10 ~ August night

Within the void, despite her overflowing feeling of despair and abandon, she saw something.

While lying hopelessly on the roof of the cursed train, her gaze caught a glimpse of something reflecting the glow in the distance.

Something there caught her attention, right ahead in front of her. Even if she already knew that was an illusion of some sort that awaited her, she had to experience it anyway.

Only delusion was waiting for her. She stood up slowly in a rustle of clothing, and nothing else.

She was resigned to suffer again.

Walking in the dark of that balcony above the cockpit, she missed a step and fell. She discovered a damaged floor, almost destroyed. She felt various materials scattered and broken under herself.

She stood up again, on a now slightly leaning floor. Before she could realise where she walked on a floor like that before, she reached the reflected glow.

Esther opened the same door, once more. She pulled back her hand, but the faint sight of the dim corridor burned her mind like a scream. She was back in the first wagon.

Something painful shrank in her chest, incising her mind, as she realised she had only returned to the beginning, and therefore trapped within a large metallic ouroboros.

That train was a giant dead snake, and she was still a trapped parasite on it.

She slammed the door violently, refusing to spend more time with the dead monster.

She grabbed the handrail and gazed at the abyss straight around. Her fingers were trembling so she tightened her grasp and resolve.

She wanted to see something else. Sceneries. Any scenery... Mountains, fields, oceans, sand... Anything, so long as there was real sky above her head, no matter the weather.

Even if it was a during a cold ice storm to suddenly bite her, she would welcome it as the most precious moment of her entire existence nonetheless. To be free...

But where she was, whether she choose what her eyes could see or not, the sight was the same sad darkness.

She was lost. She had to admit it. She was hopeful before, because she knew the place, but now she understood she could feel that way even more in a known environment...

It was illogical and such a pity, feeling even worse because this place was known... She couldn’t give a meaning to that twisted way her fate was turning into.

She wanted to jump off the train, but the dread of falling back into the void was stopping her. But there was nothing left for her to do or hope for in this terrible place... It was decaying, and maybe leaving the train was the best thing to do.

Mary-Esther shivered. Her mind went gradually blank.

Her sadness was overflowing and gaining control of her. As if she was drunk, she slowly lost the control of herself. She gave it up.

In that place, not even ghosts remained.

It was another stain far below reality... Another jagged edge in the abyss of death, another remnant of a beautiful dream unable to vanish in the pit of it.

The train was another memory long gone...

Mary-Esther passed out, feeling herself floating somewhere in the darkness once more.

Wishing to fly...

~

Someone was crying. Crying heartfully. Tears were raining next to her. Someone’s heart was so exposed she felt she could have touched it and its memories.

Someone’s sadness was filling her mind and flowing next to her body.

S - The sadness will continue, right? Please... Oh lord, please... Why? Why must this keep going? I just... can’t suffer through this anymore... I can’t do this anymore... If it has to last longer, for another eternity, please, at least tell me why... Tell me why I am cursed here!

Esther was unable to move or speak. She couldn’t tell her how much she was sharing her sorrow, fear, and sensation that fate was unfair to them.

The tears dripping fell very close to her ears. And when one finally hit her skin, her eyes opened.

The crimson ceiling was covered with moisture and mushrooms. A sharp visage was crying over her, without looking directly at her face.

Esther raised a pale cold hand at the sobbing face, feeling awfully sympathetic and sorry for her.

When she touched Scarlett’s cheek, she only felt cold air. It was not material, it was only coldness and air. But the ghost felt it and showed an expression of wonder.

S - Are you leaving us again...

M - I am sorry you feel that way Scarlett...

Scarlett stood up noticing Esther’s awakening. She wiped her face with her hands, looking awful.

S - Esther... Why... Why is this happening? Why are you... Why are we still... here?

Not alive, just there. Esther slowly stood up from the blanket where she was laying before, and close to Scarlett.

M - I’m not entirely sure... But I believe that I am currently unable to disappear from the world. And I want to use that chance to reach the reality, and make my gains of life and existence in it.

