19 ~ December night. Wing 2

One way or another...

She was soaked, under the unending rain. Mary-Esther was looking upward at the few stars behind the curtain of rain.

Dozens of metres above the ground, on a frail catwalk linking places across the pit, there was a small construction made from the leftovers of the light ceiling. Mary-Esther wasn’t worried anymore about getting wet.

She wasn’t much afraid of anything anymore beside the abyss itself.

Her cold eyes opened to the rain, as she was clenching her fists. Once again she was defying the place, trying to climb.

Prayers didn’t work, but actions hard to explain did. She couldn’t exactly describe what it was she was doing.

She was breathing in long, and then yelling as loud and strong as she could, stretching her large wing to get blood pumping faster and warmer, lifting her arms along in a tenser fashion.

It was akin to a war cry, a powerful scream that emphasized her will through her wing.

When she was eructing this way, engaging her entire body as tensely as possible with every muscle, nerve and sinew, focusing on expressing something outward and a will more than her voice out of herself, things did react in queerer ways than normally should.

The sounds from her voice became odd, as if echoing with itself and suddenly fading. The sounds dimmed, even though she was yelling. And at the same time, more than sweat, ethereal vapours seemed to leave her and twirl, reshaping the space around her ever so slightly.

And above all, through her wing she could feel that sensation of connection and creation, changing something no longer in her, but around her. As if her veins were spreading very slightly like growing stems outside of her body, a little further out, and changing reality.

In these moments when she pushed out her will with as much force and energy as possible, things all around were becoming weird. She felt the world around her trembling and tremors growing. The sounds were vanishing, the drops of water were deviated and falling away from her temporarily.

Her body was losing all its weight rapidly, making her hair and clothes flutter differently than winds could cause. In the peak of it, she could even have her feet lose contact with the ground, and be hovering just there for a few seconds of quaking.

She felt the world here and beyond, softening a little together, around these spots here and above that her wing was apparently more vividly connecting.

What happened above, she couldn’t see nor say.

Down there, these events were reshaping in ripples the world, making some wishes come true each time.

Materials appeared or changed place suddenly. Furniture also suddenly was there in places, or what had been burnt or damaged previously was being restored. New items could be found in drawers and dressers.

And more importantly, new floors became accessible above.

In a sudden burst of wind, the whole colosseo was cleaned, reorganised and extended. Only the walls couldn’t move, nor the rain.

The downpour rarely stopped or changed. Only sometimes there was more fog, and other times more thunder.

This new experience reaching its end, the trembling of the world around her calmed down, and her body weight returned. Mary-Esther fell to the ground and to her knees, recovering her senses and her breath slowly.

The sound of the rain returned first. The sight shifted from the pure absence, possibly white, to usual colour and shapes slowly after. She was at the same place as before, but once again she had pushed a little further the titanic cork above this hole blocking apparently her way out.

She felt powerful.

And then she felt bad about it. Her struggle, her long struggle, it was changing her and she could feel it. She now found a twisted pleasure in prevailing against all darkness and her own doubts.

Her emotional balance had shifted a little from pure will of survival, to a kind of lust for triumph. She liked the sensation of it, yet felt bad about this prideful feeling.

The kind young woman she had thought she had been was now letting more room to the angry part of herself that rebelled against the injustice of never having been alive. Her fists were clenched, feeling that kind of bitter anger fuelling her, mixing with some pleasure to the sensations of prevailing against all odds and even the reality of the world.

As much as she wanted to be wise to survive, the sensation of winning through strength and confidence, it felt impure and nice.

Since what was now working in moving things was in her somewhat aggressive outbursts, she felt less the need to be patient and wise at the time being. She was allowed to let herself go all out like a spoiled child.

Mary-Esther was a little more aggressive in her perspective on things, since Blue was coming back to talk to her. The shift was gradual as with everything else.

And despite her previous fears about it, she was now using more and more this raw strength she discovered through her wing to rise, instead of any other subtler or slower way.

Since she was actually succeeding in claiming new levels at each and every time she did this, they were indeed climbing faster and more reliably higher.

But now Esther’s mood was shifting just as much as the walls themselves were shivering and whispering, insecure.

That had been the oddest change for her. Mary-Esther was now able to hear thoughts emanating from the walls around her. Not exactly direct words like somebody speaking, but rather feelings, random pieces of ideas or memories, and moreover a reflection of herself, her deeper self.

The fear she heard from the walls against her work came mostly from herself in truth, and she could recognise it.

The walls were more and more and continuously echoing some little parts of her inner doubt and worries, but that was not all they had to share.

