A Rock in the River

8- Named

"We used to take sweet counsel together; within God's house we walked in the throng." – Psalm 55:14

__________________________________________

"Sammy?"

Fogged, distant. It sounded like words muffled through water- no. No. It was ink. And the ink pulled and pulled it away until he sunk to the bottom. He could feel his own heartbeat, first strong and wild then less and less and less.

"Sammy!"

Softer.

"Sammy!"

Softer even. Nearly gone.

"...Sammy...!"

Repeated in his mind until the voice so sweet to his ears belonged to no one.

But that was not the end but the middle, as it warped into something...familiar. It repeated just like that, again and again until something unrecognizable finished its transformation clear as day.

He didn't feel Francine shaking his shoulders, desperate and wide-eyed, but she stopped all the same as he finally moved his head, stared at her without seeing, and then dipped empty eyes down.

A splatter of in fell from his fingers as they found the thing he had thrown down so unceremoniously, so unkindly for what it was.

So, so much.

The bead trailed down the arch of his knuckles, severed where his fingernail should have been, and trailed down the temples of this old, forgotten pair of glasses, slowly dancing around the edge of lenses. It was cupped in the ridge- briefly- before sliding down and then down to the floor. The cracks broken into them swooped over all behind them not like they were simply in front of things but as if it changed the surroundings to be seen through the glass, and delicate lines were drawn over the speckles on Francine's jaw as he raised the object up and past her dumbfounded face.

It was almost sacred, the silence. Hollow, the feeling in the air. Soft, this suffocation, as he held his own glasses in front of gaping, empty sockets until he saw through his own filter again for this first time in a century.

As Francine held her hands awkwardly up and to the sides of her shoulders after removing them from her friend, she didn't see a halo some ways away lift up to see, too.

The change was almost audible, like a string of notes along a piano- light, delicate, new! Incidental music in Sammy's gasps as his expression widened and he made a small, sharp turn of the head towards where he could feel his fingers twingling.

They were musician's hands, ones that he not only knew but remembered used to be complete.

It was almost like Francine saw him inspecting his own body, almost as if she simply couldn't see what he did- that he was transformed. His body was still ink, but something in his soul felt a magic crawl over his body, and his mind he could see skin smooth with calloused fingertips from holding a baton for too long, a shirt barely stained with a inkwell gone rogue.

She watched his hands slap the side of his head, skewing the glasses beneath them as he clawed with not only a desperate but a needing touch, understanding his real face was no longer there but all the same feeling such abrupt, world-tipping reality that he now could recall he ever had it at all.

Small dents formed in his skull where his hands lay so tight, and teeth clenched behind lips that used to be human.

"Sammy?"

And the voice was the same as it was the first time, not his dear friend Susie but Francine.

"I..." he began, beyond belief he could even speak at all, he trembled so much, "I...remember."