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He thought a moment, wanting to go into another selection over his ivories. Something a little faster with a little more life but he thought to himself, "not now." He played a final note, stood up and went to the window. He looked out at the storm before turning back to Elena and found a seat near her. She was comfortable or, it appeared so. "I'm glad you liked it," he said kindly, "If you want, I'll teach you sometime."
He looked at her. She had the appearance of an angel who had been through hell. If she felt like himself at this point, she was probably tired as a lot of emotions had been gone through in the course of but a few hours and the raging storm didn't help.
"We've had a long day, Elena," he explained, "and if this storm quits tomorrow, we'll have another long one so in the short term, I will go see what I can make up for some dinner and I would recommend we get a good night sleep after that."
He smiled a bit, "The children you will meet don't seem to mind making visiting adults tired."
He headed for the kitchen to see what was ready to cook.
Elena certainly felt tired after their lengthy talk; after all, mentally had she gone through all the recent months in a matter of only a few hours. Additionally, the soothing sound of the finishing piano chords felt like some sort of lullaby to her, while she was lying on the couch with her eyes closed and her mind travelling far away. Though she had twitched nervously with her thumbs above the blanket, by the end of the piece of music she had reached an almost meditating state, or so it seemed from the outside.
A little sigh slipped out of her mouth when he finished the last note and when it became clear he wouldn’t continue with it, but the disenchantment didn’t last all too long; instead, she slowly sat up on the couch, still wrapped in the blanket, and blinked at him, as though she had enjoyed a long lasting winter dormancy and was just coming out of hibernation again. While she kept rubbing her left eye slightly, she glanced at Doc and gave him a friendly smile. Her head felt heavy, as if it only wanted to be rested on the cushion again. If anything, she only was looking forward for a little more comfortable bed to sleep on anymore. For once, she wasn’t worried about what might happen while she would be sleeping, nightmares creeping up in her dreams and making her rest a living hell. But that didn’t seem as much of an issue to her anymore.
The thought of the children Doc was alluding to both frightened and exhilarated her at the same time. The way he talked about them only made her look forward to meet them by herself, but there was still this deep-routed suspicion piping up in her mind and once again reminding her what had happened and what she had done. “A night’s sleep doesn’t sound bad at all,” she gave back, while she pushed the thoughts her suspicion and self-hatred offered to the back of her mind, neglecting them for the time being. It worked to an extent, an extent she could already be happy with, though. It worked a lot better than most of the times she had tried while she was alone. Usually it had rather turned into a disaster when she actively tried to do that.
She couldn’t help herself and gave a yawn to and fumbled about with the blanket and looked out of the window. The snowstorm had been losing vigor rapidly; one could actually see Gran Canaria’s not-so-impressive landscape in the far distance. “If I may ask you something,” she said. “How much of your time do you actually spend here, on your Estate? I mean, it’s a beautiful place, and it’s a large one, but I can imagine it’s a little too large when you live here all for yourself the whole time. Doesn’t it become too secluded at some point?” A little pause. “I myself wouldn’t be able to live all alone all the time in such a large area.” It only took her a second to realize that she had been doing pretty much exactly that for quite a while by now, but she kept that thought for herself. It made her shut up, though.
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He noticed her eyes and head growing heavy. The storm wouldn't allow her to get to the guest house so he helped her up and began escorting her upstairs. As they made a slow walk, he would answer her question.
"Since the storm won't allow you to the guest house, you can sleep in my eldest daughter's old room," he told her. "It hasn't been used in awhile."
He sighed a bit before continuing. "I actually only recently, say, that last couple of months, started spending time here," he began. "When Midori left and subsequently died, it just wasn't the same so I reclused myself to my camp on Erie."
He stopped and looked around a bit. She was right, the place was huge for one person. "No, it isn't the same. Emiko has decided to find her own way while the twins spend more time with their grand parents on Honshu. I mean, I see them plenty but......" He sighed with some shame, "....Midori's death changed everything. So now, I have this big estate to myself."
He snorted a little, "It's almost a punishment at times, the size......the memories........the changing climate........it's like a prison in snow at times. Still, somehow, especially with that piano, I find peace."