That place was something else, and what Mary-Esther was doing was revealing more aspects of it. There was more to the walls themselves and this hole, that she didn’t fully understood. Despite that, she was more and more rashly forcing her shortest way out.

On that time, for that brief moment of exhaustion and confusion after the event, when she was recovering her senses under the rain, she had the thought again. For that moment when she was shivering, trying to catch her breath back like any powerless being after a dangerous effort, there soaked and freeing, she wondered again if her current doing was the good choice to make.

~

When Blue was visiting, Esther kept spending her time with her, telling her the tales she had some recollections of first of all. They mostly talked in these times, like friends seeing each other occasionally. Sometimes they wandered around, but what they could still best offer to each other was talking.

Even if Mary-Esther had had the power to bring Blue to a pleasant flowery meadow, or exotic beach, it would not have been important to Blue.

Blue was coming there to see Esther, and as it was a dream for her, nothing else but Esther was truly important.

It was a little painful to know she was living in a place that was nothing more than a human dream, although that was only a hypothesis. Esther was driven to escape from that condition clearly.

A dream... Was it? They wondered, not entirely convinced by the idea. Perhaps it really was something else that Blue was for some reason able to reach as well from another end?

The wonders came not only from Esther and the sisters trapped with her, but also a little from the other side and Blue herself.

One day, Blue voiced that same concern they had for a long time, but from the other perspective.

It sounded a little insensitive toward Mary-Esther.

B - Maybe this is all a dream...

M - Did you know that the Ertuğrul’s admiral was called Ali Osman Pasha when it sailed off toward Japan?

B - I... don’t think I did.

M - Then hopefully, it’s not simply a dream.

B - Now that you say this, it reminds me of something we discussed with Rose.

Blue asked her for more and other information she couldn’t possibly have learnt otherwise.

Details Esther recalled about these names of people she had never studied, and details she likely had never heard, around that ship that left Portsmouth back in February 1865. Who had been Ertuğrul long before that, before his name was given to a ship in his honour.

And how Esther’s older name had been Gülnihal, in honour to a musician uncle in the country, and on her later years confirmed after a painter’s work in Britain.

Blue always had thought that her old name was just a different kind of foreign monicker, without deeper meaning to it.

M - Long before you gave me my name, I was Gülnihal thanks to these two very different men... Unfortunately I never had the chance to be held by them, so I don’t know more about them. Only that the musician lived before me, and the painter one caused to confirm my name then, when your father was holding me.

B - You know, I’ve held you dear in my hands as well... But there is nothing left of you today. All the cloth, the porcelain, it’s all gone.

M - Hm... And yet I remain... What if... Perhaps?

Mary-Esther thought about something and realised there was maybe something left. Something that could have escaped.

Blue saw Esther’s odd wing stretching.

It was reminding her a little of how a dog would have wailed its tail.

Mary-Esther had learnt that when Rose found her, or it, there was barely half of the doll remaining. She had found recognisable scraps.

Blue had actually been carrying some other part into town, while in her daze at the time. She had kept on these remains until her train accident.

Mary-Esther was thinking back about the part of the ribbon that made her. Maybe there was a slight chance that the piece of cloth that had been her root or seed within, was still somewhere?

B - I think you were hit by the flames, and I...

M - You picked up something, and left. Did you see the ribbon?

B - I honestly don’t remember. All I have left are glimpses of flames, smoke, and an urge to head outside...

The tied ribbon somewhere, much older, that kept the doll wrapped as a promise and blessing. Something light, maybe untied now, maybe it flew somewhere when she had been ripped.

Maybe that was the piece of herself she could still feel moving above somewhere...

Blue left that day with the idea to check what she had learnt, and also to look a little further for that old ribbon, no matter how little hope there was left.

Mary-Esther watched her fly away in a bolt of light and colours, envious.

She stretched her wing again, nervously.

Each encounter was an opportunity of huge changes, filled with excitement and worries.

Blue was gone, night had fallen again, and she was exhausted.

But maybe would find that ribbon, and something she couldn’t imagine yet might change everything for her then; and for Blue as well...

~

I - That ribbon... Is mine...

Someone she could barely see was holding it, keeping it for herself.

Had it been a dream? It smelled of ashes and warm smokes.

Mary-Esther woke up blinded by the sunlight.

She was still in her bed and in a room, but the light blinded her. It felt awfully odd so suddenly.

Someone shining like a saint was holding her ribbon, with the little knot on it.

M - That’s mine!

Esther had yelled in instinct, standing out from the bed and jumping at it. But the hand was letting it go with the wind, and it disappeared, along with the clarity of the dream.

Mary-Esther was finding herself waking up in a jolt from an odd bad dream. She had sweat, she felt cold and shivering, she had teary eyes, but the light was gone and so was the awful feeling.

