Perception

LV

Anna could not quite believe where she was as Eli turned onto the A2, it seemed like only minutes later. She grinned incredulously to herself as she stared out at some random sheep in one of the ubiquitous field next to the motorway, their coats already growing for the winter that would be coming soon enough.
"Something amusing?" Eli asked her, his eyes forward on the road.
"Nothing, really. Just where we are."
She could see his broad grin and she smiled.
"I love how you just see this as an adventure. It's a great way to look at life, I think."
He looked at her for a quick second before turning his head back.
"You think so? I've often thought I was too much of a vagrant. Like I need to be more serious, put down roots or something."
Wow. Eli. She felt a sense of warmth spreading through her at how easily he was opening up to her now. All of his natural charm and upbeat personality aside, she was well aware that this was not a side to him many people would be allowed to see.
"I don't know, Eli. You know what, somehow I feel like you might be just where you should be. I've often thought I was too cautious, too much in control of everything."
He nodded quietly. "You had reason to be, though."
She shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe it's who I am anyway, who could say? But I wouldn't mind if some of your adventurousness rubbed off on me, anyway."
He grinned, and she could just see the rude joke that was forming in his mind. It made her giggle, even if he held his tongue, and he grinned even wider now.


He was quiet for a long while, the Dutch landscape floating by outside the little car.
"Do you..." he started, clearly hesitating. "You have no recollections, of any life before foster care?"
She sighed deeply as she shook her head, and she closed her eyes for a moment.
Did she want to talk about this with him? God, she really wasn't sure about that at all. But then... the other stuff that she had talked about in the last days, that she had faced head on... it had brought her so much. So why not this?
Her voice was small and breathy as she started to talk.
"No. I don't know anything, really. Sometimes... sometimes I think I see an image of me, a very tiny me on a bed, on a pillow or something, with a lady in white nearby. It's a peaceful image, but I've never known for sure whether it was just wishful thinking. I was very young when I came into the system and no one has ever been able to tell me where I came from."
He didn't say anything, but she could feel his emotion anyway.
"You... you must have been so lonely." he said then.
And usually she would have said something like 'oh well, I'm okay now', some crap like that that wasn't necessarily a lie but also wasn't really the truth, but usually didn't seem to exist any more, not here, not in this small car heading south on a Dutch motorway.
"It was." she told him honestly. "It got better when I came over here to Amsterdam, when I met Sarah, when I made friends."
He smiled. "Sarah's awesome, isn't she?"
Anna nodded. "The awesomest."
The thought of her friend, in England, outside a stark hospital, waiting to hear news of her sick grandmother, pushed its way back into her brain and she flinched.
"I wonder who the lady in white was." Eli said pensively. "There... do you think there might be a connection to the feathers in your dream?"

The second he said those words it hit her like a flash of lightning, and she froze in her seat as her head raced.
Jeez, was there a connection, between that ancient image, that recollection, and the dream? It was certainly true that that feeling of peace... she only knew that feeling of peace in those two places. What the hey?
"Oh my God." she whispered softly.