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[themidnightson]

The Back Door opens and closes.

Two people leave, one dressed for the weather and one decidedly not.

The snow is still covering the ground except for well worn paths that have turned slushy and gray-brown. But it isn't falling right now. And Edward paused, while the door swung closed, to look across the expanse. Would anything feel far enough here to him? Was it just another distraction from?


Except he could not chance these things;
And he did not trust the Front Door after all the things it had thrown at them.

Comments

[themidnightson]

Edward shook his head. "It's only me."

There was a singularity that wasn't-quiet nor-wasn't-quiet-not solemnness. He is used to his life-- and his separateness. "Among them, and in the known histories of even the oldest of our kind we've come into contact with."

[noteful]

And that surprises her.

She's not sure why, or at least, why is surprises her as much as it does. It's hardly odd for different people to have different abilities.

(Even within families. Kim, after all, is a Seer. And Meg most decidedly is not.)

"Why?"

And then immediately, "Sorry. That was . . ."

Too much to ask, maybe.

At the very least, too rudely phrased.

[themidnightson]

Edward shook his head, short and tight, more as a point than rebuff.

"It's fine. It isn't a science," No one cares enough on this side, outside of wanting to collect them like cards, or use them like toys. "But the prevailing theory is that the strongest gifts people have during their human life is amplified when they are changed."

Alice would be another note in the truth of that.
Especially since James and the video tape.

[noteful]

"So in your human life, you were . . . what gift manifests as hearing people's minds?"

[themidnightson]

"It's a good question. I could have been empathetic to people, or" Edward's expression slips the seriousness, splitting for a wryness. "-perhaps I was very nosy."

Though he thinks of a memory that isn't his, while being him and not;

It's not your fault.

[noteful]

Or perhaps you were both.

Things are not always either/or, after all.

[themidnightson]

Maybe, the rueful twist of amusement on his lopsided smirk says, but Edward himself settles for. "Whatever it was, it was certainly quieter."

[noteful]

"How do you hear yourself think?"

Such a trite, cliched phrase.

And not even really a metaphor here.

[themidnightson]

"The same way anyone in a room full of talking people hears their self still."

Edward's hand rose making a shape like a box, only to turn it up as looking through the square instead of down through it.

"Only it's not a physical room and the volume of it can change or the numbers, or it's the same room while being just a slightly different version seen through each person, where everything about the room switches with the swings of each person viewing it -- except the actual physical reality, of course."

He has had decades to deal with it, after all.

[noteful]

It sounds like being at a cocktail party.

In a funhouse.

Warped reflections from mirrors all around and voices everywhere.

"How close does someone have to be for you to hear him or her?"

[themidnightson]

He looked over his shoulder, toward where they'd come.

"I can still hear them."


It's not as precise as it could be.

[noteful]

She turns to look, automatically, though she can't see the bar from here.

"From here?"

It's not that she doubts him, it's just . . .

Wow.

[themidnightson]

Edward simply nodded, a medium speed small bob twice.




He could have said I can hear all of them or beyond them.
Milliways was actually a blessing in it's limited populace in someways.

[noteful]

Make that a really, really big cocktail party, then.

"Just . . . just conscious thought, or are you stuck hearing the part of my brain that does nothing but think inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale?"

[themidnightson]

"I can only hear," See. Feel. "What you are thinking presently."

Though his definition of conscious and hers were a bit different.
People's awareness of their thoughts was not very clear.

[noteful]

There is a part of her mind (Edward is probably more aware of it than she is), that finds it kind of remarkable to be sitting and calmly discussing all this.

But then, she's had a week to get used to the idea, to think of things she wants to ask.

And you hear everyone?

Or nearly everyone, he said.

[themidnightson]

With the proviso she herself amends the question to, Edward nodded again.

[noteful]

So he hears everyone around him, for quite some distance, all the time.

Good Lord.

And . . . oh . . . oh . . .

"And you remember it all, don't you?"

[themidnightson]

He doesn't disagree, which is possibly agreement in itself.

"You haven't gotten back to the part where Carlisle loves baseball games yet." It's a calm dryness against her horror. The reference to stadiums is a joke. Partly.

But even that was thirties to him.

[noteful]

No. No she hadn't gotten to that point, yet.

It's . . . it's so much to have in your head.

She'd say it's an impossible amount to have in your head, except that . . . well, it's clearly not.

"Remind me never to play Trivial Pursuit with you."

[themidnightson]

"That would have been a smart decision even before this."

When he could remember everything ever read or seen, or lived through. It's given with an easy acceptance though. His family has stopped playing chess with him long ago -- all save Alice. But then it was the same with her.

And, when they were being honest, they were the only real challenge each other could find for matches as it was.

[noteful]

"Well, yes," Meg says.

And she does try to make smart decisions.

Meg takes a moment to let her mind sort through all this.

Lots and lots of new information.

[themidnightson]

Edward is by no means the most patient of beings, and while he is quite given to rash fits of temper, until these past few months he'd had decades of being the least likely member of his family to give into rash action.

But again, the last has happened.
And she's been beyond courteous thus far.

So he waits, watching over her head and across the entire field, where five or six snowflakes fallen from a nearby tree branch are caught in the draft, spinning toward the ground.

[noteful]

It's a running back over of things, of connecting the points from the beginning more firmly to the points at the end, of letting everything settle.

(In other words, it's the mental equivilant of going back over the notes she hasn't physically been taking, highlighting and drawing arrows and circling things.)

And while there are places she could ask for details, or clarification, what she's stuck with is the . . . weight of it all. The honor and the burden and the expression of trust and . . . if the number of people who know about this really would fit comfortably in a small room, why is she one of them?

It's quietly baffling.

She is, after all, just ordinary little Meg Ford. From Canada.

[themidnightson]

Aside from the totally skewed view Little Meg Ford from Canada has of herself:

The answer to that is remarkably simple for her singular audience.

She knows because he made a mistake -- and she didn't.



With quiet refrain, "Didn't you know Meg Ford, from America, was already taken."