//------------------------------// // Six: The Angel Cabinet // Story: Close Enough to Touch: The Lyra Account // by LysanderasD //------------------------------// Six: The Angel Cabinet I shut the outer door before the screen door could close, but I could hear it thud against the doorframe anyway. It needed to be repaired. But later. For now I just needed to lean back against the door and take a breather... What I noticed first was not, surprisingly, that I had hands, or even that I was back up to my normal five-and-a-half foot height. What I noticed first is that I was wearing a tie. Now let me first clarify that I like bowties. Bowties are cool. It’s just long ties that I really can’t stand. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who looked in a mirror when I was putting on one and wondered why in the world something like that ever caught on. It’s like a rope that happens to be broader at one end. You tie it around your neck and waltz around with the thing plastered across the front of your shirt all day. Why? At what point in history did someone stand up and think “Yes, ties are things that should catch on!” They’re uncomfortable and I’ve never thought of them as anything but silly. Feel free to think whatever you like. I don’t like them. So the fact that I was wearing one now bored itself quite suddenly into my brain and I pushed myself away from the door and looked down. From the look of things, I was all dressed for church--brown dress shoes, khaki dress pants, plain white dress shirt, and--this did not escape me--a mint green long tie, a color I distinctly remembered not owning. “Hate ties,” I muttered, pulling awkwardly at the length of fabric. I tried to undo the knot, but I couldn’t seem to maintain a grip on it. Apparently it was not going anywhere. I struggled with it for another moment anyway, before giving up with a sigh and looking up. My jaw dropped. The last time I’d been here, I’d been much smaller. The staircase in front of me wasn’t nearly as steep as I recall it being, nor was it as tall. There was a fixture on the wall next to me used to hold keys and such, and it was empty, now, of course. To my right, the old dining room, complete with the kitchen table that we never sat at, loaded with debris and paperwork that was never done. I caught a glimpse of the kitchen, which had never been perfectly clean, with one of the cupboards open and full of styrofoam cups, because they didn’t need washing. I had to close my eyes and lean back against the door. I felt like I was shaking just as bad now as I had been just a... few... minutes... ago... In the car. Cass’ car. Not in my mother’s house. That I hadn’t seen since I was nine. This had to be a dream. “Hey! You’re here! Good, I was wondering how long I’d have to wait.” I opened my eyes again. The voice was... “I mean eventually it wouldn’t matter, if the little bits of crossover we’ve already had are any indication.” ...coming from the living room. I stepped forward and turned into the long hallway. This had always been my least favorite part of the house, because even as a kid it had seemed to me to be terribly narrow, and now, as an adult, it actually was. “Although this is a really nice place. Your mom used to live here, huh? And so did you.” The only light came from the massive window in the living room on the far side. The pictures lining the walls were exactly the same, though, pictures of me at one year old and at three (“Travis’ first pair of glasses!”; unconsciously I pushed mine back up my nose) and at five and at seven and... “Before she... oh, right. Sorry. Anyway, yeah, hi!” Like everything else in the house, the living room seemed much smaller. The entertainment center on one wall had dwarfed me as a child, but now I was nearly as tall as it. The TV, a big and massive mid-nineties thing, seemed clunky and awkward and out of date, which I suppose it was. On the wall beside me was the old angel cabinet, beautiful and clean and properly maintained as it should have been, with all of Mom’s angel figurines positioned just so. And on the wall opposite the entertainment center was the couch. And on the couch, sitting like a perfectly normal pony, was Lyra Heartstrings. “So!” She started talking again as soon as I made eye contact with her. I had the strangest sensation as she did so; you know how your voice always sounds different to yourself? It was like that. I knew what Lyra’s voice sounded like... when it was my voice. But now it wasn’t, and the difference was a little unsettling. “Good to finally actually meet you, Travis, you’ve been busy over the past couple of hours and I think at first I was a little intimidated so I wouldn’t have been much help anyway. I’m Lyra Heartstrings! But you know that already, hahaha.” “You--” “I hope you don’t mind that I’ve been cheating a little with the magic--helping you out and such. I mean it really isn’t as simple as it seems. And that teleport there just a little bit ago? Mighty dangerous. But