They got to Emiko's room. It was a good sized room with a walk-in closet and an attached, private bathroom which had a large mirror and a whirlpool tub. Pictures adorned the dresser. One of her parents together and a family picture of them all. The bed was huge and was properly made with a Kusari quilt over it. As Elena looked things over, Doc grabbed some extra pillows from the closet. He went over to the light switch near her.
"Three switches," he explained, "ceiling fan, ceiling light over the bed and the track light by the vanity. Some extra pillows should help you. Do you need anything else before I leave you for the evening?"
As she walked up the stairs and into the bedromm Doc directed her into, Elena drugged her heavy feet as though there were boulders of stone fixated to them. It was indeed true that she was getting more and more tired, and the thought of a cozy bed and some pure silence only added to her nascent weariness. Thus it was only an absent look she gave the room when she entered by his side, barely moving her head around to examine furniture. The moment she saw it, the bed, which indeed looked quite appealing, instantaneously caught her attention and before anybody could object, she would plunk down on it contentedly while heaving a sigh of bare tiredness that quickly transformed into another yawn. She looked around briefly, noting the luxuriously-looking bathroom at the other side of the room, but paused when she glanced at Doc. A whirlpool, as inviting as it looked, really wasn’t what she needed right now. She looked at him with a squint, as if she was thinking about something. She hadn’t listened very carefully to his words – mostly due to her veil of fatigue -, but she had gotten enough of an image to comment on what he had said.
“I’m sorry to hear about all what happened to you,” she said a bit more quietly, but not with any less authenticity. “It actually puts relation to a lot of things, when I keep thinking about it. I don’t know, I can’t really say so far, but maybe it’s helped a bit to get to meet somebody with equal struggles, who has lived through an equal amount of stuff. And still lives on.” She nodded to herself, as if to reaffirm her statement further to herself. While folding her hands on her lap, she continued. “Thank you for all these insights you gave me. I’ll … I’ll think about them, when I got the time for it. And the nerves.”
With another sigh, she finally decided to make use of the pillows the bed was cluttered with. Resting one hand against the pillow and her head against the hand, she viewed him and said, almost en passant: “No, thank you, I don’t need anything more for today.” In fact, the thing she thought she needed the most was some time only for herself. Some time to think about every little bit of advice he had given her this day. She wasn’t sure she could still recall all of those bits, but she felt like she had learned something about how to tackle her bad thoughts. Their talk hadn’t felt like an absolutely effective cure to her, and it had rekindled things she had complete repressed in her mind by now that she would have to think of, but at the same time it appeared to be a step into the right direction, she reflected as she was lying on the bed, slowly closing her eyes. While she pulled the blanket over her, she mumbled, “Have a good night,” and exhaled in a sigh one last time.
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He heard the last sigh as she pulled the blanket over her. He gave a soothing smile. Unintentionally, he made her feel at least a little better.
"Good night, Elena," he replied kindly, "sleep well. I won't be far if I'm needed."
For the moment, he went to his room where he got into a pair of sweats and a bathrobe before retreating downstairs. He poured himself a glass of Brandy and went back to his West room where he stood by the window, watching the storm from outside lighting. He had a moment alone and reflected. It seemed as if he had been in Sirius forever. He began thinking of those with whom he had worked over the years, the men and women who had shaped him through hard work, good relation or just plain treachery.
Alvin Katz, the premier of the Revolution. Miguel Sephardi, a man whom he respected to this day. Malaclypse, the man who gave him his first opportunity and a man to whom he owed much. Arbiter Jack Crow of the Junker Congress whom he worked with to expand trade routes and the treachery of the de France family. It didn't make him bitter but it did teach him to keep his guard up more than he should.
Of course, his trusty piano sat quiet. With smile, he sat before it as he always found peace with it. He would play for hours at times. For now, he set his glass on the table behind him and began playing.
As she laid her heavy head against the pillow and tried to find the path into a peaceful sleep, Elena would lay awake for a while ruminating over the day’s many events and insights. One time and another she caught herself uttering words deep under her breath, since she couldn’t stop herself from turning the words she could still remember Doc had said over and over again in her mind. At some point, the quiet sounds of the piano from downstairs chimed in with her seemingly silent cogitations, yet they had a certain loudness inside her mind. While tossing and turning around on the bed, in an attempt to find a comfortable position to sleep, she found herself more and more listening to the calming piano sound she could hear when pressing her ear against the mattress. For a while she eavesdropped on it, all while her eyelids became heavier and heavier. At some point they would fall completely shut, and guided by the soothing melodies of Mozart would she sink into the sleep she had long been mooning for already.
