AN: Let me know what y'all are thinking. Love.

This time, when she rounds the corner, the pattern of her footsteps reaching Helena's ears as if through water rather than air, the woman seated on the bench is ready with her smile. She does not have a mirror with her, but she has, nevertheless continued to practice all afternoon. Up. Down. Up. Down. Squinting at the wooden slats of the bench in concentration. The time had passed quickly; the sun dropping through the sky like Newton's apple from the tree, although it is really the earth that is being pulled away. An illusion. Like all the rest. This...smiling, has managed to keep her focused. When once she was able to concentrate on multiple things: the thesis paper she was grading, the grocery list on the fridge, Christina's piano recital next week, the taste of peppermint, now it is all she can manage to simply focus on this action. It was once a reflex, but reflexes can be forgotten over time, wiped clean out of muscle memory by invading knives of a different sort. Ones that bite on impact and continue to sting long after their mark has faded.

But, she has had other things to do this afternoon than remember. Important things. Practicing. The runner is wearing blue today. Blue like the sky, clear on a chill autumn day. Blue of magical things and a marble with a smoky center held to a child's eye. Blue that makes Helena's muscles contract even before the other woman is close enough to smile in return.

She forces her face to still itself, to assume an expression of blankness. It is not difficult. This is the face she wears to bed in the evenings, the one she assumes as she watches the sun paint its colors across her lawn in the morning. Her first line of defense when she makes eye contact with someone on the street, her invisibleness causing that person to look away before they can become wary of the stranger with eyes that mirror the black of pavement and a hole in the center of her chest, too large to be a mere bullet wound or leftover shrapnel from some long ago battle.

And with the adoption of this expression, or lack there of, she forgets for a moment, why she is waiting on the bench this afternoon rather than simply sitting as she has done for so many days prior. She forgets for ten breaths about the woman with the curly brown hair who has eyes like the forest on the mountain. She forgets for fifteen heartbeats that she has been rehearsing this smile for the past twenty four hours, around cups of coffee, into sprays of freezing water, at the leaf resting against her shoe. But a dog barks and she looks up to find her closer. Close enough to make out the pattern on her running shoes and the blue stitching along the seam of her pant leg. Close enough to see the smile, two lips stretching upwards, transforming a mask of concentration and determination into something accessible. Present.

Here it is. She takes a deep breathe, the hummingbirds in her stomach falling still, perched and waiting. She blinks. Once. Twice. And then pulls her gaze up to meet the one awaiting her. She smiles, small, hesitant, but there. And the other woman grins back even brighter in return, her eyes turning to the green of the moors after a spring rain and before the heather has had a chance to bloom. "Hi," she hears, breathless and quick, two syllables, not one. The first is the word, the second is the smile itself.

And once more she is caught off guard because she has not prepared for this possibility. The woman is gone, knocking Helena off of her axis, setting her spinning in place like one of the cartoon figures from her childhood. The curved lines depicting her motion visible to the child's eye on the screen. She works her lips soundlessly, shocked. She'd smiled. She'd responded appropriately, and now, she finds that she is behind once again.

She has not considered the potential exchange of words. Of the way a voice might sound, heard for the first time, dropped between the rise of one foot and the fall of the other. In a moment too quick for the naked eye to pinpoint. She has not realized the potential two letters have to make the sound of a tree falling upon its mossy bed while no one is there to hear it, or of the bell strapped to a child's bicycle, rung with glee. And it is because the speed of light outpaces the speed of sound, that she is left with an echo and a ringing in her ears. She brings shaking hands up from her lap and places them gently over her ears, blocking out the offending reverberations and stopping the echo in its tracks. Instead, she hears the sea, as one would from a shell, the waves crashing upon the shore. Blue, like the woman's shirt.

She is reminded once more of the vastness of the water resting upon the earth's crust as she watches her daughter's tiny body, clad only in a diaper, skamper along the beach. She has a sand dollar in one hand, held so delicately, even as she stumbles along on legs not yet coordinated enough to control her movements. "What've you got there, darling," she questions, striding towards the small figure who is approaching the water's edge.

"Back," her daughter proclaims proudly.