She felt that she would never had let go of her ribbon, had she had the chance to hold it...

She wanted to run after it. She went after it in a sudden rush, space changing around her.

The hallucination had changed setting completely as she now saw only darkness and night, with an odd door glowing in front of her.

She felt herself drawn to the front door to open it, noticing dancing glows and warmth behind.

She opened it, and the door slammed itself open against her.

Mary-Esther found herself in front of a sudden blaze, almost panicking because of how real it felt. She only knew it wasn’t, but it still felt all too real.

She was in front of a corridor with fire crackling. She saw budding flames rushing along the ceiling.

The air coming from the dark night outside was cold and rushing in. In exchange, the blaze was spitting blazing particles and dust everywhere around.

There was a crumbling corridor upfront, with the shape of someone lying down and immobile.

The fumes were rolling from some materials burning nastily around.

A blackened door she didn’t saw on her right simply fell down. Another stream of fumes engulfed itself into the opening, carrying more fragments along, then including a ribbon along.

Startled, her hand had caught the flying ribbon with surprise, but not kept hold of it. She had been too surprised with everything else happening everywhere around to keep hold of it. She saw it flying off again.

Esther was confused about what had happened, but now again only felt the instinct about it.

M - That’s mine!

The weirdest of sensation of splitting was running along with her in a rip.

She felt as if the body of that person standing there, and the thought she came out from, as a soul, was suddenly ripped apart from each other. She felt as if her body had refused to move inside, and only her torn soul had done so, abandoning her past body to the dark of the night behind.

Which much to her horror, turned around and ran away from her and the fire.

She was left there, abandoned on the ground, powerless and alone in a world she couldn’t understand.

She had felt painfully like a soul or an organ ripped away from its host body, but she was also feeling now like a newborn baby abandoned in that fire... She was going to die.

Gathering the little strength she had, she passed the kitchen door and went further into the burning and smoked house, after the ribbon...

She wandered by the hellish corridors until she found herself on the other side, also leading outside. She had found the flying ribbon, but now there was something else to witness that felt almost more important.

She had the sensation of seeing someone leaving the house from there, hardly walking anymore, exhausted and coughing. She looked numbed, dizzy and confused. She was about to collapse at every unsteady step. Her hands were clenching on burnt pieces of cloth ripped from somewhere.

She had just barely escaped the house burning with her life between her own hands herself.

Mary-Esther felt the shock, as she recognised Blue, and the thing she was trying to carry out, mindlessly.

In her own series of shocks on that old fateful night, Blue had tried and failed to save Esther...

Esther was now feeling so ashamed for her selfishness, so sorry for this vision of the past Blue she somewhat recalled. She tried to reach her, to hug her, to help her...

That was the last memories of the doll then ripped apart she had been as Esther.

Everything collapsed, and Mary-Esther woke up.

~

Mary-Esther thought back about these confused memories and visions, recalled into lucid dreams for her.

She had seen that hand reaching out to her, and holding the ribbon like her soul and heart for a moment.

Then the hand had released it, leaving the small thing vanish away as if it had not mattered at all.

She could still feel that pain, carved in her heart as if she had been taken away and then abandoned, left to die. She had run after all she could hold of herself, trying desperately to survive...

She had coursed along trying to find it, rushing, running, lost honestly. Until someone, something else felt like the harbour and saviour to hold onto in front of her...

Blue... She had found Blue, only Blue.

More than her ribbon, now that she had felt uprooted, only Blue mattered to her instead...

Mary-Esther had woken up from this dream and thoughts buried under a pile of ashes.

She coughed as she rose away from it, covered with them from head to toes.

At least she was fine, but apparently some of that dream had followed her into the colosseo building.

Wearing working clothes to dig around the ashes, she found Scarlett and Elise as surprised to see her as she was to find them in the same place.

The whole room had turned to blazes for a moment, and they had come afterward to investigate.

Everything was now gone in there, its ceiling and walls now soot black, but everything else outside was as usual fine.

~

Elise dropped the scarf covering her face against the ashes in the air.

They had left the room and were now in that large and high hallway between their rooms.

The sisters were covered with filth around their face, and Mary-Esther was looking worse.

She was following them, wearing only a coat Elise had lent her for now. They were feeling a little cold and odd.

It was a fleeting moment when no one was sure about what happened or what to say.

Esther was walking mindlessly, still ruminating her thoughts, thinking about what she saw, what was a part of her memories. It had felt as a little more than a dream. As if her subconscious mind had dug through the ruins for information about the topic that had mattered to her. An important memory related to her precious ribbon.

