For Stephanie and for Silent One both, they don't exist enough in this world that I can link to them clearly. Not the way I can Sam or Kiara or Paul - we can more or less read each others' minds, when we think to do so. When, say, Kiara is out, I can observe what she is doing, as well as feel what she is feeling, and I can mostly eavesdrop on her thoughts as well. I know why she's doing something, more or less. Maybe it's less reading her mind and more understanding her. But for Stephanie, just because she is out, it doesn't necessarily mean that I 'get' her any better. All I can do is watch and try to keep up. And it's not as easy to watch - like I'm watching from behind a curtain or something.
This morning, Stephanie spoke, a little. It gave me a tiny glimpse into her world. We got up to take a shower as usual. But we recently got a new shower-head, and it's amazing - it pours out so much water over a large area, and it's just pure luxury to stand under it. The danger with that is that Stephanie is so strongly drawn to water. If she comes out, it's usually connected with a shower or a bath. Boss knows that if I'm in the shower too long, he needs to come fetch her out and help us switch back; it's happened a few times.
But this morning, as I'm enjoying the shower spray, Stephanie came forward. She delights in the feel of the spray hitting her ears, and the sound of the water tapping. I watched her turn slowly around. As she settled into the body, she adjusted her weak arm to hang straight down, and put her weight on her good leg. She swayed back and forth under the water, enjoying the water spray moving over and around her body, especially around her head. I noticed that when the water completely covered her bad shoulder, the phantom pain from it seemed to go away.
And that's when I heard her voice. If you've ever watched the movie Nell, you'll remember how she blurred words until they were unrecognizable, but they were language to her. Here's a clip with some, if you want - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHbQI2305qw. 'Tay ina win' is 'dance in the wind'. 'Done key' is 'don't cry'. And 'Ah so ta-ta' is 'I was so tired.' And so on. It sounds like someone who is deaf learning to speak aloud. And that's how Stephanie sounded. Just a whisper, but over and over again, I could make out, "Was bluh 'way." And as she kept repeating it, I think she was saying 'wash the blood away'; and she may have been singing. I couldn't hear a tune, exactly, but she was... pitching the noises?
So my first thought, knowing that she's from pre-Civil War slavery, was that it could be a song she was singing, a spiritual hymn perhaps. There are several with something about being washed by the blood, or about blood washing your sins away, or something like that. And slaves at that time were often baptized by their Christian owners, so that's possible. Stephanie's also very literal-minded. If she was baptized, she could easily have believed she was being washed with actual blood, and it needed to be washed away. Or she could have been washing in blood, or washing blood away, from some other tribal belief or something. It's not very clear to me, but it is terribly interesting.
Either way, when the water started running cold, for once Stephanie let me give her some direction. She turned off the water, dried off, and went to find Boss. I had hoped he would realize we were in the shower too long, and come rescue her. But I was pleased she let me 'push' her to make the next few steps. She did get to him, and he got her to step back internally so that I could take over.
Stephanie and Cherish both have that limitation. They will rarely switch away on their own; they need orders to do so. The rest of us can switch in and out at will, but the two slaves deny having any will of their own. Silent One, too, doesn't always cooperate with switching. But we can sometimes lure it away if left quiet for a while.
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