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( i've become a visitor )
It takes her an hour, they say, to wander from the moat to the manor, that's why no one's ever seen her in those old hallways until after one o'clock.
She needs to find her way there first.
She remembers herself, but she has forgotten her name (Pauline Ernestine). She knows she is of the manor (Rosengaard), a formerly aristocratic country estate in Western Jutland, Denmark. She remembers her time, but she cannot name the year (1780-1797). She knows she did not die in the fire, but in the moat.
Her gown is always drenched and heavier than her, so she drags her feet through the hallways, every reflective surface she passes on the way seemingly obscured by long gone mire. Seventeen months went by between her surviving the flames and her suicide by water. In that time, she lost a fiancé and all desire to look in the mirror, her face disfigured by horrible burns.
She is searching for a love she can no longer have and a depiction of herself that she cannot find, because her portrait has been moved to the eastern wing, restored after her death.
Her footsteps stop by the doors. She does not go there.