The fire had felt vivid. It was a memory holding a large amount of emotions and truth about herself, about her life. She was wondering how to manage that important memory, feeling uneasy about it now that she could value it.

Seeing Blue leaving, unsteady and frail, and going to touch and help her, helping herself as well, it had felt important.

She couldn’t fully explain her reasoning at the time, but it had been one of her saddest memories.

Why would she be so sad as to cry, when she was seeing her loved one, and closer to fulfil a dream of getting to be there, in her reality?

Scarlett & Elise saw these droplets running across the ashes stuck on her skin, and falling somewhere along her neck as she walked.

Why was it so sad for her? A little more of truth was behind that odd sorrow. She couldn’t yet fully acknowledge it, but she was now carrying it along with her. A little of a sad truth behind who she was now, because of what happened to her back then.

And the second sight that was bringing an unexpected sorrow, it was the one of that person lying on the ground, by the end of the stairways, shrouded in smokes already. A shape softly curved, not crawling anymore on the ground. The dark fumes, the fires getting closer, her dress looking like paper, and probably her last sight risen to her.

That dark thing had been a human being, poisoned too much and losing its life softly. She was giving her last breath in front of her, soon to vanish behind everything else. Her colours were merging with the surroundings, with the house...

And her life, her death, was there, at that same moment at a grasp of a hand.

She could touch it. She could taste it, feeling it for herself.

She could feel it as if she had been the one lying on the ground that day, unable to find anymore strength neither to walk, nor stand up, nor crawl, and soon nor to breath...

She had the memory filled with so much empathy for their mother, then faceless and almost shapeless dying woman. Mary-Esther had felt like she had been the one dying in that time and place.

Arlweyn had been someone kind and loving. A merciful wife, a gentle mother. Someone who had been happy with the simplest of hopes and dreams. She may had not fought to make the world a better place, but she had been a worthy person, undeserving of dying alone, so painfully and suddenly. Her death felt like the real forgotten tragedy.

Mary-Esther was overwhelmed with sympathy for her, the mother and previous holder she had nearly entirely forgotten. This painful demise she had been through now felt genuinely to her greater than her own selfish dream.

This person gone, had been a real loss...

For that moment of floating sorrow, Esther was feeling that she couldn’t match this value of a person, at all nor ever.

It was putting her back to her real place, as a mere poor doll, that could never compare the brightness and sorrow of a real human being’s life and death.

She could even now imagine how the rest of the world would feel and react over that person’s death. Over her mourning, over missing her for all the years that were to remain...

Esther herself found herself crying her pain for losing her.

Even though it now was in a far distant previous life, once upon a distant other generation of time. Now she recovered these feelings she had had for her, that poor woman between ages dying unceremoniously before her.

And Mary-Esther felt a greater sadness realising that Arlweyn probably had been the one that loved her the most, out of everyone who had held her.

Esther could now recall past thoughts, with looser recollection the further back in time she went, about everyone who had fed her with love over her century. It always had been a faint and frail trail, or intended first of all for someone else above her.

She had never been strongly loved for what she was, until Arlweyn held her. And now that this story was already gone, it was hurting her.

Arlweyn had felt a lot, giving her a little more than what the past had been, and yet not enough to be remembered... Mary-Esther was feeling awful realising how she had been jealous over the person who had given her so much, and disrespectful as to forget her existence and ignore her passing, all this time.

Even though she couldn’t quite see her face ever as she lost her life nor remember it from before, she didn’t deserve to go like that.

The woman dissolving its image in soot and ashes, dying in a most likely horrible pain, her lungs filling with everything painful but normal air.

Mary-Esther wished she could have embraced that shadowy figure, to reassure her, and kiss her goodbye... Promising her that her death would not be the end...

Mary-Esther was experiencing true grief for the real first time, and she felt awful.

She felt as if she had lost a former lover, even a mother, and someone she had been unfair and unkind toward, adding to the pain and sorrow...

She had been Arlweyn’s Gülnihal.

M - I...

Esther’s stopped walking. Elise & Scarlett looked at her between worry and surprise, seeing her eyes swelling.

Mary-Esther burst into tears and cries.

Crying loudly, drops of water escaping her eyes uncontrollably. She simply cried, unable to control herself and everything coming out of her anymore. She fell in a rustle and spreading cloud of ashes, unable to keep herself standing.

She cried over Arlweyn’s loss for and over everything...

Mary-Esther had grown not as a dying wish, she wasn’t born from tragedy.

She was almost nothing but an aggregation of soft feelings from a long line of people who had held a doll dearly.

Until a couple of people put more emotion and love into her name, into her, as much as between each other...