S - You still want to leave... You want to live.

Scarlett felt on the verge of tears again, and Mary-Esther sorry for her.

M - Why are you crying so much?

S - You... You never were alive to begin with. But we... We died! Why can’t we just disappear? I can’t go through feeling these raw things anymore... My mind is breaking apart... I feel terrible. I feel like I’m still dying every second. I can’t stand that pain, that anguish and that awful sorrow anymore!

Scarlett was gasping and sobbing more than crying. She was lost and clearly exhausted mentally.

Esther wanted to do something to help her, to ease her pain and appease her restless soul, but what could she do?

The ghost in front of her was falling apart from the inside. The doll in a damaged dress made a soft step nearer to her. Esther opened her arms and gently embraced her as much as she could.

She felt as if she was holding a bag of air without solidity. She hugged the red haired girl without thinking too much about it; only trying to comfort her.

Scarlett was so surprised, she couldn’t breathe or react for a moment. Held a little tighter, she couldn’t fall anymore. A shoulder and the softness of someone else’s cheek were apparently pushing themselves against her face. The voice she heard then felt as if it was coming fromm all over her enclosed body.

M - I am sorry Scarlett... I won’t leave you here alone... I promise you...

Scarlett couldn’t think straight anymore, a little shocked. She wanted to ask about the blue rose, or Blue, but could only sob for now.

~

When Scarlett felt a little better, and enough to talk, they went to sit on a couch in a random corridor next to the room.

Scarlett was still trembling, feeling on the edge of collapse with her sensibility and emotions much more painful than before. She had changed a little, only feeling worse and imprisoned for too long a time.

Like Esther, Scarlett had spent a time in the darkness on her own before her recent reappearance in the train.

But where Esther felt at home and found hope initially, Scarlett felt right away tortured, and went closer to losing her mind. The suffering was unthinkable.

Being left dead, without any sense or body responding, only with that certainty of fate and the void slowly eating her soul, it damaged her. She was wounded and scared.

Coming back had not done as much good on her as it did for Mary-Esther. Although it meant that another turn had begun in some way.

At least she had somewhat of a body to express some of these painful feelings now. Her body was childish and not quite as matured in years as how she was as she died, but nonetheless hers.

Scarlett looked cautiously at Esther with tired and burnt eyes. She noticed the bloodless wounds, the face of her younger sister now damaged with scratches and more.

Esther’s left eye was a little ripped on the outer side, although she seemed unaware of it.

Esther’s chestnut and red hair was of slightly lighter shade than Blue’s was however. Scarlett could notice the details that made her now more of a Blue’s lookalike than her exact replica. Scarlett looked back at herself and admitted again sadly she still looked like a juvenile child.

S - If I still look like that... Does it mean it is your dream, since the beginning?

M - Probably...

S - You couldn’t save our lives... But you took our souls with you?

M - I’m not sure of what I did before I had this body and this consciousness honestly. All I can be sure about is what I will do from now on with it.

Scarlett looked away, conflicted again.

S - Elise is probably somewhere else close by then. And Arlweyn too maybe...

M - You think? Unlike you I can’t remember her appearance. I can recall her voice a little, and her dolls. I recall a little her work and presence, but not quite her as a person...

S - Then why me and Elise?

M - I don’t know. I’m not sure!

Esther acted between shy and annoyed, making it weird to see. It was as if she suddenly felt too shameful to admit she had a crush on another child as a kid.

S - You loved Blue & Rose the most, but you didn’t dislike the time when Elise & I played with you before... Is that it maybe?

M - Possibly... My feelings for anyone were mostly what people holding me felt themselves for that thing or other person. We may have scared and hurt each other Scarlett, but I always liked you both nevertheless... And now these feelings are mine only. I’m building my own personality now, but I kept my feelings for you.

Scarlett felt rather uneasy hearing this. Her cheeks were turning a little red unwillingly. She looked away, standing up.

