Strangers

It’s a familiar voice, a familiar, precious voice, every shift in intonation and clipped vowel anticipated.

It’s the voice of a stranger.

“You were gone a long time,” the stranger says, the stranger using Hara’s voice, Hara’s beloved golden voice, that once whispered secrets in the night’s grey hush like honey pouring from a jar. “It’s been a long time, Noli.”

Nolikka Toin hears her own voice reply, and her own voice is a stranger’s as well, falling out of her mouth like cold white pebbles and clattering into the silence. “I wasn’t gone. I was a prisoner. I thought about you every day, Hara. Didn’t you think about me a little?”

“Of course.” Hurt. Wounded, even. The silence thickens and deepens until it’s the color of blood and the sound of her thundering pulse. Past it, Nolikka hears: “Of course I did.  You know how I feel about you.”

“I thought I did. You’re married.” She can barely hear herself, the thin grey thread of her voice winding through the storm of deep maroon enveloping her.

Hara’s words, though, Hara’s words cut through the storm in jagged gold flashes. “It’s how it is, Noli, you know that. It was just a phase, everyone goes through it.”

A phase. Her throat is so tight the words will choke her. Warm salt on her lips surprises her until she realizes tears.“I’m 37 years old, what sort of phase do you call this?”

“Noli, suuli, don’t cry, don’t – ”

Hands on her arm then. Her skin crawls and her stomach turns.  “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.”

The hands on her arm fall away. “Suuli, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so – ”

“Sorry, spirits fuck you’re sorry, how sorry do you think I am?” The room is too small. Hara is too close. There is no air, just the roiling storm inside her. “Do you know what they – do you know what – ancestors choke - ”

“Please don’t cry. Please don’t.”

And it breaks.

She is on her feet. “Don’t you dare tell me not to cry, don’t you dare!” Out. Now. The door is somewhere to her left.  Her feet catch on the coffee-table as she tries to get to it. Her palms burn on the carpet and the shock of the fall jars the sobs loose at last. Hara is trying to help her up and Nolikka jerks away, slams into the wall and kicks out. A yielding impact beneath her foot, a grunt. “Get away from me, get away, get away!”

The door. Open. Space. Air.

Hara’s stranger’s voice fading behind her.

Fading into the cacophony of all the strangers’ voices that fill the station.