She had been ripped apart, in more ways than one. She felt childish, small and pitiful, unable to process her sudden outburst of sorrow.

She was such a sad being, hopeless, trying its best to showcase strength and willpower against all odds and gods.

When she was a screaming child in the woods at night, her entire might feeling pointless right now.

All that for an impossible dream...

All of her life was a particle of dust, next to that woman’s tragedy. All of her fights felt little, next that woman’s life and painful death.

Mary-Esther felt so insignificant, with all her attempts to change her destiny not to exist so far being but pointless fantasies. Arlweyn had met her fate beside, someone she had envied and loved, like her husband before, like her daughters after. Like everyone else...

One day, Blue too would find her suit cold.

Someday her too would die, and leave Esther behind like before...

And there would be no one left to remember the doll that was no more.

The promise or her sincere dream would then truly fade, if she hadn’t left by then.

A downside, a time of weakness and loss of confidence was assailing her. Tears of sadness more or less meaningless next to the tragedy that had occurred in the past were there.

And all Mary-Esther could pick up from there was a loss of hope for her reality.

~

M - With two wings, I will reach you in the sky...

A new promise.

A new guideline or idea replacing the previous one. Mary-Esther was solidifying her resolve in memory of her lost mother. From her grief with the smell of ashes.

Scarlett and Elise weren’t sure of what they were witnessing. If Mary-Esther had mentioned their mother’s name in her cries, nothing clear had prevailed from her moment of collapse.

The cries had stopped after a while.

The sounds surrounding them turned into a vibrating hum, and then a dreadful silence.

The rain almost stopped falling outside.

Elise was surprised. Her sister puller her away from the winged woman now kneeling on the ground, as if she was beginning to burn or about to explode.

From her back falling naked, her large wing moved from the middle to a side, below the shoulder. The skin ripped itself on the other side, letting room and a window for something queer growing. Softly but with bone cracking noises, a new wing was sprouting.

As if it had been a growing stem of a flower, a kind of thin limb and claw was growing out of the wound.

The stretch skeletal limb was covering itself with a new set of brownish feathers like spiky grass at first and then like fur.

Before they could realise it, the new wing looked identical to its counterpart. Two wings were stretched open from the back of the kneeled figure.

The odd creature didn’t move yet. Mary-Esther seemed unconscious.

The sisters were suddenly startled when they could hear again the sound of the falling rain.

Mary-Esther seem to wake up as well, lifting a tearful face to them, as they were looking around in shock and concern.

The rain... The sky... The stars. Esther felt a strong ache in her heart. There was awful desire to go away, to leave this place for ever behind.

She realised she had a second wing now.

She needed to try... To fly off and away.

She ran pass them, to the open doors. She heard Elise yelling the name Icarus at her.

Mary-Esther couldn’t think about it in this moment of frenzy. A few light steps further, she reached the doors and abruptly jumped over the edge. She gave it the strongest impulse she could muster.

The rain washed her from the stains and lingering ashes from before. She was feeling light, and still very much driven to get out from here for ever, and to leave this ache in her heart...

She stretched her wings open, offering her face and body to the still icy rain. She truly thought for a moment that she could finally fly away from her pain and this place, fly up to the sky and reality...

Otherwise it felt too much like a sea of sadness below, where she would drown eventually over time.

She flapped her wings as strongly as her body could. They moved in her body, stretched from the shoulders outside, but rolling along her spine inside. She wailed her arms randomly before she could comprehend how her body would best work with these limbs.

She had heard the sisters running after her but not jumping behind, yelling something to her. She was flying away without turning back, not feeling kind.

She would understand later that it was more the kind of spite a teenager would have in her kind, trying to run away ungratefully from the family that had cared for her.

But Esther couldn’t fly.

Her wings, while being quite wide and big, couldn’t make her ascend in that place. She might have been able to glide with them if keeping them steady over a long distance, but trying to go upward flapping them, she lost lift and balance, and rapidly began plummeting miserably. It almost was as bad as if she had simply jumped.

Her muscles would never be strong enough to make her a bird this size able to fly upward in such a limited area. That just did not work.

She crashed through some of the structures built between balconies on lower levels, before falling again a few levels deeper below.

In pain and struggle, she managed to slow down her fall a little by a proper last impulse on these wings before the last levels. She saw the wide puddle and ground that was the bottom of the colosseo. She couldn’t manage to make a proper landing and made a brutal crash into the water, gulping some and freezing her damp body once more.

Mary-Esther recovered her senses and painful reality in hopelessness down there.

She pushed herself up and limped her way toward the next corridor, holding herself together, head low.

It had been a really unpleasant night in more ways than one...

~