New Years Day 2009, 1 am, On the answering Machine at the Silver Owl Company

David? This is Agnes. I brought a woman home tonight who seems to be quite a lot like me. She doesn't seem to be doing very well after her ordeal. I have her here and she's suffering some serious disorientation. You, of course, might have some idea what to do better than I, since you're the local 'expert' on such things.

Agnes hung up the phone, uncertain of the wisdom of having involved the arrogant blow hard, but also knowing both that the woman was both too damaged for her to handle alone and too much like herself to be safe in the hands of the hospital system. She placed a second call, telling her friend the dispatcher that some bag lady had told her about a body in the alley near the Red Arrow and that they might want to go check it out.

Grabbing the rather plain cane from the spot by the door, she limped back from the office, pausing long enough to watch the woman on the floor of her living room. She'd found some paper and had begun to fold it into little origami figures, surrounding herself with a tiny menagerie. Childlike and innocent, the fascination with the paper was obvious was clear to Agnes, but looking around the house at all the myriad hand crafts and equipment to make them, it was easy to see why she would.

The fractal spoke to Agnes wordlessly, changing its colors and patterns in ways that only she could understand. What she knew, and her avatar confirmed, was that whatever was going on there was going to take time to right itself. If Agnes was to play the part of 'Mommy' in the play, she would be the best damn mommy she could be. The woman, for her part, was content to sit on the floor with her paper animals--and that was fine for Agnes.

Finally breaking from her voyeurism, the hostess limped into the room and smiled to her guest. The woman looked up from her spot amid the wild beasts and smiled a little, the dark eyed innocence that showed in her expression might have been more disturbing, if it had been anyone but Agnes. She picked up one of the animals, a butterfly and held it out before her.

"It's very nice, Sweetie. Can you make it fly for me?"

Wordlessly, the dark eyed zookeeper nodded with a juvenile glee. As Agnes watched, she did nothing more than breathe on the paper. But a moment later a butterfly of hues and colors that would delight a child emerged from the origami one.

Agnes was impressed.

The butterfly lifted itself aloft in the room and lighted here and there as they both watched it. Neither frightened or unhinged by the event, but rather more awed by the possibilities, Agnes watched the insect and glanced to see the paper it emerged from dropped beside its creatrix. It was one of those moments of true wonder, the kind of thing that had filled her life since that Christmas Eve, 4 years ago. With a couple steps, she got close enough to kneel amid the animals, right the butterfly on its little feet, and say to the woman there "That was very nice, Sweetie. How about we get you cleaned up and get something to eat, then you can show me how to do that too!"