Author’s Note: Written for the April 12th, 2023 Anniversary Challenge at CABB ~ New Chambers. The theme … a short story concerning any anniversary related to our BatB world. Read all the submissions to the project HERE.

The place you would fall becomes
in falling
the place you are held.

~ David Whyte

Twenty-three years ago today.

She’d said that to herself, what … a hundred times?

Twenty-three years in this chamber.

At first hardly a refuge, more … a hidey-hole, as Narcissa put it, standing there in the archway.

The woman who would become her friend hadn’t guided her to the room so much as she’d delivered her. Exhausted, unmoored, thinned almost to invisibility, she’d had no will left. It would be months before a spark of hope would fly from the dulled flint she was then.

Invisible … She’d always been so, it seemed. Overlooked or disregarded, what was the difference. Oh, to be seen, she’d over and over wished.

And then … she was.

And then she wasn’t.

Again, but worsely so.

Better to have loved and lost, so they said.

Was it? What did they know?

Nothing.

Twenty-three years ago, she’d arrived Below, less than nothing, expecting nothing, longing for oblivion, for over, having long since ceased wishing to be seen. But this chamber, a craggy room made kinder with once-lovely quilts, a half-shattered stained-glass lamp, a well-worn chair, took her in and, though doorless, closed around her. A hard-cased cocoon.

Seen, unseen, unworthy to be seen ever again.

Narcissa, who could not see, came ‘round every day with unnecessary food. At first remaining silent at the doorway. Later, still silent but a shuffling step inside.

She’d turned away from the woman’s gaze – too bright.

Until the day she hadn’t retreated to the chamber’s shadows.

She’d ventured out, a walking pang of hunger, to return, if not sated, then less … edged, to this chamber that had inexplicably waited for her.

Mine, she realized.

And later … Home.

Seen, unseen, seen again …

No, she’d corrected herself. Seen for perhaps the first time, for who she was. For who she might become. She’d vowed then to look upon others with the same faith.

Twenty-three years. And now she was moving.

“Last boxes toted and stacked,” he called from the entry.

In the arms of the emptied chamber, she turned to him, welcomed him into her own.

He tucked her close and whispered, “All our new home needs now … is you, Mary.”

She sighed with gratitude. Here begins a new life … once and once again.

An anniversary doubled.

_____________

opening quotation:  David Whyte. Millennium. From Fire in the Earth. Many Rivers Press. 1999.

Here begins a new life: Dante Alighieri. La Vita Nuova. 1294.