S - You are still a little childish Esther... But maybe now you will be able to mature on your own terms... We should go look for Elise at least now, shall we?

Esther agreed and went with her. They walked inside the forsaken place, this time together.

~

Even hell would change with someone by your side. Through these dead sceneries, the two seemingly young girls walked side by side.

Even though one was dead and the other never came to be alive. And yet they were sharing words and looked a little alike, and after one another. They seemed alive, at least to each other.

Both of them were on a path to defy reality, and maybe god’s design too.

Esther was now seemingly gathering some souls of the dead, when nothing else seemed to care about them.

The two ghastly beings still seemed rather downtrodden, walking rather slowly toward the end of the library.

Their steps made little sound on the damp and rotting carpet. As they walked over shards of glass they both had reflections around them. From where they stood and acted, they could both pass for humans.

Only between them and their awareness of reality however, it was only slightly disturbing to notice the presence of light and water, and everything else when it made no sense. And no one else but them could share and understand this weird and unpleasant sensation.

Esther opened the airlock door for Scarlett. Scarlett stepped in and opened the next one to Esther, without a word. They could now progress faster together.

In the collapsed stairway, Esther left herself fall as if she was willing to kill herself.

Scarlett couldn’t hold her scream, and thankfully saw soon after that horrifying sight that the strange being was already standing up below. Scarlett scolded her loudly for her reckless behaviour, no matter how she felt.

Then without other choice to get down, Scarlett accepted Esther’s offer, and left herself fall to be caught by her arms.

Esther easily caught Scarlett, as if she was weighing nearly nothing. She felt like wind against her hands, maybe with an uneven sensation of pulse for the short moment she really held her entirely.

They thought that Elise might be back in the restaurant, so they planned to head that way first.

They climbed over the rubbles of the catwalks and reached the second wagon’s second floor airlock.

The two of them entered what was once the clean restaurant.

The tables were now so rotten they had crumbled under their own weight where they previously stood. Large mushrooms were growing everywhere ominously.

The place looked like a forest in the dark, with far fewer glittering pieces of silverware or glassware here and there.

They went across it without paying much attention. In the first wagon, they found only dirt and wild grass.

There were no rooms to visit anymore. They would cross that hollow place and reach the stairway below the balcony. It was crushed by the cockpit of the train, but they might get to the floor above through there.

Then, passing their old rooms, maybe they would find Elise in the other restaurant...

While doing so, they talked a little more, following more questions from Scarlett.

S - Why this train? What was this place meaning to you? Esther...

M - It was a place Georges had loved... It had meant a lot to him. So, it eventually meant a lot for me as well, unknowingly. The real train that inspired this place disappeared some twenty years ago... Assuming we’re still in 1921.

S - Why a train? Why not our house?

Esther had strong and vivid memories about that place now returning to her. Everything looking gigantic from her biased perspective. However the fumes and then flames were the next thing to rise in them.

The pictures in her mind were becoming blinding fire, flames rolling along the walls.

Death was feeling too close, and it was a painful memory resurgence.

M - I... I was close to you when the fire killed you... I’m tormented by that memories... I was probably scared of ever going back to that place, even in a dream. Moreover when the shrouded memory of that train remained as a nice fantasy somewhere older in me... For us... I probably wanted that past ride to last longer... You probably know the feeling... Dreaming to be in a place you enjoyed, and live through it longer, once again...

S - I know what you mean... But I still don’t understand why we would have been dragged here.

M - I can’t say for sure... I wasn’t conscious when it all began. But since we were all near each other at the dreadful time, maybe I prevented you as well from falling entirely in the real end below...

S - I... I’m not sure I should be grateful so far... Experiencing this false life has mostly been an awful experience for us.

M - Maybe... I hope I will find a way to make it up to you somehow...

They climbed through the ruins and reached the place they wanted to see.

Thankfully they found themselves right and reunited. Elise was there.

The seemingly younger girl with blond hair was still lying unconscious in the middle of the swamp that area had become.

