3.1.2

When he woke up, Alick's neck ached horribly. He half leaned, half fell forward from the wall he had been leaning against, trying to regain his senses. After the incident, he had made it down eleven flights of stairs in a haze and gotten maybe a block away from the library before collapsing with his back against the Student Medical Center. It was dark now, and as he stretched he noticed that the walkways around him were all but deserted. That's not good, he thought. Checking his watch confirmed his suspicions; three o' clock. Three o' clock. Good God. Listening around him, he couldn't even hear more than a faint slurred voice of a drunk. He stumbled haphazardly to his feet and made his way to the bus stop.

The five minute bus ride woke him up enough to be aware of his surroundings, and wary of the reaction that he was about to receive upon reaching home. He got off of the bus and made his way away from the lights of High Street, down a darkened side street. The packed and crowded two stories mostly occupied by college kids gave way quickly to run down one stories and soon to dense foliage. Few would be able to find their way through the woods here but Alick of course knew the way by heart. He weaved his way through the ever familiar trees for a good ten minutes before the buzz reached his ears. He knew it would be there; there was no way people wouldn't notice he was missing, that wasn't the way. The congregation accounted for their own and whenever there was trouble, it was trouble for everybody.
Problem was that just as he could read their minds, fifty percent of them could read his as well. He stopped for a moment and readied himself. Everyone at some point in their high school or college years felt the need to hide something from the congregation. Normally it had to do with snogging someone from the outside, about which the elders clearly did not approve of. As they grew up, most everyone would grow out of that grimy little phase, knowing that being part of the congregation meant that they were part of each other. But in that little in-between period, if they were lucky they could learn a valuable little skill that was coined as sonating. Alick closed his eyes and breathed deep, feeling the thick barriers that formed, one by one, around that five minutes of his afternoon that no one needed to know. He steadied himself a little, sonating his thoughts was a constant strain, and he knew that it was one that he would have to hold up for a long, long time.
Through the last stretch he worked hard to center his mind on other thoughts; if he was thinking about what he was sonating, then he would appear to others as thinking about nothing, and that would certainly raise alarm bells. He focused back on the Russo Japanese war (with only a second of thought devoted to his panic as he realized that he left his textbook on the stairs in the library - he probably wasn't getting that back). The war, the test, how hard he studied before he decided to take a quick nap on the way home...
It seemed like every light was on at the congregation. The clearing appeared out of the trees like a neighborhood for fairies, every house was simplistic and rustic and very old. Although after gas became too expensive to have gas lamps at every house and they finally had someone install electricity, the congregation as a whole still kept the look of it, hooking up the electricity to look just the same as an old fashioned world. As he walked up to the first house, French, a father of about fifty, was the first to see him. French was a voice, which was why he was always placed on lookout. As Alick approached, he heard the silent cry out to every member of the congregation, He's home! Alick's home and looks like he's fine! Alick winced a little as the voice entered his mind at a roar, but he smiled at French.
"What on earth do you think you've been doing, Alick?! Where on God's good earth have you been?" French stood up from his porch stoop and clapped him on the back, a sign of welcoming.
"Sorry French, had a hard night of studying. I fell asleep out back of the library and just lost track of time." Alick gave him a smile. He could hear the news bouncing through the thoughts of everyone in town, that he was home and safe.
"That all you got ta say for yourself, Al?" Miriam yelled from up the road a little ways. She was a generously proportioned woman with two young children and an apron that could never get cleaned, "You scared the congregation half to death!"
"Sorry Miriam!" Alick called, "but what'm I supposed to say? It wasn't a good sleep if that makes you feel better!" He was teasing her how, his smile breaking and showing teeth. Miriam seemed to think this answer sufficed.
"Well, you certainly need ta get yourself off to bed now before the rest of us murder your sorry behind for for making us all worry so late!"
Alick moved on through the houses, saying an embarrassed hello to several more people before finally making it to his own door. He let himself in and came face to face with his mother, who certainly did not seem willing to let his absence go without an admonishment.
"I don't see it, Alick."
"Don't see what, Mum?" Alick knew what she was talking about. She was a strong descrier and could pick apart a person's memories in a second. She saw the blank space in his memories that he had sonated away.
"Where were you tonight, Alick? Where were you really?" She fixed him with a look that could make a bloom shrivel.
"I was a the library, Mum, and you know it. That blank space in my memories is from falling asleep, that's all." It was a blatant lie, because the gaps from sleeping and the gaps from sonating felt different to a descrier. They both knew it, but Alick's mom knew she would get nothing more out of him, at least that night.
"Go, you ungrateful child, off to bed before you have to get up tomorrow and explain to everyone why you deprived us of our precious sleep." She was letting him off the hook, but Alick wasn't sure for how long. Whatever it was, he was certainly grateful and slipped into his room. The murmur from his neighbors wasn't as harsh as what he heard from school, maybe because they were voices he had heard his whole life. They lulled him into his second sleep of the day, the Russo Japanese war and the encounter on the 11th floor once again slipping from his mind.