"Back where, silly goose?"

"Back!" And she winds up as a pitcher might on a baseball mound to throw her find as far as her short arm can send it. They both watch in silence until it disappears beneath the waves. It will return to the shore eventually, born on a never-ending tide, but for now it has been returned, "Back. Home." She explains to the adult that this is, of course, the proper method of beach combing. She looks up to her mother, brown curls stuck to the nape of her neck, as though to ensure that the lesson is not lost on the silliness that is an adult who might collect shells to keep. And the mother nods her approval to show that, yes, lesson received, my darling.

It is chilly still. Not yet summer, but past spring. Too cold for actually swimming, although the sun had come out that morning, warming the sand so it is comfortable enough for bare feet this afternoon. There is suncream plastered to the button nose and across tiny shoulder blades, but the mother doesn't at all mind that when she swings her child up into her arms, some of it smears along her shirt.

"Good throw," she praises, pressing a kiss to a chubby cheek. "Well done, sweetness."

It is Christina's first time at the ocean. They have to come to stay for a weekend. And although the toddler will most likely retain no actual memories of these days, Helena herself cannot help delighting in the wonder that her daughter portrays with every new experience. She kisses the cheek once more, before her daughter squirms out of her arms and back to the sand.

"You it!" Christina shouts, before she takes off at a three year old sprint across the sand. "Buhbye, mumma," she teases, waving a pudgy hand back at the slow poke behind her.

Helena laughs. "You better run," she encourages, before taking off at a slow jog. "Come back here, you!" She will chase her daughter as the baby's screams of joy mix with the gulls' clamor from one hundred yards above, and she will let Christina get away, again, and again, until, exhausted, they flop down in the sand together, out of breath, but full of life.

"Bye," she whispers, removing her hands from her head, missing the sound of the sea immediately. "Goodbye." It is not hello, or hi, or hey. But it is an exhale of the breath filling her lungs, taking the place of where her life used to reside. "Goodbye," and she lifts slim fingers as though to wave to a receding figure in the distance, but gets caught on a pocket of air and freezes half way through the motion. It is easier to return her hand to her lap, unscathed, and trembling. "Buhbye."

Caturanga is waiting for her when she returns to the house that evening. He is seated in the ever empty porch swing, pipe in hand, the embers glowing out of the darkness as a stationary firefly. She'd much rather he disappear, but that would mean she was mad, and, as much as she might desire it, madness will not provide her with an escape.

"You're back late," he observes, when she shuffles onto the porch beside him, taking a seat in the swing and kicking off with one foot, so they begin to rock gently. She does not answer. He will speak, when he is ready. She was his student once, but he has yet to stop being her teacher. His dark eyes study her profile, a shadow only a bit lighter than the night around them. She wonders, for the umpteenth time when he, too, will stop calling on her, as so many have already done.

"I find myself rereading Darwin these days," he comments thoughtfully. "However, I have also been keeping the books of my boyhood on a table beside my bed, and I find that it is those I return to before sleep comes. It's quite silly really," he continues after taking a puff of his pipe. She has always despised the way the smoke of such an item fills a room, choking off all clean air. But here, outside, it seems to mix with the scent of recently mown grass and decaying underbrush. It is natural. And, if she would allow it to be, it might even constitute comfort.

"There are so many wisdoms in the books of our youth," he goes on, as though he has not noticed her attention wavering between the big dipper above them and his tobacco curling through around his words.

"One more? Pretty please," she cannot resist that smirk, so like her own. She reaches blindly for the top of the stack, missing the first time, but successful on her second attempt.

"Owl Moon," she begins, and pauses to allow the child to settle herself more firmly against her mother's side. They are pressed tightly together on Christina's small bed. It is late. The girl should already be asleep. But, Helena enjoys these nightly readings nearly as much as her daughter, and although Christina has her top ten favorites memorized, she lets the words wash over her without interrupting. Soothing, calming. And Helena feels her own muscles grow easy in the peace, letting go of the pressures of the day, sinking back, once more, into the images of imagination and wonder that make up these picture books.