She was asleep but seemed in pain as well. Like Scarlett, her heart and mind were damaged by the nil. The void was slowly dissolving her identity and sense of self as well.

Esther plunged her hands in the green moisture without care for her own safety, to pull Elise out of the spongy dampness. Scarlett soon could call and shake her sister softly to wake her up.

Elise opened her large green eyes and saw Scarlett first. Her expression didn’t change when she then saw Esther and her ripped face. She simply understood nearly instantly what had happened to her, and where they all were now.

She realised more deeply her mistake and her eyes teared as well.

E - So the dreamer really was you... It never was Blue...

~

Esther waited in the rooms wagon for the sisters to show up.

Scarlett had wanted for a moment alone with Elise, to talk about the situation.

A moment without her...

It was frustrating. She understood a little how they felt and was sorry for them. However having to wait for them and feeling cast aside, outside, it felt awful.

Esther couldn’t stand still, knowing they were just there in the next room.

She went to the restroom with the vain idea to wash her hands meanwhile, but found quickly that no water would flow anymore in that place. Not like that.

A piece of the broken mirror was still functioning however.

Mary-Esther took a good look at herself. She saw how damaged her skin and her face were. Her left eye couldn’t move very well in her reflection, while she felt that her gaze could still go anywhere normally.

She cautiously pressed her fingers against the cut near her eye. She blinked by reflex but could push her fingers further without feeling any real pain.

From her face, she felt the touch of human hand. But from her fingers now plunging into the wound and ripping even more her cheek, she felt the stuffing from a cloth doll again. Between her fingers, a wooden shard got caught. She pulled out that long foreign element that was paralysing parts of her face. She then tossed this thing long as a nail away from her head and into the sink.

It was not bloody, nor even humid at all. She was all dry inside there.

A body like that wouldn’t be able to exist in reality, but where she was, well, she was there...

She plucked some stuffing back into her head. She then realigned her eye to move normally again.

Looking at herself again, she saw how poorly she took care of her body since realising her condition. It was pitiful.

Even if it was not what she really wanted, that was all she had for now.

The more logical and intelligent thing was still to put it to good use with some proper care.

That thought and decision brought her to reconsider the amount of care and preservation she would give it. Because she clearly had been wasting it carelessly.

Elise had had come around while she was still looking at herself with a blank expression over her face. This was a mockery of reality, or an imitation of arguable quality.

But that was still the highest milestone yet on her grander ambition.

E - Esther... We are ready. Where do you think we should go?

M - Outside... We should try leaving this place behind.

Climbing through the damaged parts of the ouroboros, where the tail met the head, they managed to go back to the balcony. Elise had a lighter with her for some reason. It was not bringing a lot of light in the dark, but was enough so far.

Elise looked around and recognised the area as well. That was where she had indeed first appeared, along with Scarlett. They thought they were in some purgatory, but the first thing they encountered were the odd little monsters.

Elise tried to chase off these memories, but she was unable to find peace. She was building up her stress permanently. Nothing was relaxing or comforting in this situation, except not being alone.

She was a little more scared of everything past and present at every moment, growing restless. She spoke again with a trembling voice.

E - So... Are we going to look for mementos of someone’s life?

M - We’re more searching for a way out, a clue out of this riddle or maze.

S - The train is drawing a circle, right? Is it standing on a ground?

M - We can’t see the ground, but I don’t think the whole thing is exactly suspended in mid-air or endlessly falling either. From what I understand of that side of the world where we are, I don’t think we are in an infinite space.

More as if they were stuck inside a bottle, only it appeared gigantic from the inside.

E - I guess... That’s a good way to start... Obviously.

They were bitter and nervous, but Esther could relate to that as well.

M - I know how much geography is an illusion in here, but I believe we can find something else than the train in that... Place. Something like a trail, for a way out.

E - Why are you talking about geography? Where are we?

M - Well... For me, the abyss is below, and reality stands far above us. So I’d instinctively would look for a way upward.

