Otherworldly - A Shadowed Awakening

Peak of Autumn, Week 4, Day 5

She gave me a day. A single day to myself. Then the Countess had my world upended.

I awoke to a soft knock on my door, which in and of itself was not unsettling. Then I was kept up by the gentle shaking of metal hinges that followed a half-breath pause. That, still, was not unusual. I have been keeping the door locked, after all. It was the distinct click of unlocking that caught me unaware. Snapping my head up, blue eyes met amber.

“Good morning, my Lady,” Maria smiled softly as she held the door open—revealing several others behind her, “We are here to prepare you for your move.”

What an irritating way to wake up –to someone pedantically calling exile a ‘move’ as if I was simply switching rooms to get a better view of the garden. What had been mildly alarming, waking up to the door rattling, had now become fuel for a bad mood. It did not help that the sea of faces behind Maria were unfriendly. They were hostile in the way strangers often are, in the way that a boss's petulant child makes good gossip, and workers will rally with complaints. And I am under no presumption that I am anything but such a child to them. Even Maria, whose eyes are always soft and whose work is consistently deft, likely thinks nothing more of me than someone she is paid to coddle. I would think the same, after all, were this elsewhere. I would not be the type to love a child that was not my own in all the ways that matter. I am not of Maria’s blood, nor has she nursed me. I am not overly compassionate, nor was the original, and Maria, though she is nice, she is not overly kind. She cares in the way someone who is well compensated is expected to, no more and no less. The understanding of that does not stop the phantom pains of loneliness from radiating from my heart, but they are remnants of a child’s heart –not the heart I had covered in steel from elsewhere.

That has been one of the worst bits. Feeling aches stemming from emotions that have no place in my heart. Loneliness, inadequacy, anxiety. These are not who I am. Even now, as I look across the faces of the help, there are two emotions at war within me –contempt and uncertainty.

A voice, not as far down as I would like, whispers, Why aren’t you getting up? They are w a t c h i n g. The voice is small, and it wavers as it speaks into my mind.

Then there is me. In a voice laced with disgust and outrage, the sound of my own voice thuds against my mind spitting vitriol. Who cares what they think? Let them burn. They work for the Dawns. That is enough for them to be worthless.

It is an odd thing to have two separate voices in your own head. And it is wholly unpleasant.

“The Countess gave me until next week,” I ground out, fighting both voices back.

Maria gave me an indulgent smile, “Before you leave, yes.”

“It has only been a day,” I replied, my voice monotonous even to my own ears, unable to muster enough energy to fight –I could feel in my bones it was a losing battle.

“Yes, now we’ve less than a few days to prepare your items, my Lady,” Maria’s sickly sweet tone was enough to turn my mood from low to the bottom of the barrel.

I forced myself to roll over. I took five seconds. Five seconds to breathe and stare at the ceiling.

“I’m not yet dressed.”

The silence was deafening, and when I glanced at Maria, her amber eyes were pitying. It was as if she was saying, Yes, because that would definitely happen in its own time had we left you to it. It was really a rather rude thing to say with her eyes.

“Very well, my Lady. Do you require aid to get ready, or shall we return in, say, the better part of an hour?”

I looked back to the ceiling as I spoke, “Can it not be two?”

“... it can be two.”

“Fine, no, no aid, I’ll be fine. Please leave.”

Blessedly, they did. The door closed, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally tearing my eyes from the ceiling, I fought to stay awake –even though both suns were well into the sky, marking it as mid-morning at least. After exhausting my mana, I had slept like the dead.

A short time later, I was tying my hair back into two loose braids with soft marine ribbons. I had yet to wear anything other than a nightgown in the time I’d spent hidden in this room. And so it was time for proper clothes. All of which were in the pastel colors of dawn, from pinks to lavenders and periwinkles, and even some richer purples and indigos. I searched through the clothes for something neutral –a brown or grey. Instead, the closest I could find was a pale blue dress adorned with golden embroidery of the two suns revolving around each other. It had a soft yellow ribbon at the waist I could tighten and frills on the bottom of the long sleeves. The hem only went to my knees, so I slid on a pair of stockings matching the soft yellow ribbon. Even the shoes were in the colors of dawn –no browns, tan, or grey, not even black. So I slid into some soft blue leather boots that laced up past my ankles and went to the window.

I still felt I had time before the help would return. An abundance of time. Do I want to remain here, waiting for their uncomfortable return? The answer to that was a resounding No. Not in the slightest.

Back at the bed laid not one but two knit bunnies. One was the purple and silver rabbit that Eunora had knit over a span. The other was smaller and made of pitch-black yarn and iridescent eyes. That bunny had been me. I approached them both and held them up next to one another. The purple bunny was cruder, but I could feel the warmth radiating from within me when I looked into its eyes. Meanwhile, the black bunny had been a hand in the dark to keep me from insanity.

