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Thunderous incomplete
Deafening rush you end repeat

I've been
	I was
	     I am
waiting?

It's long, long I've wondered, whispered, feared, inevitable

do I want it anymore?
can I want it anymore?

can't explain
	haunt is such a tiny word
		soft romantic, fumbles this
deep rich hard alive burn I feel

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						'soul speak'	
Title:  Mysterious Time
Chapter 4
Author:  nat-chan
Genre:  Romance/Alt. Reality
Disclaimer:  standard
E-mail:  natia_99@yahoo.com or nymphnat@animail.net

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Darien walked home from the office slowly, exhausted.  
He'd been feeling so tired lately.  So empty and lost.

He thought of his daughter home waiting for him.  Rini.
His pet name for her.

For she was Serena.  He had known it that first moment.  And now
it had been twelve years.  Could it really be so long?  It felt
like seconds....and lifetimes....

It was strange.

He'd suffered through moments of overwhelming agony....an aching
and longing for something he could not name.  And the sense of
having forgotten something still plagued him.

Her face....it was burned into his mind.  ~remember...~
But he could not.

He'd studied up after that.  Read everything about people
waking without memories, feeling displaced.

Alien abductions.  Strange comas.  He'd read it all.  

There was only one theory that came close.  He'd stumbled across 
it really...in a fiction novel....not even a case study...no one
believed in it.

Time travel.

The side effects of time travel fit the bill.  Though it was
impossible.  But the sense of disorientation.  The loss of
memory...time and memory could not work together that way.
If he had travelled back or forward and then returned his
memories would only be real in the place where he made them.
Not here.

All save for fleeting images...strange sensations he would not
be able to recognize.

He knew the woman whose face he could not forget or remember was
Rini's mother.  She had to be.

That meant that he and this woman had been together.  Had made love.
And he could not remember. 

It was terrible.

He rarely slept--had come to hate his dreams...

He always woke feeling he was in the wrong place.  

All he had left was the image of her face....the strange sense
of a feeling more than love....and his daughter.

She was so bright and sweet.....he loved her more than anything
else in the world.

He wondered vaguely how he would ever explain anything to her
about her mother but then brushed it aside.  He had a few more
years yet...

He unlocked the door and headed into the apartment--noticed Rini's
dinner was untouched....

"Rini?"  He called out, her knapsack was here, "Rini!"

He looked in her room and then heard a funny noise in his own.
He rushed in and looked with horror to his open attic door.

No.  She was never supposed to know.

He rushed up the ladder and found her standing still frozen in
shock, looking at all the drawings he'd made.  Haunted.

"What is this Papa?!"  She cried out.

He rushed to her, "Rini....why did you come up here love?"

"Who is she?  Who is she?  She looks like me!"  Rini cried, panic
making tears run down her cheeks.

Darien tried in vain to comfort her, "I know she looks like
you....I wish I knew who she was....."

He knelt down to look in her eyes, "I don't know.  I see her
sometimes....in my mind.....but I can't tell who she is.  Do
you understand?"

Rini looked back wide-eyed at him, "Is she my mother?"

The question hung in the air....in the sudden silence....

His eyes became pained and Rini suddenly felt terrible for
asking.

"I....I think so."  He choked out.

She threw her arms about his neck, "I'm sorry Papa!  I'm sorry!"

She felt him hold her tight, "I'm sorry love.  I wish I had
answers...."


He sat her down then and tried to explain what little he knew
to her.  She listened quietly and watched with horror and
fascination as tears actually welled up in her father's eyes.

"How do you know I'm your daughter?"  She asked softly when
he was done.

"I am more certain of that than anything else in this world!"
He said fiercely, "I know you're mine Rini!"

She nodded.

He carried her back down to bed where she fell asleep, exhausted
as he sat beside her.

Then he crept back to his own room in agony and fell down before
his window.

~Please God....let me remember?~  He prayed....


And as he slept that night, disturbing memories began to surface.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"What if this moment is all we have?"

	The sensation of her kiss.
	
		The sound of a forest.
			
Her silver tears.....like Rini's.

And then nothing.  Blackness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


He sat straight up in bed the next morning....still grasping
at the strange dreams.  More than dreams......memories...of
moments stolen.....and gone...


He ate silently with Rini and kissed her goodbye for school.
Then he returned to the attic and sat a long time in silence.

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