~~~
The room was dim. She wasn’t always as aware as she felt today, but she was fairly certain that this her room, the doctor’s office, was always this dim. She often wondered why her office was kept this dark-- a small, paranoid part of her came to the conclusion that the doctor altered the lighting for each of her patients.
That the doctor had somehow observed her subconscious reactions to light levels, and determined she was most relaxed in the dark was absurd. Yet she wanted to believe it. She liked this doctor, she was fairly certain she liked her as well, and she considered the doctor to be fairly skilled in her field. Would it be so silly for such a skilled doctor to make a room darker, for her pale patient and her proclivities toward the dark.
The room wasn’t pitch black, of course. The wooden blinds were closed, blocking out the golden brilliance of a sun preparing to set-- what filtered through was a calm golden hue, light worth more money than she would ever see. That was all the illumination the room presently had-- all natural. There was an expensive ceiling fan, three blades, made from the same type of red-dark wood as the blinds over the windows-- she didn’t know the names of trees or what type of wood they made, but it pleased her to think it was cedar.
The cedar blinds covered half the office-- because windows made up half of the walls of the corner office-- it was probably one of the nicest rooms in the building, she thought, it had to be. The other half of the walls were bookshelves, with a pitiful door wedged in between-- with tomes familiar and unfamiliar to her. When she had first come in, she was completely silent, and she made a game of looking for books she recognized. She had been coming here for weeks now, and had long quit that game, of course... but she could still find Brave New World instinctually.
Next to the desk, also probably cedar, she thought-- Brave New World was placed lovingly next to the desk, within arm's reach of the woman as she imagined her doctor pouring over the audio and written notes of her patients, thinking of ways to help them. It was in between a college textbook on psychology and something by Elie Wiesel. Tragedy and the human condition, all fused in such a way that one couldn’t tell where the fiction ended. She supposed there was something deeply poetic about that.
The rest of the office had silver modern art fixtures scattered about in a way that one might call ‘feng shui’, they were all small sculptures, contrasting the golden carpet. She liked it-- of course, knowing the modern state of psychology, there was probably some radio technology or magic in those sculptures that emitted calming waves. No doubt, human doctors tending to mentally unstable chimeras, demons, and angels needed to take precautions.
She closed her eyes, running her fingers along the soft brown plush of the couch. The empty chair across from her was a little frustrating? Where was she? The woman, barely a woman, of 10 and 9 years, closed her eyes.
Footsteps.
Her ears perked as she heard the familiar clop of the doctor’s loafers. Her eyes were open and looking for the face of her therapist, in anticipation of where it would be, as the door was opened by the woman, clearly in a rush to get to the room.
“Elenei?” The doctor-- her therapist, Dr. Plath said, out of breath, “I’m so sorry I was late-- usually those quarterly reviews only last half an hour or so!”
“That’s okay.” Mel tried, and failed, to give a smile of reassurance to the woman, “It wasn’t too long,” Dr. Plath, for her part, reciprocated with a large smile of her own.
Mel took a moment to observe the woman, occupied with hanging up her coat and fishing the recorder from it’s oversized pockets. Dr. Plath couldn’t have been a day over 50-- but either bad genetics, stress, or perhaps both, had aged her prematurely. She looked like the kindliest grandmother a little girl could wish for-- and while it was true, she was kind, one could see that kindness etched into the laugh lines of her face, but yet she spoke with youth. At heart Dr. Plath was a young woman, and still dressed in exposing blouses and pencil skirts to show it.
“Oh, you don’t have to lie to spare my feelings, Elenei!” She said, practically sprinting from her desk with her notepad to her seat, across the couch. “We’ll just extend your session 30 minutes to make up for it, okay?”
“Mel.”
“I’m sorry?” Sitting now, the older woman crossed her legs, before realizing her mistake, in using a full name. “Oh, of course! I’m sorry Mel, it’s been a bit of a day.”
Mel gave a slight nod to the doctor, clasping her hands together in her lap. She didn’t break eye contact-- the good doctor’s eyes were a beautiful turquoise, hidden behind thick, black glasses and accented with crow’s feet-- she twitched before Mel blinked. She broke the silence, “Something to with your meeting?”
