20 ~ December night. Wing 2. Second half

Hopefully, even in that nightmarish world, from time to time the sunlight came in, and Blue brought some peace to Esther’s difficult soul.

A bench by a room with small streams of water and plants to look at was far above. It was a peaceful indoor garden on the level 34. Some time had passed and Esther was sitting beside Blue in one of the nicest places of the tower right now.

Blue was there by her side, smiling at her while sunlight was glowing outside.

In these times, Mary-Esther could feel as if maybe, these short encounters could be... enough.

Maybe she could settle with just these visits once in a while...

Perhaps she could stop fighting against the whole universe, and settle with these blissful little moments shared with the kind Blue.

Maybe... This was enough...

She thought so, trying to convince herself, while discussing along with Blue right there, about memories and dreams.

Trying to convince herself...

Mary-Esther was looking at her beloved friend’s hands, her bright indigo dress, and her face. She looked quite different now from her single memory from the train, showing clearly that time was passing on her side.

Her not so long hair now without ponytail, her green eyes, and the more vivid life over her lips as she talked, and smiled. Blue was alive...

Esther’s daydreaming in odd fascination toward her was amusing Blue who smiled easily. Mary-Esther was however mostly feeling insecure and flustered in odd ways, but that was of little importance.

She was mostly looking for a comforting chat with Blue, since everything else felt like a dead end or a painful struggle.

The kind chatter however wasn’t enough to appease all of her inner turmoil and doubts anymore.

Even though she now clearly looked like an angel to Blue’s eyes.

Even though Blue repeated how pretty she appeared, how admiring she was, and how much she missed her every time, it still felt incomplete and beside the main hunger.

As much as Esther wanted to find peace settling for just that, it would never work.

They had discussed the idea. Mary-Esther had expressed her fears repeatedly. Of failing, of being nothing...

And the fact that she felt so much sweeter when Blue was somewhere along, that she wanted to seriously consider that perhaps this could be enough.

A friendly visit once in a while, and a long life sentence in jail, fuelled by her own mind...

This wasn’t the worst of jails, since she could control parts of it, but still...

This queer life was in what either a world of dreams, or a realm of the dead for at least their family. They hadn’t met anyone else so far. The walls could echo things, but nothing clearly foreign had come through so far.

Maybe this place was a little of both, or somewhat near to these. They couldn’t really yet say what or where was this entire place.

Perhaps it wasn’t too far and disconnected from reality, if Blue could visit Mary-Esther occasionally.

And they considered whether a life in prison, it could be better than risking losing it all attempting an impossible escape.

Maybe Esther had already won enough...

It was enough hearing this, such a lack of will and confidence at least.

Blue was annoyed, and spoke with a harsher tone expressing how unpleased she was and even a little angry at Esther.

Mary-Esther found herself a little shocked to be scolded for her lack of determination, by the otherwise calm and tidy Blue. This young woman was now revealing a little of a wider personality to Esther.

No, it wasn’t time or right to satisfy herself with a mere job as an afterlife keeper of their ground. Esther didn’t quite realise how much work they had done up there, Rose and Blue, trying to help her. How much researches and even resources they had thrown and worked, trying to find help and reliable information for Esther.

After all they had done for her, Blue was annoyed to hear that she was considering to let go of her ambition.

Mary-Esther’s insanity had fuelled a world of curiosity and expectations, from the world above...

Blue was overdoing it a little and exaggerating her sentiment, but what she managed to say was quite the same feeling as when she was returning from this place above.

Esther was a full member of their family now, who had been missed already for too long, and expected to come and tell her story with her own words someday. Her so long journey from so far away, would be hers to tell when she would finally come home...

They were expecting her with excitement and curiosity. They all were. And they had done everything they could to help her journey, even if it so far amounted to nil.

In that encouraging speech, Blue missed using the word love, which unbeknownst to her was the one Mary-Esther had mostly longed for. Blue had nonetheless been quite sincere behind her emphasises.

If she had not said exactly and all what Esther had longed for hearing, she still had encouraged her sincerely to keep trying.

B - Don’t stop just yet... There is hopefully still a chance you could make it to a successful end...

Mary-Esther gazed through Blue’s sincere look, sharing the wish that she eventually did.

Blue’s very deepest thought was that Esther deserved to gain a life of her own, in reward for saving hers in the past and keeping her promises for so long.

