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  “I normally would have told you, but then you w-would have had so many reasons not to go through – ”

  “So – you’re a dick out of – convenience. Is that what I’m – getting here?”

  “No, I – no, don’t – ! I told a version of you about it before! I’ve told many versions of you!”

  “Oh-ho! A version of me! So – obviously – that makes it okay, does it?”

  It’s quiet for many more moments as I sink in a bent position, trying to regain breath I had not known I had to lose, trying to make sense of words that I had been too busy to combat away that I did not dissect, as a boy I have never known with wide eyes watches me.

  “There’s sound here,” he whispers, as if his voice has not worked for a very, very long time. As if it’s rusted over and died within the chasms of his flesh throat.

  Half-bent over myself, I attempt to straighten, to look at him critically, but I do not speak yet.

  “There’s sound here,” he repeats. “There wasn’t sound on the other side. It was quiet. I was... quiet.”

  “I thought I – had heard you – when I was walking,” I murmur between gasps.

  “You didn’t. It was quiet there. There’s sound here.”

  I nod, attempting to take him in as I breathe heavily through my nose. He’s chosen a white shirt and loose fitting denim jeans, just as I’ve chosen my denim top and white dress. He has hair as light as mine, though darkened slightly with the slickness of water, and a face that is spaced just as mine is.

  “There’s sound here,” he repeats.

  “You said that – already.” The voice that had been cutting towards Thomas is suddenly silky towards a person who is equally my stranger. I don’t know why my voice softens in response of him. Perhaps I am trying to comfort him – to help him, in a manner of speaking – but while dealing with him, something in my mind feels as if I’m dealing with fine china. As if he is precious, but can be shattered upon the slightest slip.

  “I know. But – there’s – ”

  I cut him off with a wave of my hand and sink to my knees. My heart is beginning to slow its pounding, my breath beginning to inflate my body once again.

  “Where were you? Before?”

  He stares at me with the emptiness of one who has no soul.

  My head moves towards him, my eyes narrowed in response. “Hello? Where were you – ?”

  “A closed staircase.” It is not him who answers, but the voice above us – the boy jumps, towards me and, instinctively, I pull him in, my fingers feeling how frigid and damp he is.

  I mentally comment, as I hold him, how odd my sudden maternal instinct is.

  “Wh – who... what... is... ?”

  I add to my mental comments that it is odd for him to just be noticing the voice around us, the one I had been conversing with before my attention was turned to him.

  “That is Thomas,” I reply. “At least, that is the name the voice gives itself. It has no face, and it expects us to trust him unabatedly.”

  “Is t-that so?” he stutters back.

  “That is so,” Thomas replies.

  There is a break in conversation, which gives me time to assess the fact that our voices differ. My voice differs from Thomas’ – but the boy and I share a similar lilting, an accent. My voice sounds critical and dark, through the back of my own ears, and his is softer and gentler, and yet, still. The similarity remains.

  I know I must be recovering quite well from my trip behind the glass, because the sharpness my mind is regaining.

  “So,” I begin, with a strength to my voice, “do you only apologize for the mistakes you’ve made, whether I recall them or not, or do you also keep your word?”

  His laugh returns – so recurring, I note. I’ve not laughed once since my appearance in this dream land. He has laughed multiple times.

  “I wasn’t being funny,” I state, my voice hard.

  “You’re always funny.”

  I open my mouth, to begin a discussion, but he cuts me off automatically, as if he already knows what I’m to say.

  “I keep my word. Usually. Mostly. I’m – sorry.”

  “Are you going to keep the word you made that I do remember, or continue apologizing in vain?”

  “Right – yeah. Sorry.”

  “You told me you’d tell me who this boy is.” I look down at the one in my arms, who slowly pulls himself out of my grasp at my mention of him. I turn the direction of my conversation towards him. “He said we’re connected, for some reason.”

  He stares at me. Hard. His face is beginning to bend and contour to lines that I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, are ingrained into my own face. The softness and gentleness is replaced with a sort of serious antiquity that even I do not fully understand. Like he is so, so old, his life so eternal... and he stares at me as if he can see the same spark in my eyes that I can currently see in his.

  “Of course we’re connected,” he whispers.

  “What?”

  “Of course we’re connected.”

  I pull further from him, and him from me, as he takes me in, head to toe, still shaking from the residual effects of busting through the mirror, which has retained its form better than I have mine. He’s breathing very shallowly, and his head is turning, slightly, as he examines me.

  “Of course we’re connected.”

  “I don’t believe I underst – ”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “Don’t I remember what?”

  He touches my hair, his fingers holding the length that has reached far beyond my shoulders and rubs it, lightly, in his fingers.

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “I’m – ... not sure... ”

  “You’re my sister. You’re my twin sister.”

  The information is dropped as casually as if he were telling me that my hair was light or that the staircase we are currently stationed on is invisible. It’s dropped as casually as the weather – without a thought, without a care, with nothing more than a blink and the shrewd softness of his voice.

