Souvent me Souviens (Work in Progress)

Prelude

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk

- John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

     Polly never could quite think what compelled her to attend St. Margaret's College, even as she was in the midst of aspiring to that very end. Her mum, Ivy, was scornful of this prospect. In fact, a lot of people Polly knew were, except for Fiona Perks. She passed through Oxbridge entrance with Fiona like a breeze through a window - not that it was easy, more in the way that a breeze is formless and lost - but she managed it. Polly could almost believe at times that she had wandered into St. Margaret's by mistake, and then it always turned out she was supposed to be there for some reason. Polly would then think she was rather silly for having those thoughts. Still, she could never remember the reason for studying at Oxford in the first place, only that there was a reason she was meant to go, but the reason was stuck some place in Polly's mind where she was not allowed to look.

     Things happened to Polly, things that no one could seem to wrap their heads around. For instance: Polly was a reader. That isn't the strange part, as she was a precocious girl. Polly would get book after book from the library, and gifts of books at Christmas. However, there were some books - many books - that came from nowhere at all. They would come from people who didn't exist, and it did Polly no good explaining this. She tried to tell Ivy, but of course Ivy thought it was Polly's father Reg sending the books; and when Polly went on to explain that it couldn't be Reg, Ivy concluded that Polly bought the books herself and was pretending they were from someone else. Ivy called these someones 'Mr. Nobodies'. Polly stopped trying to explain. It became an accepted fact to Polly that things just happened to her, for reasons she was not allowed to remember. Oxford happened to her, Sebastian Leroy happened to her, and all Polly could do was go through the motions until the next thing happened.

     It was before the start of Polly's second year of college, as she was skimming through one of her nowhere books, that the next thing happened: she remembered.