All around me the sound of screams ring in my ears, drowning out the frantic pulsing of my blood through my veins. The effect is not so unnerving as one might think; the voices of the multitude are raised in jubilance rather than in terror, and the timbre is muted by distance and technology. It is only the television screaming, far downstairs, and the screams are the screams of folk far distant.

         I remain motionless, draped across the foot of Claris' bed, my hands folded upon my chest like the sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian Lord, my eyes fixed glassily upon the ceiling. Occasionally, I tear them away from the scavengers I sense circling about my head to the singular bright mote in the darkness that daily presses my thoughts. My Claris drifts silently along the borders of my peripheral vision, feigning interest in any number of things, such as the impending true millenium that has sparked the celebration in the television downstairs. I am well aware that her true concern lies with my predicament. I would give her comfort had I any to give.

         Something is coming for me.

         I have devoted my considerable intellect to the matter since dawn, and my final verdict has been conferred: something is coming for me, and it comes from the most insidious venue I can imagine: within.

         It began innocently enough, I suppose. I wakened in the early hours to an overwhelming sense of trepidation, little more than a dull throbbing at the corners of my mind. Unwilling to wake Claris, yet unable to return to the embrace of oblivion myself, I elected to resolve the situation without assistance. Within hours, the ache extended delicate filaments to every crevasse of my mind, striking me down with anticipation. By evening, the burning had infected every fibre of my being, so much so that the slightest movement turned my stomach.

         Something is coming for me. I am certain. To that effect, I have chosen to limit my movement, claiming that physical activity is pure agony. It is only half-true, I suppose, but it is pointless to worry my Claris further by mentioning that I mean to devote the entirety of my energy to whatever internal force means to devour me. I am no stranger to finding myself the primary challengeamong my obstacles. For as long as I can remember, my mind has been a collection of fragments. I remain completely baffled that the problem is unique. My Claris, it seems, recalls her life in a definite, clear order. She knows, even if only roughly, the age and time of each instance as though they are perfectly arranged before her in a leatherbound album. So, it seems, run the recollections of her acquantainces.

         I have no such advantage. When I make an attempt to dredge forth a particular memory, I can only grope desperately for a shard, praying that my fingers close around the proper one without drawing blood. I have tried, long and often, to assemble the fragments in the proper sequence; they inevitably scatter, slipping from my grasp beneath the veil behind which I am forced to regard the world. Once, during the hours my Claris had gone to endure the indentured servitude of humanity's youth she calls "school," I happened upon a passage in one of her books that froze the flow of blood within my veins.

         "And there it was," said Zaphod, "clear as day. A whole section in the middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and electronically traumatized those two lumps of cerebellum."

         Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white.

         "Somebody did that to you?" whispered Ford.

         "But have you any idea who? Or why?"

         "Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was."

         "You know? How do you know?"

         "Because they left their initials burned into the cauterized synapses. They left them there for me to see."

         I had followed the conversation to its end, holding my breath without realizing it, only to discover that the initials seared into Zaphod's brain were his own. I had allowed the book to fall from my hands, my thoughts working frantically to weave the words harmlessly into the tapestry of my madness. Since then, I have made no further attempts to pierce the shroud draping my mind.

         I am afraid that when I have tracked my madness to its core and find its mark imprinted thereupon, it will be my own.          

         Deep down, I knew I wasn't fooling Sean. My choice to remain at his side had nothing to do with the fount of myriad tasks I found to complete in his presence and everything to do with his mysterious illness. While my family awaited the coming of the new year, I awaited only some sign as to what plagued Sean. His only response to my inquiries was he ached all over, so much so that he could scarcely move without fire consuming his joints. I had no idea if he really wanted me there or not. He hadn't asked me to leave, and Sean was hardly shy about stating his wishes. I took it as permission, if not a request, to stay. No one should be left to suffer all alone. If there was anything I could do for Sean, I wanted to be there to do it.

         As usual, I was afraid. I was afraid that Sean was badly hurt, afraid that his insanity was consuming him... Afraid of what he might to do me if it did. Nonetheless, I couldn't just leave him. It was long since too late for that.