Dr. Plath nodded, “Yeah…” Her usually bright voice wavered a little, “Apparently I’m supposed to be giving,” She mockingly altered her voice and made air quotations with her fingers, “more detailed reports--pffft,” She blew a raspberry, “What a load! How would I even do that without breaking privilege!?”
“I could talk to them?” Mel chimed back, with mild emotion, “Maybe a patient testimony could get them off your back?” She tilted her head.
“No…” Dr. Plath adjusted her glasses, Mel stretched out her wing, apparently remedying a cramp, the resulting gust knocked them a bit off their center. She understood there to be a subtext beneath the girl’s words-- one she might not have even been aware of herself-- when she said
‘talk’ she meant
‘intimidate’. It was a problem resulting from compromised empathy that the doctor had been trying to get her patient to acknowledge. She wasn’t like her father, Elenei was a good person at heart-- but Dr. Plath was unsure the girl could even think of things as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’
So, the healing process was taking some time!
“No,” Dr. Plath repeated. “I think we’ve talked enough about me, anyway! We’re here for you…” She slipped through some pages in her yellow note pad, stopping once a certain date caught her eye. “Now…” she began, “Our last few sessions have mostly been freeform conversation… but for today, I’d like to try something a little different, if that’s okay?” She waited for the tilted nod before continuing, “Today, I want to talk about you-- who Mel Kiều really is. Who you see yourself as, and as much of your past as you’re comfortable telling me. I can talk you through all of this, and remember, it doesn’t all have to come out today, and we can stop if you feel you need to, it’s okay. We can go at your own pace… but, does this sound like something you’d like to try?”
Mel leaned back against the plush couch, chewing on what that would all entail for a moment, and then she spoke, as if she hadn’t thought about it at all, “Sure thing, Doctor. How do we start?”
She smiled with glee at this, “Just tell me about yourself, Mel! That’s the best part… let’s start with your childhood, as far back as you can remember.”
“Well,” Mel shifted in her seat, “I don’t remember much growing up…”
“Thanks okay!” Dr. Plath smiled encouragingly, Mel couldn’t help but find it slightly unnerving.
She closed her eyes and sighed, “Okay.” Her eyes opened, “I don’t remember my mother-- my Father said she wasn’t anything more than a one night stand, but… I don’t know.”
The doctor slashed something on her notepad, “What don’t you know?”
“Well, Mya’s told me a little about her, and, I don’t know,” Mel’s hands moved uncomfortable, twiddling her thumbs, “I don’t think she was a hooker or anything, it sounded like she was a smart lady, I think my father may have really fancied her.”
“And do you think that has something to do with how he treats you?”
“Absolutely not.” Mel shot back, “He might not love me, but I know him well enough to know that hating me would be a waste. LIke… He doesn’t…”
“He doesn’t…?” The doctor egged her on.
“He doesn’t… see
anyone as you or I see them, I think, you know? But he likes usefulness, and I know I’m useful to him. So I know he likes me, he’s just kind of a cold asshole about everything.”
“Language.”
Mel’s eyes shot downward, “Right… Sorry, doctor.”
“You’re fine! Just keep a closer watch on it later, okay?” Dr. Plath knew of Elenei’s father. He was practically famous-- although not for the reason’s his daughter were.
Infamy was a better word, in Loom, at least. A cunning, shrewd politician with a reputation for being ruthless on crime-- Ambassador to several European city-states-- a Loom native with a foreign daughter, at least, as foreign as Monaco was to Loom. “So, back to you! You never knew your mother?”
“No, she died when I was very young.” Mel sighed, “My father had a man take care of me for much of my younger life.”
“Oh?”
“My
giáo sư,” she corrected herself.
“I’m sorry…” Dr. Plath paused, “Giáo sư?”
“He was…” Mel took a second, searching her thoughts for the right words in English, “My teacher, my mentor. My master of the arts.”
“Master…” The doctor repeated the word to herself slowly, before asking her follow up question, “So you lived with the man who home-schooled you…?”
“Yes. We lived on a houseboat, he taught me what I needed to know about the world, and…,” The slight young woman blushed lightly, “I’m ashamed to say this, but he taught me more ways to fight than I can remember.”