S - Like heaven for us then... Anyway, I’m wondering if there might be something inside the circle? Something like... I don’t know.

M - I think it’s a good idea. At least it’s the only part of this place that is really defined by something else. Maybe the train and us were attracted by something there?

E - You thing that ghosts and dreams obeys the law of gravitation?

M - I am sure of nothing Elise... I’m just piling up the hypothesises I can find one after another just like you, since the day you grabbed my hand around here.

E - None of us understood what was the truth then. Do you believe we are a little less wrong now?

Esther did. Elise was recalling her past decision and understanding and how wrong they had been.

They were evolving somehow, albeit struggling. Because they were still able to think and react rationally, despite the situation. Even if every belief could be wiped out in an instant by the void.

For now it was probably the best course of action to investigate the centre of the circle and spin.

The place was not exactly bound to obey the laws of physics and logic as they recalled them, but for the most part, it did. They could rely on that. Therefore, they hoped there was a ground below the train; and maybe something else inside the ring it drew.

With her pen, Elise wrote on the pieces of paper she had kept carrying around some calculations.

With a lot of approximations, knowing the number of wagons and their approximate length, she did an estimation of the ring size.

Roughly two hundred metres in diameter. Probably a little less than that.

Mary-Esther felt some melancholia, looking at them. Scarlett, under the dim light seemed about to cry over her own death, but held herself as composed as possible.

Elise, scribbling before her, looked like another sorrowful ghost re-enacting endlessly something she had been stuck doing before passing.

Something now perhaps meaningless, but stuck on her like a fragment of a movie repeating itself.

They together looked like a false dream continuing to roll after it should have ended. Their reality of script was at a lower level even than dreams.

Scarlett had been right, Mary-Esther thought. Sadness would continue...

~

They were not free yet.

A deep sadness would continue to creep over them and threaten their sanity, so long their existences remained unrealistic.

Every surrounding shade was filled with sadness. A sorrow was permeating from them like moisture coming out, overflowing in this depth of the world, filling it up to the brim from below.

This foreboding emotion felt like a reminder that failure was the only logical outcome in their situation.

It was feeling heavy on all of them, inciting to give up and cry more than anything.

An emotion of which Blue got a taste of during her short time spent around Esther’s true being. A feeling she might have brought a stain home with her, as a lingering memory.

That sadness of resignation in the face of doom, that last moment together, it was the most important memory for both beings in a way...

They were separated, but both returned to their respective ground with a stain from that sadness in between, carved as a memory in them.

Mary-Esther was going with Scarlett and Elise, the strange ghosts also still standing.

They were trying to find their way together, maybe as family. Trying to find an unlikely way ahead or above, away from that lingering mist of sadness.

She knew that somewhere, somewhen, Blue was making the same.

Along with the remains, with her own scars of that moment they shared. Perhaps with a new family, Blue would also be gradually moving on and away from that mist in the rift.

Mary-Esther and her two sisters friends, checked the ground below with a pole, and jumped into the darkness together. A leap of faith. Her feet reaching another ground soon.

In an entire dark world, feeling an uncanny thrill. Standing up blind, but willing to face what lied in there.

She was still thinking about Blue, certain that she was moving forward too in her life.

Somewhere, Blue was living, maturing, evolving. She was living on and on, straying further away from a sadness she might never entirely forget.

While Esther had been falling, followed by the cold pressure of air of ethereal hands soon reaching her again.
Mary-Esther’s thoughts were still straying toward her. She closed her eyes, confident that if only but one thing was ever to be true, it was her love and care for Blue.

She could cry again, from relief that she at least was gone.

For a moment, as she stood there in the void, holding the two ethereal hands, she felt that she was not falling, but rather flying.

~

A few steps further away from the train, they fell into what felt like a cliff and a pool of water. The ground had just abruptly betrayed them, as if it had stopped existing suddenly.

Mary-Esther panicked, less from the fall and more from being suddenly immerged in water. She tried her best to swim back to surface, with little success.

