Chapter One, Episode 65 - Nightmare - Situationally Theirs

Review, Edit and Update:

This is my first blog post since July 09, 2020.  I am glad to be back. 

For this piece, I've altered the format slightly by italicizing the dream sequence. Then, in the first paragraph I have restructured the last sentence by splitting it into two sentences for clarity. Further on, I added some detail about Emelina's original bedroom.

Nightmare

It was about history. Not the war of 1812 or the sinking of the Titanic. It was Emmie’s personal history. No, not even that. It really was about the Beaufort Estate history. A part of her home that Emmie just did not know. 

In the night, Emelina tossed and turned. Dreams of Samuel digging up the entire garden. Flinging plants everywhere. Martha and Cook laughed and laughed, while eating gigantic lemon meringue pies. Digby paced the watery spacious kitchen, ignoring the two women. He pulled a wagon filled with enormous ledgers, pages spilling out of them that he had to keep picking up, stuffing them back into one ledger or the other. Her long dead but still handsome husband, Michael, shook his finger at her and said something that Emmie couldn’t understand. Like an echo floating through thick fog, words stretched out like molten taffy. From the branch of the ancient redwood, Sarah stood on her swing, jumped high in the air and disappeared. Jeremy streaked through it all in his silver car. Brigitte wandered the ragged edges, sometimes there and sometimes not. In every scene there were men, women and children Emelina didn’t recognize. They drifted and swayed, like gray frayed curtains blowing in the wind.

Emelina sat bolt upright, panting. She wiped the perspiration from her face, her pyjamas soaked in sweat. She was cold, cold. She flung her covers back, grabbed the fleece blanket she kept on her chair and wrapped herself in it. The house was silent. She was the only one there - except maybe Sarah, the estate ghost. Emelina, slipped on the slippers Martha had made for her, and went out into the dining room. Clutching the blanket with one hand to keep it around her shoulders, she walked to the window and pushed aside the satiny blue curtain. Outlined in silver, Sarah was on her swing. The full moon made her more ghostly than ever. The moon threw a shadow from the great old tree toward the house. Sarah’s movements cast strange black shadows that moved back and forth, back and forth. Now that Emelina was awake and upright, she knew what she had to do. Clarity about the details would come later. The grandfather clock in the living room struck three. To return to her bed would not be comfortable, the sheets cold and damp from her nightmare. Pulling the slipping blanket more tightly around her, she walked back to her original bedroom that overlooked a tiny flower garden and climbed into a warm, dry bed. Pulling the duvet up to her chin, she turned over and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

**Author's note: Now that I have regular internet access, I hope to resume Situationally Theirs as of today, including my morning Updates and my evening posts of new episodes with Dez and Emmie. The timing of them may be a bit off as I am in a very 'moving' process. So many things topsy-turvey and to be relearned! I will now be writing from Saskatchewan.