"It was late one winter night, long past my bedtime," she giggles when Christina pokes her with an elbow, but she does not release her serious voice, "when Papa and I went owling. There was no wind. The trees stood still as giant statues. And the moon was so bright the sky seemed to shine. Somewhere behind us a train whistle blew, long and low, like a sad, sad song..."

"Goodnight, sweet girl," there is no response from the still form, a lump in the bed, sprawled across the entire expanse of her sheets. The moonlight shining through the window glows off of her daughter's pale skin. The curtains are pulled back to allow the sight of the street lamps glinting off the snow to warm the room. It is wintertime, and Helena can feel the weight of the snow laying upon her shoulders as it lays upon the earth, covering houses and resting atop trees. It is a welcome pressure. A release from the heat of a long summer, and the brilliant color of another autumn come and gone. The city has gone into hibernation, the flowers are tucked away, the rain has turned to snow, fat fluffy flakes that stay on noses and eyelashes. And although the world seems to have grown dull, she adores the shock and visual stimulation of a red hat popping out from the snow bank, of a million crystals reflecting the light of the sun, of the night that is not truly dark when there are stars to count and a moon that matches the glow of the snow.

"Sweet dreams, my love."

"I hear that Charles is coming to visit," and she wonders for half a moment where he has heard this, before realizing that her brother must have emailed him. There is no way to deny it.

"Yes."

"Soon?"

"Friday," but she is not sure if Friday is soon or far away.

"I see," he puffs on his pipe a moment, not answering her unspoken question, and she stretches her fingers apart until the webbing between them creaks in agony. She sighs and lifts her feet, hugging her knees to her chest.

"We are quite fragile things. We humans," her teacher murmurs.

She agrees, but does not quite know how to say so.

"And grief, well. Grief is quite liable to tear our carefully constructed lives to pieces."

She swallows the tears that form automatically at his words. She does not want to discuss grief. She lives with it, it is her constant companion. There is no need to give voice to its presence. It spoons her in its cloying embrace each night, and attempts to keep her under as she struggles to awaken each dawn. It holds her hand while she crosses the street, and chains itself to her ankle each afternoon while she takes up sentry in the park. She does not need this man to explain to her the process that is grief, the physical manifestations it is capable of assuming. She is intimately connected to it, more so than any other lover she has ever entertained. It owns her, body and soul, and she revels in the scars it leaves on the inside of her skin, across her chest, pressed into her teeth and bones.

No, she does not need Caturanga to give voice to her grief. And, so she stands and unlocks her front door, disappearing inside. He does not get up to follow her. She rests her back against the glass until she hears his quiet footsteps disappear down the porch, the sound of his car starting, tires pulling away. He will be back, but not for many days. He will leave her with his words, and his pipe smoke, until she is blue in the face from lack of oxygen, and then he will be back.

She dreams that night of dragons swooping along the coast, white cliffs rearing into the heavens. She dreams of a woman with a voice that is a melody and a smile that is a thousand stories. She dreams of pipe tobacco in a Southern night. She dreams of bike riders at midnight, learning to fly. She dreams of owls and fathers and the sound of a train, long and low, letting loose the sadness of all the mothers with all of their missing children into the abyss. She dreams of men cloaked in the blue of a king's robes, and then of men in the blue of the sea, and finally the blue of the line of sky above the night and below the day. And it is these men that she dreams of in relation to a child with trusting brown eyes and a penchant for mischief. Until her dreams are the white of porcelain and a red that is only capable of existing as it is pumped from the heart of a human being. Red that has drenched the corridors of her mind until she does not remember which way is up and which is down and she is left gasping for air in a stairwell that goes nowhere. Red that is hazy on the edges of her vision when she sits upright on the floating planet that is her mattress, drenched in sweat and shivering in her bare skin, white and clean in the square of moonlight reaching her through a pane of glass.

She does not shower. She does not open the bathroom door. Instead, she wraps herself in the sheet of her grief and strides firmly down the hallway. But she is brought to a halt by the white door, firmly closed against intruders. She rests one hand upon its surface, tracing the outline of a sticker placed there by tiny hands. Winnie the Pooh, and his jar of honey. She leans forward to put her head against the hard wood.