As fear was flowing into her body like the water did, a warmer touch pulled her up. She reached the surface and regurgitated the water already filling her insides.

She couldn’t see them, but she understood that Elise and Scarlett were swimming ahead, while carrying her.

Esther was speechless, and let herself follow their lead, being carried over the waters by them.

Thankfully soon enough after, they could walk again, and Esther did too. She tried to thank them but only water came out of her mouth. She crawled over the rocks away from that shore.

Their feet could step over a mix of sand and pebbles.

Slowly as they walked further, the water level was fading down. Scarlett helped Mary-Esther standing up again. Elise also grabbed her hand to pull her forward.

They didn’t talk much yet, too focused on pushing walking ahead.

They could begin to see a glow. They walked to it. They were feeling frozen from that short swim in that impromptu body of water.

They gradually reached what was like a small island of sand, protruding slightly like a hill above this shore and water. Above that dimly visible surface, the glow in the air stood shapeless, maybe like moonlight through a cloud.

That place was the centre of the ouroboros. That glow did come from rays of light piercing from above, through fumes and mists down there. They could confirm as they stepped over the sand there, looking around and above them.

Far above, cloudy, a small light was noticeable like a dim star.

They were in a large circular cave apparently. The architecture, or the lack of it, could be guessed from this small island in its centre.

Although now that they were here, they had some faint perspective of circular walls protruding out of the water and rising high like towering cliffs into the sky.

There will multiple and high arches above the water, opening to way outward like the one they came from.

And now in this surreal circular shore, they could gaze at their surroundings and the ceiling too high to clearly see.

In this giant cave, the only thing to see was their footsteps in the sand of that soft slope of an island in the apparent centre. And more importantly, there was the source of light also dimly noticeable above their head.

That sand reminded Mary-Esther of something or somewhere far older. She let go of the two hands she had held, to crouch and get a pile of that golden sand in her hand.

That mineral dust felt warm, the feeling was the same. It was not sand, but rather dry earth...

S - What is this place Esther?

M - I’m not sure... But this sand comes from a place on Earth I knew...

A place before she had been Gülnihal, and even before she had become a doll?

The place where a part of her very being started... Her cradle.

Esther looked around but saw nothing else clearly defined.

Scarlett and Elise were still dripping wet and anxious looking, awaiting some word from their guide.

M - I don’t know about that light above, although that would be my aim... As for this sand, I’m not sure if it really matters, but I think it’s from the place where I was born.

~

They had spent some time resting over that sand. Long enough for even Mary-Esther to fall asleep while trying to dry her wounds. It wasn’t exactly as fevers, but she fell asleep in unsettling dreams.

She found herself struggling against darkness and nil. Again, the true nothingness seemed eternal, chipping away at her body and sanity without mercy.

However softly, eventually, an odd voice coming from above or below reached out to her.

- You... What... are you? Being?

A poor voice with a foreign accent. Esther couldn’t reply in this state however.

- Name... Name? You... Name?

Esther couldn’t reply. Was she dreaming?

With that thought, the voice from the abyss suddenly changed, and Mary-Esther managed to reply.

- What is your name?

M - Esther... You... I can feel you are lost too, far below reality... You are another being like me...

- Did... I failed? Did the reality... died?

The question was awkward, but she did not seem to be a native English speaker anyway.

M - The world still exists, far above us... Don’t lose hope, one day we will reach it... Someday, I will come to life...

The thoughts behind the other voice were moved a little. Esther had that feeling.

The soft voice coming from below was now fainter. It was trapped as she had been, in the depths of the abyss, even further below her now...

- You... Thank you for bringing me a glimpse of hope. I can feel you are leaving. You... You are such a marvellous being... Estha. It’s too bad you are already waking up.

M - What is your name? I’ll try to help you too rising!

- I’m...

Esther thought she heard the voice singing something light. She didn’t catch its meaning.

