Pagan: Anna: Exploring Charlotte’s Room

[k_a_webb]

Posted, with others, in return for the psting of a poem written by Elizabeth Barrette.

For the first time Anna stepped into the bedroom that she’d been told was hers. Technically that meant it was Charlotte’s room, but she was slowly getting used to the idea that, even though she thought of herself as Anna, she was also Charlotte. Her worry was that she wouldn’t like Charlotte and that would make it difficult for her. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep in a room that she didn’t feel any connection to. Once she was in the room there was a minute, maybe less, when she did feel uncomfortable because she could feel Charlotte. It was as though the girl she had been before the accident stood behind her.

Slowly she looked around the room, wondering how much of an effect the accident would have had on Charlotte. The effect it’d had on Anna was strange. Losing her memory was difficult but the hardest thing was knowing that the people who had been in the car had been Charlotte’s friends. One of Charlotte’s friends had died in that accident and Anna found herself wanting to grieve for him even though she didn’t know him. Sighing, she focused on what was around her because thinking about what had happened confused her due to her own expectations and the expectations of the people around her.

“Are you okay?” Lloyd asked from behind her.

Anna looked behind her. “I think so,” she replied, smiling at him.

“Do you need me with you?”

“It’s sweet of you to offer but this is something I need to do alone.”

He nodded. “I understand. If you need me then I’ll be just up the hall so just call me.”

“Thank you.”

She turned back to the room, listening to Lloyd’s footsteps as he walked away before she focused on the room again. Anna wanted to look around properly but at the same time she felt like an interloper. It was as though the room didn’t want her in it because it had been expecting Charlotte back and she wasn’t Charlotte. Looking like Charlotte to everyone around her didn’t mean she felt like Charlotte. Finally Anna decided that she needed to make the room accept her.

Breathing deeply, she slowly walked around the room, looking at little things that caught her eye. There was a small wooden box on the chest of drawers; a couple of pictures stuck to the corner of the mirror; a chunk of amethyst on the bedside table; and a used incense burner on the top of one of the bookcases. Her eyes ran over the books on the first of three bookcases, the one with the incense burner on, to find that it was full of fiction books. A couple of storylines came back to her, which made her smile. She couldn’t remember the people who said they were her family but she could remember storylines. Strangely, knowing those storylines made her feel more real. Up until that point she hadn’t had any connection to the world around her and those books gave her one.

Still smiling Anna turned away from the bookcase. It was tempting to pick up a book and just pretend that nothing had happened but she knew she should finish looking around the room. She couldn’t bring herself to look in the chest of drawers or wardrobe so she decided to look in the drawer of the bedside table. There wasn’t much in it. At first she thought the only thing in there was two packs of strawberry incense sticks. When she took the incense sticks out of the drawer she found a small square card underneath them.

Thoughtfully she picked up the card. Anna stared at it, wondering why it had been put into the bedside table. On the side that had been facing her was a design that would have been put on the whole deck of cards. Once she’d turned it over her eyes were drawn first to the picture. It was a cartoony drawing of a tower that was being destroyed by lightning. She recognised it but she didn’t know why. At the bottom of the card were the words ‘The Tower’ and then there was a small sixteen in one corner.

“Why do I know this?” she asked herself, sighing.

Knowing that she knew something but not knowing why she knew it was probably the most irritating thing about having amnesia. Finally she put the card on the bedside table because staring at it wasn’t going to help. She took one of the incense sticks out of its packaging and went over to the incense burner to put it in. Then she realised she had no idea where something was to light the incense stick. She didn’t feel comfortable searching though all of the drawers in the room to find some matches or a lighter so she just sat back on the bed. Having the other unlit sticks next to her meant that she could smell strawberry without having to light the stick. It was a nice smell.

Anna turned to look at the other two bookcases in an attempt to take her mind off the card. There was an interesting collection of history books on the bottom shelf of one of them, mostly about the Tudors and the late years of the Plantagenets. All the other books were fiction. She’d been told about the college courses she was doing but there were no books for any of them on the shelves so she wondered where they were kept. As she glanced around the room once more, trying to work out where those books could possibly be, she realised what the card was.

“Tarot cards,” she said, looking back at the card. “Why was there a single tarot card in the drawer of the bedside table?” She bit her lip. “Or should the question be where is the rest of the deck?”

She picked it up again, running her finger around the edges of the card. The Tower was a card most people disliked getting in a reading and it was easy enough to understand why. It told of change that came from outside influences. Anna couldn’t help smiling at how apt it was. Her life, Charlotte’s life, had been almost entirely obliterated by the car accident she’d been in and it didn’t just affect her. It affected her whole family. Then there were the other people who had been in the car. One family had lost someone as the driver had been announced DOA and the girl who had been sitting behind the driver would probably never regain the use of her legs.

“Change,” Anna whispered, staring at the card with tears in her eyes.

Blinking the tears away she focused on the card itself. There was a reason that card had been in the drawer of the bedside table but she didn’t know how to find out what it was. Asking Lloyd was a possibility, even though their relationship had been strained before the crash, or someone who had been a friend. She just didn’t know who was the most likely person to know the answers to the questions she had about the card or if anyone would.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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I have linked to this from the trade poem "Kindred Dreams (http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/2875055.html)."