Doctor Charlton stroked his chin for a moment, making sure that his astonishment didn't suddenly spread across his face. He sat back in his chair and composed himself.

"So you believe you have been reincarnated, " he said as if it was the most normal thing that has ever left his lips.

"That's what Sam and Andy say but it doesn't much feel like reincarnation or what I imagine it would feel like. There is no new beginning or rebirth I just yearn for things that are long gone and cry for things that I shall never get back,"Said Lavinia and looked impossibly sad and for a moment, Dr Charlton felt something he hadn't felt in a long while, empathy.

~

From a very young age, Lavinia had been asking for toys she did not own and people she'd never met and cried for a family who was not her own. The older she got the more vivid Lavinia believed her memories were becoming and would often refer to what she believed to be the last few years of her life, although when George asked about her 'death' Lavinia would say she couldn't remember how she died a fact that still remained.

After years of emotional struggle with Lavinia, the Gregory family refused to talk to her about her supposed past life. So she would draw it, she would draw the faces that she knew so well, that were etched onto the very edge of her brain, and the drawings would comfort her. To Lavinia, they were proof that everything she believed to be true had happened, and these faces on her pages they had once been people and moments in her life some whom she had cherished but all, she believed had decided the fate of the woman she once was.

As much as Lavinia craved to see the once living faces that now lurked in her drawings like painted ghosts she wanted one thing more than anything, she wanted to remember how her first life ended and believed if she could remember she would accomplish the one thing she wanted most of all.

Peace.

"Lavinia I want you to do something for me," said Doctor Charlton.

Lavinia just looked at him with her green eyes unblinking, looking at her made him feel a little nauseous, but he buried his feelings somewhere deep inside so he knew at least they wouldn't rise for a few moments and he could say what he had to say, as a Doctor not as a man.

"I want you to write about this past life of yours and give it to me. Give it to me however you like, post it, email it, video diary, or write me a letter and push it through my office door, text it if you like and in our next session we will talk it over, is that alright with you?" Said Doctor Charlton.

He knew that his methods were a little unorthodox but Doctor Charlton really thought he could get through to Lavinia so protocol reluctantly went out the window.

Lavinia thought about it for a moment and just nodded back at him, she did love to write.

Doctor Charlton smiled a sad smile back at Lavinia and she couldn't help but be offended.

She opened the door to leave and a dark cloud washed over her when she saw Anna, waiting diligently outside the office. Anna expected a full run down on the appointment from Doctor Charlton but was swiftly dismissed by the words "Sorry Mrs. Gregory, Doctor-Patient confidentiality, you understand?" and just like that he shut the door, Anna's mouth still gaping open expectantly.

Lavinia thought she better engage with Anna before she thought it appropriate to bang on Doctor Charlton's door and beat it out of him.

"He wants me to go back tomorrow, " said Lavinia barely glancing in Anna's eyes.

"Good, that's good isn't it?" Said Anna the nerves apparent in her voice.

Lavinia didn't respond, she knew she had to find the words and after all the tears and tantrums she wasn't sure she would be able to, at least not right now. 

The car ride home was silent, Anna and Lavinia had never been the best at communicating with each other and now their relationship had dissolved into frosty exchanges at best but most of the time their attempts at discussions would turn into a blazing tornado of wills.

Lavinia had never lied to her family about her feelings; she had believed that she was somebody else, trapped, dead, and for as long as she could remember her family would avoid the subject, hoping it would miraculously go away.

Lavinia felt trapped in a life that wasn't hers and without the people who made it, who made her who she was, and in all honesty without them she couldn't understand what the point of it all was. Her family had tried indulging her, telling Lavinia that she should see this second life as a second chance but she couldn't see it that way, she saw it as a curse and a lie.

All that she wanted now was to be free and now, finally to tell her story to someone who would hear her, and she was beginning to wonder if Doctor Charlton would be the one who would listen. She had never told her story to anyone not the whole of it; her faux family had only heard mere snippets and now, after all this time, she was bursting to let it all out.

The posting schedule for The Girl Who Fell Out of The Ocean is every Wednesday and Sunday!

The Girl Who Fell Out of the Ocean is Book 1 in The Ghostly Saga.