Weakly Florian’s hands pulled away from his mouth, the pressure in his chest finally subsiding.
“What the fuck is w-wrong with you?” he forced out between shuddering breaths, wiping his tear-streaked face.
“I took all those feelings out of you, for now,” she said, holding up the threads. “So that when we begin, you can focus, and discern what are your true memories and what aren’t.”
Frustrating as it was, Florian did somehow feel more... not quite calm, but not entirely numb. There wasquietin his mind—he hadn’t realized just how loud and anxious and constant the noise in his head had been since his father died. It was exactly as she described: the emotions that she had drawn out with her magic were simply gone. When he thought about them, he was distantly aware that he had felt angry, and guilty, and scared; but it was like someone else was feeling it. It was almost a relief, but distantly he thought that he should be angry at her for doing this to him.
“Take some time to center yourself,” she continued, moving to sit down despite the lack of visible ground beneath them. “We’re in no rush. When you’re ready to begin, let me know.”
Her eyes closed. Florian watched her suspiciously for a long moment, but she kept the bunch of softly glowing threads loosely grasped in her hand. Her eyes remained shut, her breathing even. He wondered if she was sleeping, or meditating, or just waiting.
Eventually, Florian awkwardly moved into a sitting position as well, then tentatively laid down. It was strange, feeling some force on his back that kept him in the same position; but there was no shadow beneath him, and no visible sign of anything other than the blank white background that stretched in every direction.
With his hands pressed to his eyes, Florian forced himself to breathe slow and deep. While Elodie seemed to have taken the most distressing of his emotions out of him, his heart still thudded with stress and resentment. His face felt hot to the touch—he could only imagine how red with embarrassment he must have been.
But… There was a certain relief to having spoken aloud everything that he’d been trying to keep down for the past several weeks, much as he hated to admit it. Everything had felt so big and unmanageable, but now that he had said it all aloud, it felt smaller somehow. At least, some of it did.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there on his back, hands over his eyes and breathing evenly. He might have fallen asleep; he was exhausted and sore, after all. Eventually he pulled his hands away, wincing in the bright white light as he slowly sat back up. He felt not exactly well-rested, but at least not as tired as he had been.
“Okay,” he said softly, looking down at his hands with half-lidded eyes. His voice was still hoarse. “I think I’m ready now.”
“Good,” Elodie replied. When he glanced up at her, she was standing, and her eyes were open as if she’d been watching him the whole time.
She gestured for him to stand, so he rose to meet her. When she offered him her hands again, he hesitated before gingerly placing his hands into her palms—the ball of his emotions was no longer in her grasp. Distantly he wondered where she was keeping it, or if it were gone forever. He felt like he should be nervous about it, but everything from his collarbones to his stomach felt empty, the place where he would normally feel anxiety simply hollow instead.
“Now,” she continued, pulling him from his thoughts. “I want you to focus. Use your magic to draw out the memories of the spirit attached to you.”
“How?” he asked, frowning, but she only shook her head.
“That part is up to you,” she said. “It will come naturally to you. Maybe you’ll force it to reveal itself, or coax it into showing you. Old magic is intuitive, more instinct than anything else. It is a primal force of nature, so to wield it is primal as well. Channel it through yourself, and it will do what you want.”
Florian sighed. That didn’t really help, but he closed his eyes anyway and tried to concentrate on the flash of memory that he had of Soleil, of the strange sadness that wasn’t his own yet made him cry in grief, what felt like a lifetime ago in his father’s study in the Winter Court. He remembered, and reached out with his magic. Instead of allowing it to flow through him and out through his words, Florian let it sit, feeling the pressure mount in his chest like a held breath.
“Who are you?” he heard himself whisper, and behind his eyelids a clear image erupted.
He was no longer standing across from Elodie in the liminal space that she had created. Now he was standing in a forest, watching a faerie circle in the ground, waiting.
“I see something,” he said, his voice sounding impossibly faraway. “I’m in the woods. I’m waiting for her.”
“Keep following that thread,” Elodie’s voice came, muffled and distorted, as if he were underwater.
Florian nodded, and felt himself sigh—no, not himself, the body he was inhabiting. He knew she wasn’t going to come, not today. The sun was already setting. She never came past sunset. He turned to go. He would come back again tomorrow.
