Sacred Vow – Chapter 14

Ian stood motionless, lost in his memory until Djalma returned with tea and food, and broke into his thoughts.

“So your recent visit was something troublesome?”  Djalma asked.

Ian moved slowly toward the couch.  “Yes I had a visit with a manifestation of Katerina with a baby.  It was really painful.  Someone was taking the baby away from her.”

Just recalling it drew Ian’s consciousness back to that place.  “I couldn’t help her, and I was getting angry and panicked.  I think my strong emotions about the situation eventually forced me out of that alternate life.”

Djalma seemed to have some idea why Ian was stumbling over his words.  “You’re not completely disengaged from that place yet, are you?”

The question didn’t make much sense to Ian.  He took the residual emotions that he felt to be no more than anyone else would feel after a traumatic experience.  Of course he would never be the same afterwards!  He had been utterly useless in saving someone he cared about from harm.  More than someone he cared about!  Someone he was deeply connected to.

“Please tell me how the visit ended, Ian.”

“I could do nothing but watch as they took the baby from her. Katerina was suffering greatly.”

Djalma was very patient.  He seemed to have some idea of his friend’s need to take time going through his recounting of the event.

“My rage became so intense,” Ian said, “that I found myself back on this couch just when Katerina was about to be harmed.  I got bounced out of that reality.  One moment I was struggling to help her and the next, I could only see the light of my study coming through my eyes.

“The return was painful, as though I physically collided with this location, and sort of rebounded, feeling not quite in this world, not fully out of it.”

Ian became silent periodically.  At each delay, Djalma would wait for a time and then call on Ian to continue.  It was a good thing, because otherwise, Ian would become completely mired in the memory of that moment.

“I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I had an unfamiliar sensory experience.  Instinct told me that this particular sensation was the doorway back to the place I had just left.  I felt like I was still in the recoil of the returning bounce, and so I directed all my attention and emotion at the doorway.”