Jocelyn’s mind was stuck in a loop, and no matter how hard she tried to break herself out of it, she could do little more than watch the scene play over and over. She wanted to speak out and tell Aidan that everything was fine, that he could take Tora home and then drive her back to their house, but she could not speak. She could hear perfectly fine. She listened as Tora and Aidan spoke about her as if she was not even there, which annoyed her to no end, but from their perspective, she might as well have not been seated in the car. Her mind was a thousand miles away, and unbeknownst to her, some period of time in the future. Tora would easily recognize the woman in the vision, but to Jocelyn she could not possibly be real. The pointed ears, the perfect complexion, and the tall, graceful form was one she had seen in movies, but was impossible to view in the real world. It was a daydream, or so Jocelyn had convinced herself, but it was one that she could not wake herself up from. 

The scene would not change until she finally sketched it onto paper, and even then she would only receive a glimpse of a few moments past what she was witnessing now. She wasn’t sure exactly why she was daydreaming about mythical beings, but it wasn’t uncommon for her to do so. She had quite a few drawings stashed away with things other than elves. There was some warped looking creature, with long ears and strange curved noses that walked around carrying pots, pans, and dynamite on black leather belts that held up their tidy linen pants. They carried pickaxes and shovels in their hands, and spoke in weird squeaking gibberish that took her some time to translate. Along with the mysterious creatures, there were tiny little people, who she assumed was a clan of midgets. They were as strange as the creatures, but they at least looked to be human. She believed that she had an overactive imagination, that translated stories of roleplaying games her classmates played into visions of what the world would be like if such creatures existed. The woman in her vision this time around was a familiar face, but that did not make her presence any less peculiar.

Aidan sped off for their home, unaware that his sister was mentally yelling at him. He would have ignored her even if she could get her message across. He felt the need to get her home and away from any risk of possibly interrupting her trance and causing irreversible damage to her fragile state of mind. Tora would have to be clued into Jocelyn’s background despite how his sister might feel about it, and Aidan could only hope the boy would understand the tragic life Jocelyn had lived, and how it had affected her. She was fragile, no matter how much she tried to deny it. No one could live with the fact that their mother believed they were a demon and attempted to kill them and remain untouched by it in some small way. She could not form connections to people, and Aidan believed it was because of their mother’s attack, and the fact that even before that, their mother had made Jocelyn feel completely unwanted. He was nearly eight years older than his sister, and had watched as their mother treated her like a monster, always yelling and screaming at even the smallest things that Jocelyn did. She would slap his sister’s hands even when she was little more than a baby, and while he hadn’t witnessed it first hand, Aidan suspected that Jocelyn had suffered quite a bit of abuse at their mother’s hands when he was not around.

Pulling into the driveway of their house, Aidan parked the car but made no move to rush Jocelyn out. Glancing into the backseat at Tora, he flashed a friendly smile that did not reach his eyes. “Sorry about this. It happens every once in a while, and we never know when it’s going to occur. So far it’s only happened while we’re at home, but there’s been a few times we’ve had to rush her back to the house.” Aidan didn’t give Tora a chance to respond, instantly exiting the car after giving a quick explanation. He circled around to the passenger’s seat, gently pulling his sister out from the vehicle and guiding her by the hand to the house. “Do you mind closing the car up for me? I’m going to get her inside. You can just walk right in. My aunt’s not home so you don’t have to worry about anyone snapping at you.” He wasted no more time getting Jocelyn inside, ushering her straight to her room and to her desk. He did not leave until his sister had a pencil in her hand, and a piece of paper resting in front of her. Once he heard the soft scratching of the lead against the page, he left her room but kept the door wide open in case she snapped out of her daze early. He stood in the hallway for several long moments, waiting to see if Tora would decide to check up on Jocelyn or if he was content to linger downstairs and give his sister some space to do her thing.