Dr. Plath had to remind herself how important combat was to Elenei-- from what she’d gathered from their earlier conversations, her father had practically had her raised as a kind of urban guerilla. She simply nodded, “Would you say he, your giáo sư, was he like a parental figure to you?”
Mel’s eyes clouded at this, “No.”
She’d struck a nerve, “I’m sorry, Mel.” Immediately backtracking, she tried to change the focus, “Were they pleasant memories, at least?”
“I think so…” the clouds left her eyes, “I loved living on the sea, even if we never sailed anywhere...”
“That’s good!” Dr. Plath clasped her hands together, “So-- born in Monaco, raised on a houseboat by a mystery martial arts master-- your life is like a fantasy spy novel!”
“I guess so…” Mel gave a mirthless chuckle, “Then this happened…” She flexed her wing, extending it fully and having to curve it upward as it came against a wall-- there was a certain beauty to be found in the lopsided image of one winged girl, and her wing, so black it reflected the sunlight like glitter, a golden, stygian ebony.
"Your accident...?” Dr. Plath, for her part, had never prodded much about that-- she specialized in angels, she knew wings were a sore subject for many-- she figured she’d let her bring it up, black wings were one thing, but losing one was another matter entirely.
Relaxing her wing, Mel shook her head to clear her bangs from her eyes, “Well, I had to grow the wings first, which was the real accident.”
Dr. Plath’s eyes went wide, “Wh- wait, I’m sorry, what?”
Mel shrugged, “When I was 10, I got sick-- like, it wasn’t something the doctors had ever seen before, my blood had become black... I became blind, my skin burned in sunlight… and the swelling…”
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”
“No, I’m alright.” Mel motioned to where her old wing had been, “Long story short, my giáo sư contaced my father to resolve it. My father knew people, better people than the doctors, and although I’m certain he had been paying for every aspect of my life thus far, I suppose he figured this was the time to truly make his presence known to me. So he did. No hugs, no fuss-- he presented himself, and explained to me what he’d be doing to save me, and our relationship going forward.”
“It sounds very cold.”
“I guess you could say that…” Mel tilted her head, “But in my eyes, then and now, he was my Knight in shining armour… still, I won’t pretend I don’t miss being human…”
“The procedure to cure you made you… an Angel? A kind of Chimera?” Dr. Plath said in disbelief.
“I didn’t really understand everything he told me, but basically Angels have a better natural resistance to disease-- his theory was that he could fill my body with the essence of weak Angels over the course of several weeks, they could become a type of composite with my soul, and the process of…” Mel looked toward the ceiling, trying to recall a name, “Temporary something.”
“Temporary willing possession.” Dr. Plath shot out.
“That! Yeah.” Mel nodded, “I don’t know the hows, but it worked… I lost the black blood, and grew some black wings. I ended up losing my left one in a sparring match a few years later. At the time, I hated it-- I had to learn everything all over again, how to fight with my lighter body, how to fly… I thought I would be happy if they got cut off or something… but…”
“The pain never goes away.” Dr. Plath added, in a quiet tone.
“Sometimes at night, I can’t sleep because of how loud it feels like my soul is crying out for it.” Mel seemed to develop bags under her eyes as she spoke of it, “It never goes away-- I don’t ever want to lose the other one, I’m not sure I could handle it.”
Plath quickly changed the subject, “Besides! Being an angel helped you save the Prince of Monaco-- even with the one wing, no human could have survived that fall!”
Mel shrugged, “I guess, I don’t know… Like I wasn’t…” She looked away, “I was just in the right place at the right time-- I would have tried to save him, wing or not.”
She picked up on the hint, “Okay, Melly! One more question, if you’ll indulge me, Mel! This one is more abstract, but for my notes, I’d like to know… What makes you feel alive?”
Mel thought on the question for a moment. “Fighting… Sex… Flying… The ocean…” She paused, before a light came to her eyes, and Dr. Plath could swear she saw an upward curve in the young woman’s mouth, “Coffee, as black as my wings and as sweet as candy… somewhere secluded in an empty 24/7 breakfast diner at midnight.”
“That’s good.” Dr. Plath gave a small smile at this, “That’s really good Mel, I want you to think of that coffee when the pain rears it’s ugly head in, okay?”
Mel nodded.
“Okay, now, how about we do some breathing exercises?”
~~~
kapuchu