It was by far not the most peaceful sleep one could have imagined, but for Elena’s recent standards, the rest was well-nigh gold. And so it came to no surprise that, when she awoke the following day, the first she would do was to lengthily yawn with relish, sitting up straight on the bed. One thing she could already say for sure was that she had for once not suffered under bad dreams, else she would have been in a totally different condition than the almost rested one she was in right now. What she still could remember from her dreams were rather fragmentary, but it must had been some minorly altered version of their talk downstairs she had lived through during the night again. Some of his words she even now still pondered over in her mind, but they made a lot less sense than they had made yesterday, she found.
Still in a benighted state did she climb out of bed and stumbled over to the bathroom to freshen up. It was only at this point reality seemed to catch up with her again as she glanced into the large mirror behind the washbasin and spotted herself; even the most peaceful slumber had not helped with her almost sickly pale skin, she realized, and so she sighed, this time in no content at all. Slumping down a little, she would get over her usual morning routine fairly quickly, interrupted by occasional spells of yawning. That the last day, or in extension the last couple of weeks, had drained her of much of her inner strengths, if there actually were any left, she could still feel far too much for her likings. She felt inanimate as ever, so to say, just as she had come to know from some of the worse days of the past months.
She would have loved nothing better than to plunk down into bed again and catch another sleep, but a quick glance at the clock told her that it was already late enough. And with the daylight shining through the room’s window so excessively, she would hardly be able to fall asleep once more. Thus, instead of holing up in the room, with a grunt she decided to have a look downstairs and see whether she would find Doc already awake or not. There was a brief shudder that ran down her spine as she walked down the hallway towards the staircase, still in a somewhat drowsy state of mind. Above all, she was tired – of everything.
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She would wake to the smells of bacon, coffee and other smells of breakfast. Doc was in sweat pants and wrapped in a bathrobe and his hair was cleaned and just over his shoulder. It was clear he was up early as he had gone out to shovel the walk. Two place settings were set at the table. His cup of coffee sat next to him on the counter where he was cooking. He heard Elena come into the kitchen. He turned to her with a kind smile.
"Mohnin'," he said with his old, slight, southern drawl. "Coffee?" Assuming she would want some, he began pouring a cup for her and bringing it to the table.
"I don't know how you take it but I have all the fixings." He then handed her the warm mug.
Fresh fruit was also nearby. It was obvious that Doc liked a good breakfast. "The snow finally stopped but not before it dropped about two feet last night. I don't see an issue getting out to the settlement."
For some reason, he found her to be attractive but he kept it to himself. It was refreshing, really, a pretty female again in the estate. Hopefully today would be a good day indeed.
Blinkingly she scratched her slightly frowned forehead, briefly looking up, and nodded slowly, making a pretty sleepy impression as though she had not yet fully awaken from the asleep. While she gave another mild yawn that she hid with her hand, she gave the chair a twitch and collapsed into it, laying her hands on the table before her. “Good morning. Yeah, I doubt coffee would hurt. Black one, please. No milk, no sugar, just as pure as it can get,” grated she and looked round the kitchen, inspecting it in a way that however could only be called superficial. There were some minor headaches that made her wish to just close her eyes again, but she tried to disregard them as well as she was able to.
Him mentioning their planned trip to the camp was followed by a silent sigh from Elena. It wasn’t a sigh of reluctance she uttered there, but one of uncertainty, and for a moment it was as though somebody had pushed all the air remaining out of her lungs. She couldn’t help but conceive how it would feel like to stand in the middle of a group of young orphans, all looking up to her with an expectant look. The terror of all those big eyes of little people glaring at her was all she could imagine about it right now. How much would it remind her of terrible things, she wondered. Hell, it already now reminded her of terrible things, now that she kept thinking about it. All those high, clear voices, she could almost imagine to already hear them now, as she sat in the kitchen and took a nip of the coffee Doc had shoved over the table to her side. Absentminded as she was, she didn’t even realize she had burned her tongue.
