Ila And The Phoenix

Day Six (II)

I followed him to the bookshelf where he took out the flat box that held the pretty tiara. After inputting the lock, he picked the jewelled crown and released a small laugh.

"You remember her?" I inquired, wondering if all of his memories would progressively return.

He frowned then. "Not quite. I can only recall that I had a sister and that this was hers. I got it for her." He walked forward, looking both awed and confused. "That was so long ago."

"How then do you have it?" I asked.

He looked up at me. "I don't know." His eyes roamed about the room. "I keep a lot of relics from my former life but I. . ."

His frown became intense but only because he was thinking hard.

"What?" I prodded.

"I think I might have somehow preserved every relic somewhere and then went back to get them."

"Just like the birth certificates?" I asked. "Where did you get all of those?"

After a few moments his eyebrows lifted. "A museum."

I shook my head, feeling dubious. "Okay but even if you got them from a museum, who put them there?"

He tilted his head sideways and glanced at the ground then turned and placed the tiara down. When he looked at me, he seemed to be slightly uncomfortable.

"Did you steal them, Bryn?" I spoke calculatingly, unsure of my own question.

He drew me close and leaned against the bookshelf. "No, I did not steal them. I simply retrieved them."

He stroked my face whilst staring at me and I slowly began to realize the answer to my second, earlier question. My eyes widened by a tad and when the realization fully settled, I scoffed audibly.

"Every woman you've loved before." I blurted, shocked by what I was saying. "They kept them safe."

Bryn stared at me with an expression of caution and uncertainty when I stepped back. But I had stepped back subconsciously.

"That's how your memory passes from one eon to the other." I stated, unsure if I was angry at him or simply stunned. "You get someone to fall in love with you so they preserve your belongings as well as. . ."

I glanced at him. "That is why you signed the mansion over to me."

He moved from the bookshelf and I stepped backward again - subconsciously. He was sick! Not in the most terrible way or necessarily harmful way though, but he was sick. I could not wrap my head around what he had been doing for, what? A decamillennium? A centimillenium?

"Ila."

I lifted my hand to silence him and walked out of the room. I needed to breathe.

It was so long ago since I last visited the garden and thankfully it was no longer snowing outside. There was a chilly wind in the air mixed with traces of warmth from the weak sunlight. I strolled around the yard, aiming to go around the mansion in a circle and my brief walk reminded me just how big of a house it was.

It was mine now!

I halted.

I owned a freaking house! A Von Trapp style mansion with a pool and a yard and a gated fence and a pretty garden and six rooms filled with expensive shit.

It was overwhelming to think of it so I stopped myself. I stood at the other end of the building where the balcony from one of the spare rooms jutted out to bed the tall trees in the yard. There was a ledge there. I sat on it and hoped Bryn would not come and find me. For once I was not bothered to be away from him. He was far too whelming. Being around him felt like eating hippy crack for a three course. All my worries faded around him or at least it used to before all of the current drama. I could barely think straight when I was with him. He was always my center focus as I was his.