It was fair for Blue.

Because Esther had granted many wishes and upheld promises being kept beyond herself, she deserved her only fair wish to be somehow fulfilled.

It was so romantic, and so wrong. It was such a naïve thought that when Esther understood truly, this was how Blue felt; she didn’t have the strength to admit to her how wrong it actually was.

~

Blue still was young, naïve and kind. Mary-Esther was less and less than before. Far less already than when she was sharing Blue’s confused personality. She was not there because of promises and wishes made from her past beholders above.

And absolutely nothing would be fair in her one dream being fulfilled...

But Blue was clearly helping as much as she could either way.

She repeated how much she was trying to help from her top side too, and that was the most important show of faith she could bring. She was searching for the ribbon with the others, and exploring her other options too.

So far the other options out there involved information collection. They had been involved contacting some of the highest authorities from various religions or pagan beliefs, all of them proving unsuccessful or unhelpful.

Another option they were pursuing was shrewdly not directed at Esther but rather at Blue. Considering her a medium for something different, maybe the best way to help was through herself directly.

Blue was telling her they were planning to study her sleep at night, and maybe look a little further in the modern idea of hypnotism. Maybe that field of new insights they were unfamiliar with could bear some interesting fruits for their endeavour?

Mary-Esther knew the concept of it but nothing else, and had to acknowledge Blue’s strong commitment to help her. It was sincere.

Then the conversation shifted, and Blue was more curious about the two wide wings Mary-Esther carried along her back.

They were really impressive, and unexpectedly warm to the touch. Blue plucked a few feathers that were as big as quills, making Esther feel as if she had been pricked. She did feel it.

The feathers were in these colours similar to Mary-Esther’s hair, quite as soft, and quite big really.

B - Great feathers for an odd bird.

M - But I don’t have enough strength in my flapping muscles to be able to truly fly however.

Blue burst out in laughter hearing it.

The angel look-alike that couldn’t fly and the useless wings, that was hilarious to hear and imagine.

Even Mary-Esther eventually joined in the laugh about this ironic truth. She was like a flightless bird.

B - You’re closer to a chicken than the bright angel I imagined if these wings are so useless.

It was less cute but far more amusing to picture the great Esther jumping around and flailing pointlessly her wings like a spooked chicken, rather than flying elegantly like an eagle or any other bird.

Blue was laughing with so much heart into it, that Esther was pulled in the amusement and giggling about the same imagination of ridiculous clumsy shows. She liked the funny ideas.

Mary-Esther tried to explain what she could herself understand about the truth of these wings.

How they were symbols, but mostly her picture in this place of her real persona reaching out.

It was the shape of her real personality that she was building, as it was growing out from the Esther she still mostly was, and toward whatever was the blind world above she could thinly reach and perceive.

These were the marks or foundations that a new Esther was building herself, likely in a higher plane she couldn’t see.

This was Mary-Esther’s belief.

From her experience and promises to herself, she was evolving and changing, in a way that meant getting closer to her objective.

She was always trying to go higher.

Since Blue had a hard time understanding Esther’s clumsy and mystical metaphors, she summed it up into the consideration that each new wing meant that a new step was achieved toward her goal.

Each wing also meant a shift in her belief and emotional balance. She had felt it first hand, Mary-Esther found herself changing, physically and also emotionally. As time went on, she was changing.

The only way they had to measure Esther’s progress, if that was even relevant, was the number of levels accessible in the surrounding building, circling around this inner patio like a deep well.

That way of knowing how far they could go was of limited value and clarity, but at least it was there, and the only thing that indubitably grew over the course of time and events.

When Blue came down, it grew, and when Esther tried to reach up, it grew... So together, they were possibly digging from both ends to make this tunnel happen.

That important day ended when Blue disappeared, and Esther was left alone as usual, in an indoor garden that turned darker without any sunlight anymore.

Mary-Esther was missing Blue’s presence already, her warmth vanishing from the air.

She found herself alone in that old building again, still thoughts in turmoil about what to aim for and what to do.

Blue’s pleasant dream was over, and Mary-Esther’s unpleasant living dream was resuming, in the same place now colder and sadder.

She was surprised though other things than mushrooms could actually grow there, because of how little real light entered the garden. But flowers and various herbs were seemingly alright in their pots.