The lump in her throat that had slowly approached during her cogitations gave her a clear signal, that she should stop to ponder about anything concerning those children, pronto. So she shook and scratched her head and looked at Doc. “Sorry, I was thinking about something just now,” she said with an apologetic voice, and slightly blew on the coffee to cool it off. She managed a minor smile. “Say, how far away is that settlement you have been talking about? I mean, how much of a long walk is it gonna be?” Demonstratively she looked out of a window and weighed her head slightly. “Because if there’s one thing I really can’t stand at all, it’s snow. So the less we got to walk through it, the gladder I’d actually be.” She hesitated for a moment as she thought about that camp. A gruesome thought came to her. “Also, uhm, do they even have a roof over their heads? You told me they live under quite the miserable conditions. I seriously hope it’s not as bad as my imagination suggests?”
Unconsciously she bit her lips and fell into another state of quietness, taking a sip from her by now cooled off coffee, almost clasping at the cup and casually blowing up a strand of her blue hair that had fallen into her face. Then she looked down again. What had seemed nothing but cozy now made a virtually alien impression to her. What the hell was she doing here, on an estate she didn’t know, with a man she didn’t know either but from stories over the Neural Net? She couldn’t clearly say anymore how useful anything of what they had talked about and would talk about would prove to be useful in the end. The next time she would have a mental breakdown surely wasn’t far away anymore. She couldn’t really feel anything. She was just sitting there, staring dead ahead out of the window by now. The only thing she knew was that she was getting more fidgety again, as though unrest was bottling up more and more inside her anew.
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"Now, now, Elena," he quipped with a chuckle, "their living conditions are quite nice. I guess the word camp isn't the best word to use. As climate changed, so did accommodations. Families have a small house with all the amenities they would need. They can come and go as they please. Children without parents are in a sort of barrack. They get a room and are well taken care of with medicine, food, cloths and yes, even entertainment. They even attend local schools so it's not a bad place."
He sipped his coffee, "I keep the clinic staffed twenty four/ seven. Believe me, the Canaria government tries to make sure they have what they need and if something is overlooked, it is rectified."
Doc then put his coffee down and became concerned. He was concerned both as a doctor and as a person. Elena looked withdrawn and it concerned him. He kindly went over to her and place a caring hand on her shoulder. "You know, if you're not ready for this, I won't take you over there."
Had he known Elena only a little better, Doc would have probably pursued another tactic to make sure she would not do anything she was not ready for. But what he did instead was definitely not the cleverest of moves. Elena perhaps seemed withdrawn, introverted – which she truly was, worried about what was to come in the following hours, and still pestered by the memories that had by now decided to turn up at her mind’s doorsteps again -, but she was still herself. And so did she counter in her typical fashion. She retreated a little as he placed his hand on her shoulder, but not too much, and shot her head back to eye him. It was hard to tell anything out of her eyes, but it surely was an unpleasant stare she gave him, at the same time pursing her mouth. Then she opened it. Her voice somewhat constrained and loud. “Listen, we talked about it yesterday, didn’t we? Today we’ll walk up there, and have a look at those orphans. I don’t see a reason to not pull that through.” In essence, her hardheaded demeanor was showing again. It did not matter anymore whether she wanted to meet these children or not, she just wanted to get through with it. She did not want to retreat, not anymore. She had, in fact, retreated far too often already, she realized as she kept looking at him.
She broke the long-lasting eye contact, looked back at the table and her cup of coffee standing upon it. After a silent sigh she raked her fingers through her hair, with her elbows resting on the tabletop. It didn’t take long until it came to her mind that she probably was getting far too worked up on all of it again, but she could not help it really. She sighed again, this time louder than before, and felt how her breathing became more hectic again, so she put emphasis on in- and exhaling slowly and calmly more. She turned to him again, this time with a facial play that one could almost call soft.
“I’m sorry,” she said with quiet voice, resting her chin on the palm of her hand, trying to keep herself under control – in partial success. Whether she was ready or not to visit that camp was of no importance. She simply had to be. “But I feel like I should go through with it, no matter if it’s gonna be easy or not. I’ve tried the other approach, the one with not doing anything about it, for the last few months. And look what that helped me. Nothing at all.” Her voice turned more decisive all of a sudden, after she had tossed back the rest of her coffee in one go. “That being said, I’d prefer it if we went there sooner than later.” She showed him a small smile. It was difficult to judge how much of it was for real and how much artificial.