seymoure

Chapter 80

Intangibility

Cela had never longed so to feel the breeze in her hair.

But instead, she stood with her hair not blowing in what appeared to be a substantial summer wind.

The sun was going down, and the people had quit the outdoors in favor of the hearth and home. There was no one to speak to, no one whose attention she might try to attract.

She had been here for nearly four hours, and nothing that had happened would lead her to believe that she was anything but a ghost.

If she was a ghost, she thought, perhaps it was time to do a little haunting.

She did not walk; the soles of her feet did not touch land beneath them. Rather she floated inches above the floor, but she had not broken herself of the habit of walking and so made her feet repeat the expected motion.

As she moved into the heart of the town, she saw a house that was somehow familiar. Perhaps she had been there at some time in her childhood, or she had known someone who lived in a house like this. Whatever made the facade ring a bell in her memory, this was the place she was going to enter.

She moved to the door and continued in her process, hoping to pass through the wood, and found that this was not a problem. She was at once indoors.

The home was plain but clean. It was full of handmade items that sat on shelves throughout the room. These were simple, but the kind of thing that people can hold for great sentimental value.

A man with a broad white beard and a nose easily large enough to anchor it sat in a large overstuffed chair. He was reading a book that was nothing less than five pounds in weight and perhaps older than the man himself. That made the tome ancient at the very least, for the man was so far past his 60’s that he couldn’t have remembered them.

In the next room was the woman that Cela surmised was the wife. She was hefty but happy looking. She was pleased with the home work that she was doing, and with dinner nearly done, she was about to call her husband in to enjoy her offering of supper.

She came in to call her spouse, but stopped for a moment to straighten her hair in a mirror hung on the wall.

It was not a vain thing; she was just making herself presentable to the man she loved.

The mirror!

Knocking the glass from the wall would get some attention. Then they might be personally motivated to see her.

While the woman was seeing herself, Cela tried to pick up something and throw at the looking glass. But nothing she did would have any effect. Her fingers passed through everything she tried to grasp.

Cela was frustrated as she looked at the woman who finished primping and turned to walk in to see her mate.

But there was the surprise of surprises!

In the glass on the wall, after the woman had walked away, Cela saw herself.

She was without form or substance. No one could see or hear her, and she could touch nothing.

But she could see herself in the mirror.

Cela smiled.

Now she understood.