Owner: Molly | Overlay by PiranhaPettingZoo | Steampunk font by Hannarb
Hello, hello. Yes, I expected you would be coming by. The police were here just yesterday. I'll tell you what I know, although it isn't much. I didn't know Katheryn well, by any means; we were the same age, but all those years she was just another girl at school. We went to our junior prom together, actually, but that was all. Her death especially affected me, however, for I was the one who found the body.

It was her wedding day. She was old, at thirty, to be getting married in those days. I myself had been married for two years, to my wife Silvie. Katheryn was marrying, at last, the father of her child. The boy was seven at the time.

We had all gathered in the garden that day. It was beautiful and perfect, all of it. The bridesmaids, the decorations. Henric had never looked handsomer. Ahh, you didn't know? Yes, Katheryn was marrying Detective Henric Buren. A fairytale. A family was the thing she wanted most in the world. She came so close.

I headed into the house that day to find her at the request of the priest...

I found her in her room, slumped at the vanity. There was blood everywhere. I yelled for help. People came running, and I staggered out of the room, and then out of the house. My wife was still seated in the garden, overwhelmed by the rush of new and frantic sounds. Her blind eyes could not see the body being carried out of the house, or the white dress soaked with red.

"My dear, Silvie my dear, she's dead. She's dead." My voice trembled. She placed her forehead against my arm.
"I'm so sorry, love, I know how close you were."
"To be honest, I think I was only invited because of you, Silvie, but to die on one's wedding day. What a tragedy."
"...Katheryn? Katheryn's... dead? Kath?"

I pulled her close, and she began to shake violently. Katheryn had been dearer to her perhaps than anyone. Silvie remained silent as police and emergency medical technicians swarmed around her into the house, her eyes even more vacant than usual. When we reached home, she remained in bed all night, and into the next day. It was all the more heartbreaking that she didn't cry; she simply lay there, staring at the ceiling.

Silvie... I don't know if she's ever been the same since Katheryn's death. It's been ten years, and still I believe she thinks of her often. Katheryn, you see, was a scientist for many years, and it was during this time that she first knew Silvie. It was only shortly before her death that she left her apprenticeship. I don't know much about the experiments she conducted in that old laboratory - perhaps you should speak to Marjory about that - but I do remember her efforts to fix Silvie's blindness. They were futile, but Silvie and Katheryn grew close after the endeavor, and I truly believe that Katheryn helped her understand her true worth, and accept her blindness not as a disability but as a gift. You see, Silvie is far from helpless. I suppose I should leave it up to her to tell, for the articulation of blindness is intensely personal.

Yes, you want to hear more about Katheryn and not about us, but I can only explain my interaction with her in the context of my own childhood. When I was ten years old, I was found wandering in our town center, lost and nearly unable to recall any particulars of my previous existence. I was taken in by a kind old man, now deceased, who raised me as his own and enrolled me in school here. As I have said, I regrettably did not know Katheryn well. I was always shy in school. She, like all the others, likely found me strange. I suppose I'll never know if she agreed to go to that dance with me out of pity, or something else.

We graduated. In our last year of university, Katheryn had her son. I eventually attained a teaching degree, and at 25, I met Silvie. She was only 17, and so our interactions were minimal, but after she graduated we found ourselves drawn to each other. We married, and it was about that time that my memories, what I had forgotten of my childhood, began to return.

Who can say, of course, if they are truly memories, or simply fabrications of my subconscious? Still, they filtered through, like stray beams of light through the thinnest of paper, catching on the fragile fibrous grains, wispy and uncertain like new frost. I thought them dreams, at first, but they came so vividly and sometimes during the most productive periods of my workday - they came to interrupt and plague me with the vilest headaches, near-tangible beings that flooded my senses and reduced my work to naught - and wholly captivated my attention, rendering me quite useless until they had subsided.

Soon, I began to write the daydreams down, and soon I came not to dread but to expect them. I lapse, sometimes, into hour-long periods of incoherency, irreversibly caught up in my own mind, blind to my surroundings. I began to believe that these thoughts, which I had assumed were memories, were actually prophecies, or reflections of past lives, so vivid and strange were they. I saw places in my mind that I had never been, could never have been as a child, and yet when I described them to others, they told me it was as if I had been there. I could remember every detail. It nearly drove me mad, these visions.

I digress, and I apologize - but you see, my own condition and my wife's have kept me occupied these past years, and I scarcely had time to know Katheryn, or anyone else in this town, really.

I don't mean to make it sound as if Silvie is entirely dependent; she insists on taking on no maids, cooks each meal flawlessly herself and has memorized the ways of the house - in paces, in stairs, in the subtle-shifts of light as she passes windows and opened doors. Still, she can be... difficult, sometimes. I don't know how else to put it. She likes to know that I am near. Especially after Katheryn's death, she's been quieter. She wants me home more often. Somehow she still believes I may leave her, even after all these years, and if ever I tutor a female student of mine, she won't let me hear the end of it. I know she can never regain her sight, but I only wish she could see how foolish those worries are. We are both broken, but we have each other. Do you understand?

Now then, I suppose I've kept you long enough. You're welcome to go in and speak with Silvie, if you'd like, but do go easy on her if you do. It was nice to speak to you.

{Enter the sitting room} {Leave the house and visit Marjory's lab}