Page 101 of Elanie & the Empath
And then the floor vanished beneath my feet.
38.ELANIE
I wasn’tsure I’d ever seen another being so surprised to see me. “Dr. Semson.” I lowered my fist. “Are you on your way out?”
He only stared at me, his round, silver-blue eyes not blinking once.
“Dr. Semson?”
Finally, he said, “Oh. Hello, Elanie,” while rubbing his palm into his chest. “I was. Heading out, that is. But…I don’t have to be.”
“I know I don’t have an appointment?—”
“Who cares about that?” he said in a rush, then he scratched his head. “I mean, it’s fine. I have an opening. Do you want to come in?”
He took a step back, and I stepped inside.
“What’s going on? Are you”—he cleared some thickness from his throat—“okay?”
“I’m having some headaches,” I said, looking at his examination table, at the flexGlass jars of cotton balls and tongue depressors on the counter, at the handheld mirrorreflecting the clouds floating by on the digital ceiling tiles. “And I’m not sleeping.”
“Here.” He extended his hand to me, and when I took it, I noticed how vibrantly blue his skin looked against mine. “Let me help you up.”
“Thank you,” I said, stepping up to sit on his table.
He let me go, curling his hand into a loose fist for a moment before reaching back to search for something on the counter behind him. His eyes stayed on mine until he found a yellow pad of paper and a pen. “You’re having headaches?” He jotted something down. “When did they start?”
“After I got back. I meanwe,” I corrected while his jaw ticked. “After we got back, I guess. But they only happen at night.”
“Maybe that’s why you can’t sleep.” He scribbled something else. “It’s hard to sleep when you have a headache.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s the dreams.”
His hand stilled as his gaze rose to meet mine again. “Dreams?”
“Yes,” I said. “Every night. The same strange dream.”
“What is it about?” His voice wavered, and I wondered if he was nervous. “If you’re comfortable telling me, that is.”
“I’m comfortable.” I placed my hands in my lap. “Wherever I am in the dream, it’s dark outside. And cold. It’s snowing, and the wind blows almost constantly. But inside, it’s warm. There’s always a fire burning, wood popping, amber light flickering off rock walls. I think I’m in a cave.”
His pen slipped from his grip, clattering to the ground. “A cave?” he repeated, ignoring the pen.
“I feel like I should be scared in these dreams,” I said. “But I never am.”
He clutched his pad of paper so tightly his knucklesturned gray. “You aren’t? Because it sounds like it could be. Scary, that is.”
“I’m not scared,” I went on, “because I’m not alone. Someone is in the cave with me. But I can’t see them. I can’t see their face. I try so hard, every night, but they’re always in the shadows. Just out of reach.”
His eyes shone, his lips parting. I sensed the rapid acceleration of his heart rate.
“Whoever they are, they take care of me. They bring me food. They keep the fire going. They make me laugh and tell me stories. They keep me safe.”
A tear tracked down his cheek, but he didn’t seem to notice. “They sound like a good cave partner.”
“I think they were.” I was tempted to smile, which was something I hadn’t been tempted to do in so long that the sensation caught me off guard. “I think they were the best cave partner a being could ever ask for. Maybe that’s why I never want to wake up from these dreams. Maybe that’s why, when I do, I try my hardest to fall asleep again, just so I can go back. So I can be there again, living in that cave. Surrounded by fire and snow and wind and warmth. Surrounded by him. Because if I could go back, then I never would have had to leave him there alone.”
He’d changed something about his office. The digpics on the walls were different, tropical trees blowing in the breeze, a fire flickering in the darkness, and a fuzzy, precocious grint leaping between a dresser and a bed with a tie in his mouth, his thick, bottle-brush tail whipping through the air behind him.