- You cannot help me, Estha... It’s best, if I disappear... But I feel, so relieved... I am glad hearing and glancing at the being you are. It gives me solace. I am forever grateful to you, telling me that reality did not disappear a long time ago, along with me...

Mary-Esther called out to them, but waking up suddenly.

Her hand grabbed Scarlett’s dress as she was right next to her.

S - Have you had a bad dream?

M - I... Was I dreaming?

S - You’ve been asleep for hours now. Our little journey seemed to have exhausted you.

They were still in the cave, on the warm sand and earth in the middle.

M - Either that was a dream... Or a contact with another one...

S - Another one?

Esther glanced into Scarlett eyes. They seemed a little dark.

M - It seems... We may not be the only ones surviving below reality... There might be others who have fallen like us, and are struggling their way out. What just spoke to me, if it wasn’t just my imagination, it’s deeper in the fall than we are currently, but it existed before. It once was...

S - Others, like us? It’s altogether a little reassuring to hear so, and quite frankly disturbing...

Esther understood her feeling of worry.

M - Where is Elise?

S - Finding the way ahead, up there...

Esther looked up ahead and then upward. Where Scarlett pointed at, along the cliff walls of the cave.

The dim glow far up above them was their next step to reach, although Esther had not thought on how to proceed just yet.

And to her stupor, she saw the frame of Elise climbing along the rocks making the ceiling, with unexpected skill and persistence. Esther was stunned seeing her so high up already, in what would be risking her life beyond measure otherwise.

She might be going to make it...

S - She might actually succeed.

M - Scarlett...

S - What is it?

M - You sound colder... Did something happen?

Scarlett was embarrassed and unhappy. She walked a step away and crossed her arms in annoyance. Esther sat, wondering now. Did Scarlett look a little older now?

S - While you were unconscious, we had a little of an argument.

M - Why?

S - We... Fear that your success... A way or another, if you do, we also fear the consequences and meaning of it...

M - I was never alive like you were... Wouldn’t you like to come back to life as well? Like Isâ ibn Marym? What was he called again...

S - Who? Anyway, no, no... It would be a crime against every law of god and nature. I know it’s your goal, but I can’t make it mine.

M - Why? Would the gate be just there, would you honestly refuse to cross it?

Scarlett was puzzled, tormented in her beliefs. She feared that time could come to be. She feared what it could mean to have dead people simply walking back from their graves.

That was just not possible.

S - I fear and hope that such a door would not be left unattended by some dangerous powers you’d better not cross...

M - You are scarred. I can understand why. I’m sorry you feel that way Scarlett. Your choice is yours, but mine... I will not renounce it....

S - When you were sleeping... We feared we would just disappear. But when we realised we did exist independently from your awareness, we became scared.

M - Scared... That I might eventually succeed.

Scared of what reality above could become, if the dead came to gain life.

Dreaming about heaven was always sweet. Dreaming of power, dreaming of our lost ones.

Dreaming of beating nature and god by achieving something impossible. There was no harm in wishing for it... But at the same time, in that odd place, two ghosts began to genuinely fear it might come to become true.

What would it mean for history, if such an impossible thing actually happened?

Nothing, at best. But everything wrong, at worse...

Everything of the world they knew could change, and maybe not for the best. If such a thing was to happen, some truth would be shattered.

More than Esther’s life, it was the real world that would change...

But on the other hand, Scarlett could not lie too much to herself.

If at the end of her dark journey she was to end up facing a doorway toward the world she once knew...

She would wait, look around in the darkness, ponder eternally and take glimpses of the other side. But in the end, she would take a last look to that silent purgatory, and cross the way out from that looping nightmare. If there was truly nothing, being from hell or heaven, guarding such a door, she would definitely go through it.

She would try to return after them...

She felt cursed and guilty. Her emotions were raging and hurting her mind and sense of responsibility, but it was clearly two antagonistic wills prevailing within her thoughts.

Esther was going for it anyway, and Elise was sold on it too now...

Could such a thing really be?

A way out...

~