         His breath grew shorter in an odd parallel to the crescendo of cheers from downstairs; both reached a peak at the strike of midnight, and the final notes of both were punctuated with screams. I was facing away in the moments before the witching hour, so it was that I beheld the answer to Sean's ailment in the cold, silver otherworld of the mirror rather than in my own.

         A single, wrenching tremor rippled down the length of him, drawing every muscle taut. His eyes darted toward me as if he meant to ask for my help, or to ask me to flee; then his gaze clouded over. With tremendous effort, he swung his legs about, grinding his teeth against the resulting agony, and attempted to stand. The moment he attempted to bear his own weight, his legs folded beneath him, driving him to all fours. I felt, rather than heard, the cry that split his lips as his knees slammed into the carpet; my ears registered only the exultant shrieks from downstairs. Sean's scream was not meant for human ears. Though mine did not hear the sound itself, the echo left them ringing for hours afterward, just as a shadowy sillhouette of what happened afterward burned itself behind my eyes like the hazy afterimage that haunts the fringes of your sight after flash photography. I cannot help but wonder if it is this sound that spawned the ridiculous myth of a bell sounding each time an angel gets its wings. Perhaps the person who wrote that heard a pale, distant echo of such a scream, mistaking the distant thrumming for the peal of chimes. What, then, of the reaction of my other senses...?

         Although logically, I know it can't be true, I can't help but wonder if I hadn't been facing the mirror... Maybe the beauty of the spectacle would have blinded me. Perhaps it was Sean's scream that signalled the change. As his lips parted, so did the skin between his shoulderblades, slashing his back with two angry stripes that erupted moments later in a flurry of feathers. Part of me wanted to look away or close my eyes. The pain that accompanied Sean's fledging made him terrifying to behold. I wanted to spare him my witness to his moment of helplessness and pain, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. Despite his obvous torment, he was... The process was... Heartbreakingly beautiful, like the delicate steps of Hans Christian Andersen's little mermaid. She, like Sean, paid in spades for a pair of extremeties absent at her birth, and afterward, her every movement appeared light and graceful beyond comparison to observers. Unknown the them, in reality, she was dancing on daggers, the points piercing her soles with each step. It was that kind of beauty and grace evident in Sean, and I could not remove the blades from beneath his feet.

         His wings were so flawlessly white they seemed to possess an ambient light of their own, a pure, clear light that cleansed my soul even as I gripped the sides of the mirror to steady my fear. The perfect luminescence of the feathers made me unsure whether they were real, or if they were merely an omen presented to me through the metallic gleam of the mirror. I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs to their limit, and turned to face him, unsure of what I would see. The exertion had overcome him; he lay upon his stomach, wings spread over him like an exquisite canopy, one arm stretched forward as though he had been reaching for something that had slipped through his fingers. No matter how many times I blinked to clear my vision, it remained consistent: Sean's wings were real. Oddly, I found myself struggling to remember what he had looked like without them. Wings seemed as natural to Sean as his hair, or the scar he had borne since I had known him, or even the breath in his lungs. It was before, when he lacked them, I realized, that he had seemed odd and incomplete; there had simply been no basis for comparison.

         I raised one hand to my lips, gnawing nervously at the nails, uncertain of what I should do. Steeling myself, I pulled the blanket from my bed. I wrapped myself inside and settled on the floor, clasping Sean's outstretched hand in my own. His fingers closed around mine instinctively, and I hoped that it provided him with some link back to me. I was still afraid, and terribly confused, but I knew more than ever that I could not leave him alone now. Andersen's mermaid had only borne dancing on daggerpoint because the presence of her prince sustained her. She knew he was there, watching her. She knew he would be there when she woke. I am no prince, and I am certainly no magician. I am only Claris.

         I couldn't stop him from hurting, and I still can't, but if he is destined to dance upon daggers, I will be there beside him, easing his pain when it is done. I will be there.

Fin

Notes: If you've somehow stumbled on this page, know here and now that Claris Project is by Lyn. Ali did not make up the characaters or their situation. That was all Lyn.

The book Sean is reading is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Thanks to Wendylette for editing. ^^