Welcome to Gaia! ::

He waited a goodly amount of time for the old woman to answer the door. The mailbox outside said Hawken, but the little old woman who opened the door looked about as far from a Hawken as one could get: small, with a face like an unpeeled almond, wizened gray eyes poking out beneath her thin brows. Everything about her spoke of delicacy, from the tissue-paper quality of her skin to her wisps of white hair.

"Mr. Rylan," she said, "come in," and she made her way slowly into the house with an odd rolling limp. It had the air of a place frozen in time: at some point, it had been abandoned, for all the old woman still lived there. In the living room, one wall was a curio cabinet of trinkets and figurines. The other wall showed a wedding portrait (a younger woman and her American beau in his Army uniform) surrounded by old photographs. Viv and a woman who looked like she could be her sister, Viv in her cap and gown. Viv holding up an acceptance letter to MIT, white teeth peeking between thin lips.

The old woman set the tray down on the coffee table and settled on her flower-print couch. "I am Kazuko Hawken," she said. "And Vivien was my daughter. These things, where did you find them?"

Kazuko nodded, following the story even as she poured iced tea into the tall, thin glasses. "She did love the cliffs," said Kazuko. "She used to go there every summer, it's true. But she..." She held out wizened old hands for the leather coat, and when it was handed to her she sorted through the seams. "She did have a jacket exactly like this one," she said, lingering over the hand-written medical alert tag. "It was her father's."

She looked up at Rylan, the very picture of dignity. "Near the end, she was obsessed with climbing the cliffs. She would go every day, until the chemotherapy took too much from her and she couldn't any more." Kazuko's hands shook around the collar of the coat. "She'd started seeing things, Mr. Rylan. The old story of the otherworld, she said she'd been there. And that there was something there, in the cliff face."

The old woman smiled sadly, running her thumbs fondly over the old leather. "It was a brain tumor," she said. "Inoperable. She killed herself, you see, an overdose. She didn't want to be remembered as sick... she felt it was below her."

She sighed, and gestured to the tea. "Drink. So you are saying that you've seen my daughter's... spirit?"

Kazuko smiled, perhaps caught in memories of her daughter. "No, she never did tell me what she found there. That was after the hallucinations started, and I have no doubt she kept it secret for fear I wouldn't believe her." She smoothed down the points of Viv's coat collar, as if her daughter would be coming back for it and its crisp creases had to be preserved. "It is odd... I thought she left this coat in her room, on..." the day she died.

She rose, and disappeared upstairs for a moment. When she came back, there was a second coat in her hands, just as perfectly preserved. "I don't understand," she said, "how there could be two? She only ever had the one."

"She remained in contact with one of her teachers," said Kazuko. The jackets were identical, down to the fading of the medical alert symbol. "Professor Liam Noor? He's a kind man. Strange, but kind." She sat back down, hands folded around the second leather coat. "It wouldn't surprise me to learn Vivien was part of something strange," she said. "She was a strange girl. So ambitious! But I loved her. She was my daughter."

Kazuko shook her head. "Of course, Mr. Rylan. Please bring it back to me, when you can."

She smiled, running her thumb over the hemming of the jacket collar. "She was."