\ Epilogue: Parallel in Two, Pt. 2 \

The cool midnight air rippled through Marsia’s red-grey locks as she wandered the desert. Each step was a tall task for her mechanical body—she began to hear the whirs and clicks in her joints.

She needed shelter. And truthfully, she was just a little lost.

The stars were wrong, she concluded. They would usually lead her home without fail, no matter how far-off she’d fled. By now she surely should have been seeing the faint lights of her hometown.

But then, her sense of direction had never been stellar. It was possible she’d veered slightly off course.

She crossed the crest of another dune, maybe her thousandth since the laboratory. The desert never changed—endlessly repetitive, as if tessellated.

But over this thousandth dune, she found something new. Not her home, nothing of the sort; but perhaps a way to find it.

A dark figure in the valley kneeled over the glassy sands. Their hood blended into the night—the wind blew lightly across their cloak. She knew immediately this was a scavenger.

“Hello?” she called.

The scavenger snapped to attention, crawled back, and stood up. They held a lantern, only dimly lighting the scene with a warm orange glow.

“Who are you?!” they hissed.

Marsia looked down at where they’d been before. Grains of sand covered what appeared to be another cloak, buried just below the surface. She raised an eyebrow.

“Lonely funeral, this is,” she mumbled. “Would you happen to know the way back to Matamici?”

“Answer my question,” they said. A brazen hand reached into their cloak—she caught a gleam of silver.

Marsia took a moment to think. Her response would dictate their next move; she had no mechanism of defense. She chose the safer play.

“A traveler.”

“Give me everything you own, and I’ll tell you where to go.”

“Brilliant. I don’t own a bloody thing.”

The scavenger approached her, eyeing her. “Whatever this… outfit is, it’ll go for a lot. You know what’s best for you, you’ll hand it over.”

Marsia shook her head. “Bolted to my bones. And you could do with a bit less attitude.”

They grumbled. “What even is it?”

“Good question. I’m not so sure, myself.”

With a jut of their thumb, they pointed to the north-western sky. “You’re only a few miles off. But it’s scavenging hours. Pretty little girl like you should wait it out till dawn.”

“I’ll be just fine. I’m half-demon,” Marsia bluffed.

“…What?”

“Look into my eyes. The red color is a manifestation of my inner malice…”

“Whatever. Get on your way, now. I don’t need any you interrupting what was supposed to be a sacred ceremony.”

Her glowing red eyes glanced at the covered corpse. “I suppose you knew this person?”

“I did.”

“May I ask their name?”

“She wouldn’t want me to say.”

“Well, she’s dead now, mate. You’re heartless enough to steal from an innocent traveler, I reckon you can go against a dead man’s wishes.”

The outcast held the lantern up higher, getting a better look at Marsia. Her vibrant wires and metal coverings certainly looked out of place.

“…She never knew me. She was the kind of person to keep everyone at arm’s length. That’s why she wouldn’t let any of us in the guild speak her name.”

“That’s a silly rule. How would you even talk to her?”

“You wouldn’t. And if you had to, you would never address her by name. It was a privilege even knowing it. But now that she’s gone… we’re not sure what’ll happen to the guild.”

Marsia smiled gently. “My, she had you all twirled around her finger, eh? Sort of glad she’s gone. Maybe that’s a burden lifted for you.”

“Times are hard now. No one respects us anymore. We can barely protect ourselves,” they replied. “But even then, I think I’m the only one who came to pay respects…”

The sands shifted in the blowing winds. Part of the corpse came uncovered, the cloak flapping in the wind—Marsia walked over and slowly tucked the body and cape back into the ground.

“She was a selfish person, then?”

“Hey… you didn’t have to do that.”

“I know,” Marsia replied. “And I wouldn’t have, but… I think it meant something to you.”

They turned away, hood covering their expression. “It did. She would never let us show our faces. I wouldn’t want nature to uncover hers.”