  “Don’t you remember?”

  I don’t. But how am I supposed to tell a young, seriously confused boy, who believes that I am his twin, that I do not remember a single line on his face, unless I were recalling it from the mirror?

  I have nothing to say. No escape. If I call for Thomas, he will surely be offended – if I do not say anything, he will take my silence as an acceptance of his words – if I question him, again, offense will be taken. So I just blink at him, choosing the lesser of evils, the cacophony of reticence.

  He leans towards me and pulls his own bony body around mine. I can feel him breathing in the embrace, can hear the quiet thrumming of his heart. Though I do not stop him, my figure is stiff, and I am focused more on analyzing the personality and thought processes of the other in front of me than I am on the contact.

  Brother.

  Do I have a brother? I do not know. I roll that word in my mind, weighing it, testing the strength and validity of it.

  Brother.

  Baby brother.

  “I am the older one,” I try, unsure what gives me the idea to speak. He’s so startled by my revelation that he pulls away. “I am your big sister.”

  The smile that breaks the surface of his perpetually hard face warms some distant part of my heart, though I know hearts cannot, technically speaking, be warmed to such a degree.

  “Yes,” he whispers, once – then again. “Yes. You are my big sister.”

  “And your twin,” I murmur.

  This is odd – even I must admit – but I do not dare voice such opinions and take away the shred of joy he has latched himself upon.

  Finally, Thomas intervenes. “Yes. You two are twins. That is part of your personal file.”

  “Personnel file?” I question. “As though – we are personnel in a corporation of some sort?”

  “No. Personal file, as in, the file of your personal regards.”

  “Rea
d it to us.” My eyes have not moved from my brother’s – nor him from mine. I’m watching the boy I have most likely watched grow up, but have never before now seen.

  “Of course. You two are twins who have been close since birth.”

  “Where are we from?” asks my brother, and for some reason, I’m proud of him. Proud of his strength.

  “That information is not on file.”

  “I thought you said we had been born here – that this was our full existence,” I comment.

  “Right. Yes. Of course.”

  The same smile edges on my brother’s and my faces.

  “All you two have told each other is true. You are twins, and the sister is the older one.”

  “What are our names?” I murmur. It had been promised to me, after all.

  “His name is Isaac.”

  Isaac. A name with an interesting sound to it. I take in Isaac, and he glances at his hands, as if contemplating the fact that they would be called Isaac’s hands.

  “Hello, then, Isaac,” I greet. I momentarily note that Thomas could be lying to us, attempting to mess with our minds – and, yet, it is an identification, just as good as any other, I’d suppose. Assigned by deity or parent, it would be assigned either way.

  He smiles at his hands, then at me, a sort of sparkle stirring the depths of his melancholy eyes. “Thanks.”

  “And your name...” Thomas voice goes strangely reverent... as if he holds my name in particular on some sort of pedestal, or as if it is close to him, personally. I try to contain my automatic disdain at such an emotional response.

  “What is my name?” I prompt, instead.

  “Everyone calls you ’Ives’, mostly. Just ’Ives’. You like it better like that.”

  “Ives, is it?” An alliteration, when taking Isaac into account. It makes a nice buzzing noise when spoken, and I decide that I do not hate it too fervently.

  “I am called Ives,” I go on, “but that is not my name?”

  “Well – no. Not your full name.”

  How lucky am I to get more than one name. A commodity not afforded to many in this world, from what I can ascertain.

  “Then what is my full name, Thomas?”

  There is a pause as Isaac and I stare up, awaiting an answer, hanging off the words of an invisible god, until, finally, the singular name is breathed out through the sky.

  “Ivory.”

  four

  Ivory.

  Obviously, the immediate implications of the name hit me. I have startlingly bright hair. If I were born first, my parents most likely took in the color and decided to name me Ivory, then searched for a matching name to accommodate my brother.

  Ivory.

  I know why I choose to be called Ives. My given name is far too formal. Far too appearance-centric. Far too... wrong.

  It sounds light, and gentle, and quiet, and lovely.

  And I feel none of those things.

  “Ivory,” Isaac repeats, but I shake my head at him, quickly, a reprimand. When he attempts, “Ives?” and I nod, almost noncommittally, he smiles slightly in a response.

  “I am called Ives,” I tell Thomas, a realization – or, perhaps, a thought – occurring to my newly named self.

  “Yes. As I said, you like it better than – ”

  “Why is this my first memory? Obviously, I have existed long before today. If I prefer Ives to Ivory, and you know of that preference – and, of course, if I had just been created, I do not anticipate the bank of knowledge I have acquired available – and there is the matter that you said you’d told versions of me – ”

  “I’ll explain, I’ll explain!” The words are spoken between a hiss of gentle, rolling laughs. “You just need to give me a moment to. You’re always go, go, go, aren’t you?”

  I bite down a response that I have been giving him ample time and opportunities to tell me exactly the answer to my own query and sit in absolute silence as I wait for him to release the information I’ve been seeking.