"Darling, have you seen mummy's black jacket anywhere, the one with- oh." She is brought up short by the vision presented to her. Christina, in a white dress and white stockings and white shoes has her hair pushed messily out of her face with a white headband. She is seated at the tiny table beside her dresser, bear in the seat to her left and t-rex to her right. She is holding the tea pot in one hand and she looks up at her mother's intrusion into her imagination.

"Tea, mummy?" She invites sweetly, gesturing to the seat across from her.

Helena represses a smile and sweeps a deep and impressive bow instead, causing her daughter to laugh outright, before she claps a hand over her mouth and sits straighter in her chair. "I would be delighted," Helena responds, primly situating herself in the plastic seat, knees pulled up almost to her chest.

She watches in fascination as the five year old, only ten days away from six, pours tea for her guests without breaking character. She plays the hostess effortlessly. "We were afraid you weren't going to make it," Christina chides the adult gently.

"Yes, well. I am terribly sorry for my tardiness," her mother apologizes. "This is absolutely delicious," she indicates the drink in her hand.

"It's cham-uh-mile," Christina pronounces carefully, yet incorrectly.

"So it is!"

"It's Frederick's favorite."

"Frederick?" Helena asks with a raised eyebrow.

The child indicates the bear.

"Ahh, yes, nice to meet you, Frederick," Helena reaches over to shake a stuffed paw. "And who might you be, good sir?" She asks the plastic dinosaur.

"Oh, that's Annabelle."

"Annabelle?" It is the most ridiculous name for a tyrannosaurus rex that she has ever heard, but her tone cause her daughter to turn her mouth into a bow shaped pout.

"It's her name."

"And a lovely one at that," she amends quickly. "You have a lovely name, Ms. Annabelle."

Christina giggles, and Helena cannot resist the urge to reach across the plastic table and swipe a finger down a dimpled cheek. "But I think Christina is the loveliest name."

"In the whole world?" The child has asked this question before.

"In the whole entire universe," she promises.

She sinks to her knees, one hand and her forehead still pressed firmly to the door. The weight of the memories within that room are overwhelming. All of the afternoon teas, the bedtime stories, the tickle fights. There are stuffed animals living behind that door who come alive at night. But the closet is full of monsters now where once it was empty and safe for a little girl's wanderings. And the sheets are musty from disuse and the paintings on the walls have come unglued and lie faded and yellowed on the floor. The sunlight does not catch the shine of a polished shoe buckle, and moonlight occupies an empty pillow where once it joined a head of tangled brown locks.

She believes she can hear her heart beating from within that room, locked inside a chest that dwarfs its minuscule measure with its emptiness. It has been taken from within her and placed behind this closed door. She has been sewn up and put back out on the streets, but unable to stray too far from the room where her heart resides. She is on a leash. A tether. And the string is made of iridium wiring that she cannot cut, nor does she wish to, because that would mean stopping her heart and she does not think she could bear to survive without the agony of each individual pulse.

She stares at the floor beneath her and listens to her heart beating, alone, in an empty room. She will rise from this place eventually, she will dress, she will brush her teeth, she will practice her smile in the mirror ten times, she will say, "Hi," twice, just in case, and she will drink coffee until she cannot feel the salt water making its slow way down the back of her throat. She will fill her lungs with the tang of half-forgotten salt water from a seashore on a half-forgotten day. She will recite all of the words of Owl Moon in her head, reading them off of the skin beneath her fingertips. She will view the world through a filter of the blue of far away lands and magical places where the feeling of loss does not occupy the rooms of a house. A place where doors do not remain closed and showers are not red and nightmares are scary stories mothers tell their babies while they hold them close throughout the night. A place where the sea is a meter past the front stoop and the forest is only a hop away and the sky is transparent and the sun shares the sky with the moon, and the stars chase you around the backyard like fireflies set free from a jar before the thunderstorm. She will move from this place after an infinite number of her heartbeats have echoed throughout the hall, bouncing off furniture and shattering her rib bones. She will move. But, for now, all she can is listen.

AN2: Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. Read it. It's fantastic.