"I'm glad that you two are settling in so well. So I hope you mind staying here alone for awhile", Kay told them. She sighed at the chorus of protests, adding firmly "Maybe I'll be able to bring you with me tomorrow, but for now you should stay here. You can eat, play and sleep -- so you shouldn't be bored while I'm gone".
After filling a dish with fruit for the hawk and another with cheese for the kitten, Kay then propped open the bathroom door. That should take care of basic neccessities, she decided. *FOOD* she announced, pointing to the dishes and sending a picture of them. *Make waste* she added, with a picture of the toilet. Then she quietly let herself out of the room and closed the door behind her.
There were many odd looks in her direction when she returned to her desk. She ignored them as easily as she brushed off any questions. All that REALLY matterred was that she was back, and that she could still do her job as well as ever.
Yet her thoughts kept returning to her worries. On top of everything else, she hadn't slept well lately. Even her late-afternoon nap had been disturbed by some sort of nightmare. She couldn't remember what or why, only that she'd been startled awake with tears in her eyes. Cries of distress (both feline and avian) rang in her head as counterpoint to a sense of something priceless having been lost. She hadn't been able to explain it, not even to herself.
Kay's channels hadn't recovered enough yet for her to fully raise shields. So, even after her best efforts, nightmares had continued to plague her several more times. Each was different from the last. And the only details that she could remember, were fragments of the one that had awakened her that morning before dawn -- the sound of an infant's frightened wailing, an overwhelming sense of intense fear/pain/rage/guilt, a person engulfed in blue flames, and then utterly-silent complete darkness. THAT one always shook her awake in a cold sweat. And she _STILL_ didn't have any way to explain any of it, except to say that she'd been having nightmares.
Part of the reason she'd come to Cottman IV was in the hope of being able to sleep more peacefully in different surroundings. But the change of location didn't seem to be helping much.
Several times in her life, she'd buried her nightmares deeply enough to get a few years of peace. But each time they had eventually returned. It seemed to be a family trait.
Gran had the Sight, so it was to be expected for her to get them. Yet she seemed to adapt well enough to be able to deal with them. *If only Gran was still around to give me some guidance*, Kay thought to herself wistfully. But Gran had gone to the arms of the Goddess for rebirth far too many years ago.
Ma had also been plagued by nightmares. They were bad enough to push her into making a trip to an offworld clinic every few years so that the psych techs could make another try at removing the unpleasant memories that caused her nightmares. Da had once explained that the psych techs had initially told him that there was so much buried in her memory that she couldn't bear to face the whole awful weight of it all at once. They refused to tell him all the details, saying only that she had seen a great deal of abuse and that the need for escape- and-survival had forced his wife into doing at least one thing-better- left-unspoken that her conscious mind wasn't able to accept (or forgive).
Kay shivered in horror. It freaked her out to even THINK about someone messing around in her own head and trying to delete memories. The temporary cure seemed almost WORSE than the problem. What if so much was deleted that she was no longer herself ? And what if the WRONG things got deleted ? Idly, she wondered what her mother had been like BEFORE giving birth to her.