Mistress Susan did not rely on theatrics. There was no dramatic snap of the fingers, no elaborate hand gestures or sudden, bombastic commands. Instead, she closed the space between herself and Meredith, and for a breathless instant, stood at her side, letting the electric anticipation of the crowd soak into the fibers of the stage.

“Pay attention to the pauses between my words,” she said softly, her voice so low and smooth that even the humming of the HVAC seemed to quiet down out of respect. She spoke each word with the precision of an artist placing a rare jewel, every pause carrying a weight that invited the listeners - especially Meredith - to immerse themselves in the silence. “You don’t need to understand them. Trying to do so makes it more difficult. Just listen.”

Mistress Susan’s words arrived not as orders, but as invitations, open doors that could be ignored, or stepped through, or observed from a safe distance. The absence of pressure was, paradoxically, a pressure all its own. Meredith’s body responded before her mind did. Her shoulders softened and her fingertips uncurled from the arms of the chair. She felt, acutely, the gentle expansion of her ribs as she inhaled, and the subtle contraction as she exhaled. The process had begun, not with a bang, but with a slow and steady tidal pull.

Mistress Susan’s presence was total, but not oppressive. She crouched beside Meredith, bringing herself just below eye-level. “You may notice thoughts floating up,” she continued. “Don’t chase them. Don’t push them away. Let them pass like leaves on a stream.”

Her hand made a small, rippling gesture, as if to illustrate the point, and Meredith allowed the metaphor to play out in her mind. Leaves, drifting. Water, slow and clear. She almost laughed at herself, but the urge receded as quickly as it arrived.

The auditorium had fallen silent once more. No shifting in seats, no suppressed coughs. Nothing to disturb the bubble forming between Meredith and Mistress Susan. It occurred to Meredith that the rest of the world had receded - her sense of the audience, of the stage, of Dominic (and his eyes, always on her) felt muted, like a distant echo. In its place, now lay a peculiar calm: not the absence of thought, but a redirection, as if her mind was now attuned to a different frequency.

Mistress Susan’s gaze was steady, but not predatory. She looked at Meredith the way a cartographer might regard a blank, uncharted map - curious, respectful, and in awe of what might be discovered. 

“Good,” she murmured loud enough for Meredith to hear. “See how your breath syncs with mine?” She took a slow, purposeful breath, and Meredith did the same, not because she had to, but because it was more natural to go along with it. “Let your body fall into this rhythm,” Mistress Susan went on, her voice so near it seemed to resonate through Meredith’s whole being. “No hurry, no pressure. Just the sensation of settling into the flow.”

Meredith’s eyelids grew heavier with the unusual, tempting ease of letting go of her guard. Her eyes, which had been staring off into space, started to lose focus and soften, moving from Mistress Susan’s face to the lights above to the gentle dance of shadows on the ceiling. She noticed the warmth coming from the stage lamps, the faint smell of dust and metal, and the soft thud of her own heartbeat in her chest. Everything seemed clearer, as if the world was being reduced to its simplest, most basic form.

Mistress Susan spoke again, threading each phrase into the next: “With every breath, you’ll find yourself drifting a little further. Not asleep or lost; simply… elsewhere. Let the boundaries blur.” There was a promise in her tone, a guarantee that nothing bad could happen here, regardless of what Meredith chose to surrender. The honesty of that promise, the utter lack of artifice, was what undid Meredith’s last line of defense. She let go. Not of herself, but of the need to remain entirely herself.

Mistress Susan’s gaze never wavered; her eyes sought Meredith’s with a reassuring steadiness, then drifted away to the ambient lighting, to the delicate shadow play along the walls, and finally to the metronomic pulse of the lights above them - softly dimming, softly rising. 

“See how the lights move?” Mistress Susan said, her voice barely cresting above a murmur, but clear as a tuning fork inside Meredith’s head. The words arrived with a gentling insistence, not coaxing so much as offering a gentle hypothesis that was safe to accept. “Let your thoughts move the same way for me and drift deeper. There’s nothing you need to do except follow the rhythm.”

Meredith became aware, with an almost physical shock, of how the auditorium’s lighting was designed to simulate the slow pulse of breath. The fixtures over the stage would swell with warmth, and fade into a bruised purple while an opposing row glimmered in response, never fully leaving her in darkness but always hinting at it.

Even the exit signs - the only fixed points in her periphery - seemed to blink more slowly, as if time and pace were being negotiated anew just for her. There was a gravity to it: her gaze kept returning to the oscillating lights, her mind tracing the pattern and falling into step with it.

Mistress Susan let the silence do as much work as her voice, sometimes allowing complete cycles of the lights to pass before she spoke again. “Good,” she said eventually, the single word arriving as a reward. “Very good.”

The lights continued to flash slowly. It didn’t matter whether she closed her eyes or left them open; the afterimages danced on her eyelids like phosphenes. There was a strange comfort in this repetition, a sense that she could ride the crest of the next wave indefinitely, always landing in perfect quietness. Mistress Susan’s attention was like an invisible ballast, keeping her tethered to the room even as she drifted further away from herself.

“Let them take you,” Mistress Susan suggested, and it was not a command but a gentle proof. “Let your thoughts ride the pattern of the lights, in and out, until you realize it’s all the same pattern anyway.”

The first real moment of confusion  - small and manageable, but unmistakable - came when Meredith realized she was no longer quite sure how much time had passed. She was present, but the cues she would use to anchor herself (a stray cough, the creak of Dominic’s elbow, a tickle in her throat) had been replaced by the all-encompassing rhythm of the lights and the subtle, persistent undertow of Mistress Susan’s voice.

“If you find yourself wandering, that’s expected,” Susan said, and for the first time, her words sounded as if they were coming from inside Meredith’s brain. “Thoughts will come and go. Allow them to pass through and return to the pattern.”

Meredith nodded. Her perception was changing as she slowly sank into a trance.