firewatcher | [PSL] 2016: But I'll be here 'til chaos calls

Night off, finally. Coming off a long shift like that all she should have wanted to do was sleep, but it never felt like there were enough hours in the day anymore. And sleep was more and more often an exercise in lying awake, alone with her thoughts in the dark. Just like every year around this time except worse. No thanks.

So Palmer made herself a cup of coffee and went to see if Great-Aunt Julia was what passed for awake. Weird how things changed so quickly—three months ago she would have sworn there was no such thing as ghosts, and now one was haunting her couch. Her aunt haunting her couch. She'd set a bunch of older pens on the coffee table in hopes that one of them would have enough emotional whatever imbued into it to work for Aunt Julia, but so far she'd seen nothing.

She did a quick double-take when she saw someone actually sitting on the couch, but then relaxed as she realized that it was just Danielle—who she had, she remembered, blearily, told she could come over whenever.

"'Lo, Danielle," she said, rubbing at her eyes and taking a seat next to her on the couch. "How's Aunt Julia?"

Threaded | Flat

Danielle had no memories of her mother. How could she? They'd lost Julia when she was only six months old. Miles never talked about her, of course. He wasn't exactly the sentimental type. And Shawn...

Well, Shawn was every bit as much Miles' kid as Danielle was, even though neither of them wanted to admit it.

Some things were best left unsaid.

The past few weeks had been...crazy really. Half like something out of a dream. But this was her mom. Her mom. One of the many pieces of the normal childhood she'd never been permitted to have. And with every conversation, Julia was becoming more and more lucid. Or maybe Danielle was just hoping that was true. At any rate, she kept coming back, kept trying to talk to her.

It wasn't always easy.

She'd only just returned to her body when Palmer came in. Rubbing her eyes, she turned to look over at her, quickly trying to brush away any traces of the emotional turmoil she was dealing with. "Status quo," she said. "I was just on my way out."

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