.

“The degree to which you exist.”

“I see.”

“You don’t seem worried.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“What drives you? All of you have some obsession, some damage that forms the core of your being.”

“Are you undamaged?”

“Answer the question.”

“Nothing special.”

Lyssa frowned. Her fingers curled. The skin of reality began to fold again. Chesed’s golden hair seemed to swim as an aberration enclosed around her. But she did not react. The spherical shell of pink grew dense, priming like a trap. Tension released; the energy collapsed. But it stopped within an inch of the warbling fields that suddenly draped over the Self’s skin.

Lyssa withdrew, her expression kept blank.

“I saved our life earlier,” Chesed said with an even tone. The colors of the shore glazed over her eyes. “Why do you stand by?”

“Nothing out there interests me,” Lyssa said. “I don’t care about the real world.”

“I see. You’re protecting him.”

“What?”

“I know what apathy looks like. Call it my obsession, if you must. You’re protecting grandfather’s work, and the world from people who want to use your gift.”

“There’s nothing special about my gift.”

“Not in here. This is memory. There is no space for you to fold. But outside there is nothing but space.”

“What are you? Not even Bildungsroman could resist me.”

Chesed did not respond. Nothing Lyssa said afterward pulled her away from silence. Not even when this manufactured sky shook, did Chesed leave her position. Lyssa scowled and left that strange place, where sandcastles dissolved under the waves, only to be resurrected again moments later, over and over.

--

She wasn’t sure when it began, only that it had become a particularly bad headache. It must have been the fatigue. She had been working all night, and she hadn’t slept all that well the day before.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Penny was saying as she shut the door to their flat behind them.

“I know almost nothing about her family,” Carrie said. “I thought she was just rich.”

“No, it’s complicated,” Penny said. “She has a lot going on.”

“Does she need help?”

“Probably. But she doesn’t want it.”

“But-”

“To some people, pride is paramount,” Penny said. “Something my grandma used to say. If someone wants help, they need to ask for it.”

“Sounds a lot like what Langsherites have been saying lately.”

“Pfft,” Penny made a dismissive noise. She turned to Lyssa. “What do you think?”

“I need to go to bed,” Lyssa muttered.

“Yeah you look beat. Good night.”

Lyssa smiled back. She left them to their idle talk and returned to her room. The lights were off. She walked past the messy arrangement of opened books and utensils on her desk and fell onto her disheveled bed. She felt cold, yet her forehead ran slick. Her room felt alien.

Not that she wasn’t used to that feeling. The confines of her own room used to feel constricting as a child. The walls had ears, and eyes, and mouths. And they jeered often. Her mother had wanted her taken somewhere, a pediatric place. Her father resisted. It was the source of many an argument. Life was easier if Lyssa just pretended they weren’t there. Now with her gifts realized, reality buzzed. She could withdraw her senses all she wanted but the ambient psychic energies of existence remained, quiet, but ever-present.

That was all the voices had been, a natural phenomenon of having a psychic gift. That made sense; it was normal.

Lyssa went to sleep.

When she woke she was in a crater in the ground, soaked to the bone, and covered in ropes of tensile matter. She cried out, her whole body stuttering. There was dirt clinging to her. She tried to wipe the cold particulates away from her eyes. A beam of pure white gouged into her skull. She screamed, pulling away. Air buffeted her in regular beats as she gathered her limbs into a fetal ball. The helicopter landed. A familiar voice spoke, both in sound and in telepathy.

“You’re okay now,” Whitworth said. “You’re okay. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have missed this. I’m sorry.”

“What?” Lyssa managed to say. Her voice was too quiet to have been heard with the ears.

“You’ll be fine.”

She was being lifted and placed on a stretcher.

“My roommates,” she said as she was being carried away.

“They will be fine,” Whitworth said.