Harmon didn't know if he was getting through at all. He had to devote so much energy to translating his message into coherent speech through Kerren's compromised system that he couldn't also try to look out to see if anyone was listening. The only indication he had that he was being heard was the way his host's brain lit up when he mentioned her mother's name.
All he could do was continue to speak through her, hoping beyond hope that there was someone on the outside to hear him trying to verbally piece together the various ways the long-ago Sarah had impacted people at the Deertail Lodge. The visual similarity between her and Kerren really was uncanny, so much so that when he had seen the daughter earlier that evening, he had almost been forced to rethink his views on immortality.
As he spoke what he had since come to know and believe, he was delighted as new sections of Kerren's young brain sparked to life. It took a little while for him to realize that he was actually watching her fitting the puzzle together, and he hoped that there was someone else doing the same on the other side of her lips. Even if there were, it would have given him no extra satisfaction; when he spoke what he and Benny had discovered about the role of mirrors in the story, being inside Kerren's head had been like flying around inside a firework show.
It began to occur to him that maybe all his invasive activity was doing Kerren some good. All his mucking about with her neurons might actually be helping them mend from the shock of her injuries, or at least he was going to allow himself to rationalize it that way. As he told her about her mother, and the positive role she had played in the lives of people at the Deertail, he had begun to feel a slowly increasing sense of welcome. Either Kerren was getting used to the idea of someone being inside her mind, or he was becoming inoculated against feeling of intrusion. It still a minor rebellion against his sense of decency to do it, but it took away the moral sting a little bit. If Kerren's increased capacity started to show signs that she didn't want him in there anymore, he would gladly retreat.
She didn't, however. It compelled him to keep talking until he was done, in a way; he felt like he was getting Kerren better by doing it, and that in turn made his effort seem worthwhile. Not only this, but the strength of their connection made him even more aware of his physical proximity to her. The thought of them actually meeting again in the physical world was starting to become something he found he wanted.
There was something familiar about her brain; at times he felt like he knew its contours, recognizing the way information would flow from one place to another. He thought it must be some remnant of her mother; Sarah and Harmon had shared a few late-night talk sessions, and he had been entranced by the woman's thought processes, not quite like anyone else's he had ever encountered. That must have been the origin of the familiarity he was sensing in this vast, internal space.
If Sarah had shown anything other than cursory interest in him, he knew, he could have fallen for her. But he had learned that relationships cultivated while leaning against a bar never grow into anything more, and she had been the source of this realization for him. Like everyone else, she had spent her time at the Deertail, and then disappeared into the world beyond the foot of the mountain. He had never caught the same spark she had brought to his life again, and never expected to.
Before he had seen Kerren, if someone had told him that the closest possible copy of Sarah was about to walk into his life again, he would have assumed that he would immediately transfer some -- if not all -- of his years of romantic disappointment into feelings for her, but for some reason that hadn't happened. He had approached her and her wife at dinner the previous night out of a sheer fascination at seeing someone who his fiction-addled brain might have mistaken for his old love. Maybe it was because her romantic predilections were clear, or the fact that he was keenly aware of how much he himself had aged over the intervening years, but the kind of emotions he was experiencing were more like those that a teacher might feel for a promising young student.
Now he was speaking with no other impetus than to see Kerren's brain illuminating in new patterns, feeding off its own renewed energy. He couldn't entirely feel that he was personally responsible for the growth by adding his energy to the system; the only thing he could think of was that it felt like he was *inspiring* her. He had yet to see whether this new vitality would last, but for now he could feel its light, see its warmth, and it made his resolve even stronger.
With this in mind, he peeked at the world outside Kerren's skull. He didn't withdraw from her mind, only expanded his sphere of awareness. It was an aspect of his power that he hadn't really mastered yet, and was surprised to find how easily he could control it. It came with a strange sense of vertigo, however, a collision between perceptions of largeness and smallness. It was something like using a magnifying glass to examine a miniscule drop of water, and finding that there was an immense, bustling city inside it.
The group around Kerren were barely recognizable in their immensity and distance. They seemed to be segregated into two groups; on one side of his host's still-bound body were two women and a man. He immediately recognized Kerren's wife crouched nearby, but the others Harmon hadn't seen before. They were a blonde woman and a dark-skinned man, clearly a couple from the way they were standing close to each other. On the other side of Kerren's apparently miles-long body, Dale stood like a Titan, with Glenda in his arms. Harmon didn't quite like the way she was lying limply, or the way that Dale's arms minutely trembled, as if he had been holding her that way for a very long time.
Next to them was Carlos (whom he shouldn't have been surprised to see, since his known cohort Benny was currently sitting with Harmon's body in his small room under the stairs). Between the two men, also not too surprisingly, was Bruce Casey. He was talking a mile a minute -- thankfully, the sound was too far away for Harmon to actually make any of it out -- and gesticulating his arms wildly; first, they raised as if to mimic climbing a ladder, then reaching out for something, and then gesturing to other members of the small crowd. They all seemed to bear the same expression on their faces: dismayed indulgence. The author clearly had the floor, but no one seemed to be happy about it.
When it was clear that no one was listening to Kerren (and he wasn't even sure that she was still speaking for him), he let his words trail off. The flashes of disappointment that cascaded like a blazing Niagara through Kerren's brain made him want to go on, until forever if she would let him. But there was something more important going on in the outer world at the moment, and so he turned his full attention to it.
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