I carefully tucked the purple bunny into the basket below the bed and wrapped my arms around the black bunny. It would be my companion for the day.

“Let’s head to the garden, Noir,” I sighed.

Just as yesterday, I pushed open the window and jumped.

Even with the new clothes, I landed just as I had before, with the soft thud of my heels and the slight bend of my knees. Maybe I expected to feel something, and maybe I did feel something. It could be how the breeze felt fresher than the day before or how my muscles felt more limber after being used two days in a row. It could be how I was taking the sun on my skin or the chill in the air that was sharpening my breath. All of these were things that I hadn’t noticed the day before. Things I had ignored or hated or refused to acknowledge. And maybe that was all the difference.

My heels dug into the ground, and I slipped between the hedges, finding my way to the brick walkway. Rather than returning to the statue of Lyla, I headed in the opposite direction –a memory of a memory guiding me along a familiar route.

-

“Come bunny, let’s find somewhere nice to read,” I whisper gently as my steps softly thud against the stone.

It had been a long day of Eve pushing, prodding, and goading. She was right to, of course, I had been clinging to her, and she never asked for that. But her magelights were just so pretty. I couldn’t help but stare. She wasn’t wrong when she called me a nuisance.

Rubbing my still stinging eyes, I glanced up over the hedge and caught sight of the window to my room. Between the curtains were two maids cleaning the glass panes. I should stay away until the afternoon to give them time to do their work.

The path away from the estate was filled with color –flowers bloomed in every bush and tree branch. There were crimson Sun Shines and indigo Star Flowers, there were the chartreuse Hearts of Sol, and the blush-colored Dovetails. As my feet padded along, I gripped my book tightly, grateful Eve’s latest prank hadn’t destroyed it. She had been practicing her spellwork by cousin Lyla, making her magelights change color as her tutor read the statue's story aloud. Eve had been meant to tie the color of her spell to the story's mood. Once she had spotted me staring, she had their brightness flare with such power that my vision went blurry.

It was a winding path that split off into different directions. The left path led to the side entrance of the barracks, the middle path would meander until it rejoined the left path at the training grounds, and the right path led to more garden. It would pass by several denser areas spotted with clearings meant for such things as mid-day reading trysts. I headed not for the first or second of these clearings but the third. It was in the hopes that no one would continue on so I could settle in and read a tale about Scylla and her Godtouched. This one was supposed to be one of the founding myths of Logos, the empire across the southern sea. It had taken ages before Lina allowed me to take it out of the library.

‘Frivolous and unnecessary,’ Her high-pitched voice had said, ‘You should be focusing on your actual curriculum.’

But supposedly, this one has dragons. So I’d fought Lina for the better part of a month to prove I knew my writing and arithmetic well enough to be ‘frivolous.’ Of course, by fought, I mean I studied the books she had given me well into the night. When she declared I was ‘acceptable’ I politely slid Scylla and her Tydes: A Story of Fortuitous Waves towards Lina. With a disapproving huff, she slid it back and added more arithmetic books alongside it.

‘I want this done within the month,’ She had said.

The books were difficult, with triple-digit addition and even multiplication. Still, reading about the Goddess of Luck’s adventures in the mortal plane was worth it. She was among the few still worshipped in Maeve after the last Divine Revolution, and her history was so cool.

Stepping off the garden path, I slid between one of the hedge archways. Behind the greenery was a small clearing lined with bushes blooming with some kind of lilac flower. There were two stone benches around a table and stepping stones leading toward the setup. But the moongrass that filled the clearing looked soft, with its green and blue speckled blades so lively, so I unwrapped the shawl from around my shoulders and sat atop it.

-

The memory flitted through my mind between one step and the next, a memory so visceral I could still feel the soft moongrass beneath me as I sat and read. Words unknown to me had become familiar, and I gave a small sigh. Memories with Eunora’s essence were different than the dreams that had plagued me during the integration. That had been facts, it was truly just the memory. But walking around, weaving, and re-performing things she had done unlocked something new. It unlocked her thoughts. It reminded me that while I was in control of Eunora’s mind and body, we were one now. I was she, and she was me. Nausea filled me.

I looked at the bunny I was holding, a recreation of the bunny from Eunora’s memory. Noir was pitch black with shining eyes, the yarn reflecting the light into a myriad of colors. It was the opposite of the purple bunny Eunora had carried, with its dark eyes and nose.

It was unlike anything pre-Awakening Eunora could have created.

The garden itself was just like Noir –what had been colorful in memory was dim in reality. As I found myself following the path towards the moongrass clearing, I wondered about this choice. I wondered if the Gods would approve. Stepping backwards, to where the path began splitting, I closed my eyes. I felt the breeze run across my cheeks.

I opened my eyes and spoke.

“[Sophism]”