“And this lady… why did you follow her?”

“She had power. Not in the supernatural way, but in the way that made you believe she could do anything. No one liked her, though. You’re right about her being selfish.”

“I know I am. I didn’t have much attachment to Marsia, either.”

The figure turned back around. “That was her name—how did you…?”

“Lucky guess,” she replied, piling the sand over her old body. “Now tell me. What’s your name?”

“…She really wouldn’t want me to tell you.”

“She does want you to tell me. I know that because I knew her.”

The scavenger, out of meandering responses, sat down in the sand next to Marsia and her corpse. They slowly doffed their hood and looked up at the blotchy stars with their blue-grey eyes.

“My name is–”

“Skyler Everly, right?”

They blinked and looked at her with dismay. “Are you a psychic…?”

“No. Just another lucky guess,” she said, propping an elbow on her knee and leaning back. “The stars are such a work of art, aren’t they?”

“I’ve never really thought of them that way.”

“Why not? Too caught up in the war for survival to step back and see the big picture?”

Skyler nodded. “You’re odd. You say such weird things, but you cut right into my heart.”

“It’s the demonic blood,” Marsia joked.

“You’re not serious.”

“No, not at all,” she said. “Who’s leading your guild now?”

“…We don’t have a leader.”

“Everyone for themselves, I bet.”

“That’s right. Some of us stuck together a while, thinking maybe Marsia would come back… but she was dead only a couple miles from the city wall. Raiders found her and tossed the body into our hideout one day.”

Marsia closed her eyes and imagined it—her last memory in this world before now. She’d fallen deathly ill, and selfishly wanting to keep her ailment a secret, she wandered into the dunes. That Marsia had been a fool.

“You know, Skyler, I may be just a traveler looking for directions, but I’m sure I could offer you some direction as well.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Right now, things seem hopeless, don’t they?”

“You have no idea.”

“I have plenty. I lived every day of my life without hope, until I met someone who turned it all around.”

“I’m not looking for a partner,” they said.

“Neither am I,” she replied. “But people need each other. People need friends, even scavengers like you.”

Skyler looked down, sifting through the particles with their gloved fingers. “Who are you to say that would change anything?”

“Well, that same person I met taught me something important. Everything is constantly changing. Every second of every day, people make choices and make changes.”

“Not the way our world is.”

“Especially the way our world is,” she corrected. “Don’t you wish everyone was just a little nicer? A little less bloodthirsty?”

“…Yeah. But that’s not something I can change.”

Marsia gave the scavenger a warm smile. “Yeah, mate. I didn’t think so either,” she said, “so I never tried. No one ever really does.”

“It would be a wasted effort. That’s why no one tries.”

“That’s what we call a hypothesis,” she said, pushing herself up from the sand. “In order to prove a hypothesis, you conduct an experiment.”

“…?”

“I propose you take me back to Matamici. I don’t know exactly what state this guild is in, but if you want to prove you can’t change the world, you’ve got to at least try it first.”

Skyler stood up beside her. “So, what. We’d just… stop protecting ourselves? People out there are evil.”

“Only as a consequence of the world they live in now. If we show people there’s a real chance for change, they might not be so inclined to kill us,” Marsia said. “Though we’ll still fight back, of course. Just not to the death.”

“…I’m willing to take a chance on that,” they decided.

“You were always a risk-taker,” she replied.

“Hm?”

“Nothing. The city awaits us, Skyler. And just maybe, a kinder world, too.”

As she began to walk off into the night, the cloaked scavenger stopped her. They met her eyes with intrigue; she was reminded of the laboratory all over again, of the people for whom she cared so much.

“Hey. I don’t think I caught your name.”

She thought for a moment. She thought of the girl who’d shown her change was possible, even if she hadn’t believed it then. So Marsia turned her head away, and before she took her first step, she told Skyler:

“It’s Arufa.”

Parallel in Two

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