I don’t blame you for doing that. Ahahah, all those kids around, touching and prodding and poking and eugh--” She stopped talking long enough to shudder. I opened my mouth to interject and she immediately took off again. “Anyway yeah I might have been helping you out a little bit as far as the magic goes, although you’ve got Levitation down pat, which, kudos, by the way, it’s a very simple spell but you had pretty much no instruction and you did it! So good job. Speaking of good jobs, you’ve got really good taste in friends and your friends have really good taste in salads. Just saying.” “Lyr--” “Also I’ve done some digging and I’m impressed, actually, you’ve got a good mind for details. I like that. I don’t have a very good mind for details. But it did help you remember that I went to Celestia’s School! It wasn’t that great, by the way, but that’s a story for another time. Anyway, what I mean to say is, I’m not entirely sure why I ended up in your mind but I think there were probably worse choices and so I’m glad I ended up with you.” “Lyra!” I snapped. She sat up a little straighter. “Yeah?” “I...” But the thing she’d just said finally caught up to me. “You don’t know why you ended up in my head?” “Nope! But I do know I’m not the only one that’s popped up, I guess. That’s good. It’d be weird if I were the only pony that showed up in a human’s head, hahaha, I mean, you’d probably think you were crazy if it weren’t for the whole body thing, right? Good job on that, too, by the way--” Honestly, all she needed was a baseball cap and a Menger sponge and I could have mistaken her for Pokémon’s N--if less creepy and more enthusiastic. When I’d first come down to the south from the Midwest, my grandparents had cautioned me that I was a rapid speaker, and that I needed to slow down or I’d just confuse the people I spoke to. I did slow down, some, but when I did speak I was still a very rapid, precise talker. I may as well have been a metaphorical tortoise to Lyra’s hare, though: I could barely follow how quickly she speaks. I raised a hand to tell her to pause. This time she did so, but I think it was because I caught her when she was breathing in. I relished the silence for a moment. “Does anyone ever...” I coughed. “I mean this in the politest possible way, but has anyone ever...” “Told me I talk a lot?” She blushed and looked away. “Yeah. All the time. It doesn’t help. I mean I know I do it and--ulp!” She pressed a hoof to her own muzzle. “Sorry. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.” I moved over to the couch and took a seat. I was closer to the window, on the opposite side of the couch, and I saw Lyra slide away from me slightly as I sat and cradled my forehead in my hands, lost in thought. “So...” Lyra said eventually. “If you haven’t guessed yet, this is a dream. But it’s a good dream because it lets you and I talk on more or less equal hoofing. Footing, I guess, for you. That reminds me, why--” She stopped herself again. “Sorry.” “So you have no idea why this happened,” I asked once more, just for clarification. “No idea,” she answered, sounding far too cheerful  to be sincere. An uncomfortable silence fell between us. I noticed for the first time that the blinds on the window were drawn shut, and the unmistakable light of sunset was peeking through the slats. Something about that bothered me, and I reached a hand out to draw a finger across the blinds. No dust. Meticulously clean. Mom wasn’t a neat freak, and neither was I... Things got dusty, things got messy, especially with a parakeet and a cockatiel flying around the house... Two things struck me at once. The first was a feeling of confusion as I finally resolved what bothered me about the blinds: I couldn’t for the life of me remember if this side of the house faced west. The second was a pressure under my leg, as though I was sitting on something. I stood up and took a look at the couch. It happened when I was six. It isn’t my earliest memory, but it is probably the clearest from that time of my life. It was Christmas Eve, and I, enthusiastic and impatient child that I was, had demanded to sleep on the couch in the living room so that I could wake up and catch Santa in the act. Mom had admonished me that Santa was very sneaky and he’d know when it was safe to come in. Still, I stayed up as late as I could that evening, excited and certain I’d catch old Saint Nick red-handed. Mom’s pet cockatiel--I forget his name, now, and that’s a little stab of sadness--kept me company. The little guy loved me, I distinctly remember that; he’d always land on my head or my shoulder when I sat still long enough and I loved feeding him treats. I’d fallen asleep that night with him on the arm of the couch, by my head, and I’d woken with a small, stiff, hard pressure under my shoulder... “And the one she got after that hated you,” said Lyra sympathetically. “Yeah. It was like... karma...” I blinked and looked up at her. She started and averted her eyes. “How did you know that?” Her ears went flat. “How did you know this was my mom’s house? How did you know about the cockatiel--or anything?” This time the silence was more than uncomfortable. It was tense. I frowned and stood up, and she shrank away. “I did some digging, okay? I did some looking. Because what was I supposed to do? You wake up in my body and I wake up in your head. You did some learning. So did I!” It was meant to sound defensive, but what really got me was that Lyra sounded scared. I realized I’d balled my hands into fists. I took a deep breath and relaxed, and slowly sat back down down on the carpet, legs crossed, making myself small. This seemed to encourage her, and she uncurled from her cower. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think to ask. I wasn’t sure I could ask. I mean it’s not like you were doing much better with...” She lifted a hoof and shook it in my general direction. I nodded in understanding. It didn’t help me feel better, but it was the truth. “I’ll stay out from now on. I promise. I mean as much as I can.” She waved a hoof around, indicating the setting. “I mean I’m already this far and I’m not sure I can go back.” I just nodded, rubbing my forehead. “So you’ve gotten into my memory,” I said finally, looking up at her. She smiled back, apologetically. “Yeah. Kind of couldn’t help it.” “And I’ve gotten into yours,” I pointed out. “... A little, yes.” Her grin faltered just slightly. I left the question unsaid, and the longer the silence stretched the thinner Lyra’s smile grew until it finally tumbled into a grimace; it settled somewhere between fearful and irritated. “I have something to admit,” she said, and opens her mouth to add, “ Cass swore, and a horn blared beside her car. I jerked awake in the backseat, and suffered a strange and very uncomfortable sensation of numbness which I realized wasn’t numbness at all; it was because ponies don’t have hands and feet, they have hooves. “Sorry,” she mumbled to me. “I was daydreaming.” I tried to say something in return but suddenly became aware of how dry my mouth was, as well as the massive pillow that had somehow worked its way inside. How did...? “How did you manage that?” she asked for me, breaking into laughter. I gestured at her to tell her to keep her eyes on the road, and from the rear-view mirror I saw her eyes snap forward again, although she was still giggling. It took me a moment to get the pillow out of my mouth, and I shook my head afterward, disoriented. “I wish I’d seen you do that. It would have been hilarious.” “Yeah, sure.” I rolled my eyes. “Where are we?” “You were out for a good while, I think. It’s nearly five. You ready to stop for somethin’ to eat? I am.” She paused. “That and I think we should find a place to set up camp. We just passed Greensboro and it’ll be a bit before Durham yet but there’s not a lot between there and, like, the middle of Virginia.” Four hours? I’d been asleep for four hours and only dreamed what felt like the span of a few minutes? Dreams are weird, said Lyra’s voice in my head. Oh hey, did you hear me? I hadn’t said anything, but the surprise in my mind must have been enough. Cool, that’s cool. I’ll try not to keep talking too much, like I promised. But neat, cool, we can talk now. I mean only if you want to. I won’t push. I mean you’ve got a lot on your mind and stuff and “Sure, whatever works,” I said quickly, and probably more loudly than I needed to. I can see Cass’s eyes snapped to me in surprise. “You okay?” “Just fine.” I put on my best smile. She giggled again. “Aw, I can’t question you when you’re that cute.” I was aware of the bizarre sensation not only of my blush, but Lyra’s own flushed embarrassment. “So I had a thought,” she added, eyes still out front. “What if we just slept in the car? I mean it’s not that cold out yet, and besides, you’re probably nice and warm. It’s just a thought, since, well, hotels can be expensive.” My expression twisted into one of shocked surprise, while internally Lyra proceeded to burst into ashamed flame. “Uh, what?” She didn’t seem to notice the shock in my voice. “What, bad idea?” No! No no no. Lyra’s voice was insistent. “No, I don’t... think that’s a good idea.” She looked genuinely disappointed. I looked around desperately--as if there were anything in the vehicle that might provide me with an excuse. My eyes lit on my bag, however, and suddenly and quite unexpectedly an idea bloomed. “Not tonight,” I amended, much to Lyra’s frustration. “No, there’s an idea I’ve got, but I’ll need an internet connection. I can pay for at least one night.” “Fiiiine.” She looked at her phone. “We’ll be pulling in in a little bit. We’d already be there, but there was an accident a ways back so we held pretty still for a bit. You think there are any ponies in Durham, Trav?” I chuckled. “It’d be nice.” A silence fell, although it’s not uncomfortable. I turned to stare out the window. It’d be nice, Lyra added, and for the first time, she sounded lonely.