  “It’s all part of your job.”

  “My job?” I repeat.

  “Yes. Of course. We are part of a society which provides for us totally and completely, and in which all involved must do their fair share. Every job is uniquely different and benefits the society in different ways. You, for example, are a Moderator.”

  Moderator?

  “You exist here, where I’ve woken you, on an encased staircase – in a realm of nothing more than what you see. This staircase stays empty and void of life... save for, of course, you. Nothing happens here. What you see around you is the extent of your world.”

  As he continues talking, I take in the unchangeable force of the universe that apparently so fully surrounds us. If it is empty continuously, then how – why – ?

  “But don’t think that this world is nothing more than what’s immediately available. Soon, the two of you will have your hands so full you won’t even be able to imagine.” There’s a sort of sultry chuckle with his words, one that makes me glance upwards in retrospection.

  It was then that the once still expanse of glass that I had plunged myself through began to stir. I pull Isaac slightly away from it as I watch the surface change from reflective to dark in an instant. From the depths of the black that had been painted on the canvas before us, slowly, gently, finally, the dark form of a staircase begins to rise between thick red mist. The staircase looks empty, devoid of silhouettes yet, for some reason, that is all I’m searching for.

  Isaac and I have taken special interest in the image in front of us. We lean towards the barrier, close yet not too close, enough to see the air contained within our screen, not enough to taste it.

  “We call this staircase the Ashen Staircase. Both you and Isaac have had charges on this staircase for most of your lives.”

  The staircase laid before me has another certain pull to it – similar to the pull I had felt when I had first laid my eyes on Isaac, but not as complete. I wonder if the pull is a distant part of my mind, attempting wildly to accurately remember that which, over the course of time, I have forgotten.

  “Your charges are people. Like you and I, except rather than being sent to this staircase, where they can objectively judge lives, they’re sent to that one, where they live them. People appear on the staircase, on a random point – some, very few, start at the actual bottom. As the time behind the barrier progresses, people’s viewpoints begin to mold and differ. They begin to forget or remember things – sometimes, things that were never true to begin with. Your job is to watch their sojourn up the staircase, and to intervene – if ever you find a reason – by going through the barrier. Of course, you can’t stay too long on the other side of the barrier, nor can you take your true body with you when you go.” My still slightly shaken mind strongly agrees with such sentiment, automatically.

  “If your soul melds with the person you are in charge of, then you will die with them. If not, you will be reset, laid out on this staircase, with all of your memories erased, until you are awoken and a new charge is chosen for you.”

  Thomas leaves the image of the Ashen Staircase, as it were, on view, but it dims, minutely, as if it is an electronic screen that must be tapped to retain its brightness and vivacity at all times.

  “Alright!” The way his voice muffles, suddenly, makes it seem he’s stretching as he addressed us. “It’s question time! Ives?”

  I consider my options, momentarily, as Isaac’s light eyes remain locked onto the Ashen Staircase, before deciding, “Why did you come to me automatically for questions?”

  “You always have the most questions. Every version of you.”

  “Do the versions of me differ greatly?”

  “No. You’re always the same person – but sometimes, you react differently to different situations. Different parts of your personality, I’d think.”

  “You said that instead of being sent to this staircase, they’re sent to that one, where they can live. Does that imply that we are all dead on this stai
rcase, and this is some sort of afterlife?”

  “I honestly don’t know. But – I mean, if I were to guess, I’d say I don’t think so, since you can die with your charge.”

  Right. I can’t believe I overlooked that statement. “Have you always been watching over Isaac and me like this?”

  “No. Isaac used to be on another staircase with another voice directing him. You two requested a change a long while back. I’ve always been watching over you.”

  “You said that Isaac was on a closed staircase.”

  “Yes. It’s impossible to put the glass to reflect another part of this staircase, so I had to create a closed staircase – one where I cannot reach him, nor are there any stimuli that exist on other staircases like the Ashen Staircase. It’s the space between your staircase and the Ashen Staircase, but I have to, y’know, make it suitable to human life, so they can breathe and what-not. It was the only way for the two of you two to find each other. It was what you suggested before you went into sleep the last time.”

  “It is wet on this... closed staircase.”

  “What?”

  “He’s damp.”

  “Oh. Yes. Sort of. There’s water there, through the barriers – it’s not easy to explain. But there is water over there.”

  I consider this for only a moment before I return. “Your speech seems to indicate that there are other staircases besides this one and the Ashen one.”

  “It does.”

  “What is this staircase called?”

  “The Moderators’ Staircase.”

  “Would I find other Moderators on here?”

  “No. You would only find other people that I specifically guide – and currently, I only guide you and Issac.”

  “Does that mean we are the only two Moderators?”

  “No. There is a Moderator for every being on every staircase. They just all exist on alternate staircases. You often won’t interact with other Moderators, but it is possible.”

  “How many people have I been assigned to in the past, in all?”

  “I’ve never kept track. Thousands, I’d say.”