She stood up, sighing, but looking up. As with every other dusk, it was time to meet up with Elise on the highest levels, and climb further to discover the newest levels revealed they could reach.

They had already a couple of surprises before, when discovering some places with unconventional architectures. The labyrinths with identical rooms and dead end corridors were common. There even was a real maze somewhere. Both of which were now covered with scribbles and marks leading to the shortest ways out.

Other odd levels had corridors for fifty metres long way, without anything. And then there was a cosy apartment behind. They had found a temple dedicated to the sun, another to Shiva... That one really came unexpected.

And the level with the most items to go through so far, was the level 35, the weaponry.

It was shaped like another museum, wish shelves and displays for every kind, more than storages and uniformity of stockpiles. The light was rather good in there, and they could gaze at every kind they could have thought off, when thinking about what a handheld weapon might be. From primitive clubs that were not worthy of a display case in a museum, to the possibly latest assault rifles from the great war. They could look at this historical summary of weaponry with wonder.

There was no armour, but some helmets were on display by the side shelves on occasions.

Elise picked up with curiosity a heavy revolver from the United States, making the barrel roll, and pulling the trigger to make it click with a clean metallic sound. It was curious to her who never had held a weapon before.

That level was not the latest accessible, but it was a place of curiosity where they were likely to meet each other. That weaponry was oddly attractive for all three of them.

Mary-Esther herself was curious about the rifles. She had not yet tried them out.

She had however been surprised to realise that she knew actually a little how to handle herself with a sword.

An Ayyubid sword with Damascene steelwork had caught her attention, amongst many crusaders weaponry. She played a little with that sword the first time around, handling it with unexpected ease. Her body moving along as if she remembered dancing steps with it. It felt odd, but she put it back on its display where it belonged afterward. Her back still had some rigidity, but she was feeling like her spine wasn’t limited by the splinter anymore. Perhaps as things had changed around, her body had as well.

Now she was inviting Elise to climb and see what the new areas were.

Elise put a heavy oriental sword back on its stand, and followed the winged Mary-Esther.

The level 30 was built with a new museum hallway, very large and deep. It ended on a kind of medieval underground, that went without straightforward corridors for quite or almost the diameter of the raining square. Then there was a balcony and an obvious wall hiding the way up next to it.

Even if they had canons and enough gunpowder kegs to blow it apart, it was a useless bother. They had experienced enough times how levels beyond their current reach were dangerous and hollow. They would know where to go next.

Slowly, surely they were climbing, level by level toward reality. As Esther told Blue before, that whole place was the well they were digging toward reality. She would try to push it further again soon.

At the pace of a plant spreading its roots and growing, their well was slowly but certainly rising and getting closer to reality...

As the winged Mary-Esther was looking at the night from that new and highest balcony, Elise realised how true it was. She was slowly building her ziggurat to reach... the world.

Not god, not heaven, not a promised land... Only the world she had known. How come trying to reach the place where living things dwelled was so much of a hassle?

Where was the mistake, beyond their death?

Elise went under the rain too, passing by the giant wing blocking most of the doorframe. She too was unsure, but came to look at the height they had already covered and what was left above.

They could see some little lights here and there in the levels below. It was like looking at a vertical and cylindrical town at night. It was their mine, their route. They were digging upward, in order to escape their fate...

And above them, still too far away to be distinguishable, there was the ceiling, or a gate, or the sky...

E - We could make it...

They could reach the end of this tower, and reach what would be their true sky.

~

Their sky was the focus of all their dreams and efforts. They felt they were living in a cave most of the time.

Mary-Esther was suddenly awoken by the noise of thunder. She left her bed and ventured outside her room while everything was still dark, the lights switched off. She could still hear the rain outside. The corridors were smaller and smaller, the turns feeling narrower around her. She was having a sudden claustrophobic surge, feeling lost in a labyrinth she could barely see and didn’t quite recognised.

Just as when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she reached and opened the doors leading to a next small room, at the end of a too long corridor.

That small cabinet had almost nothing but a chair and a small desk with books left on it. By the windows she could see the rain falling.

She was curious about the books she had guessed mostly from their shapes, but she was now even more curious about the windows to the outside downpour.

She got closer, her heart beating quite faster than usual. Mary-Esther brought her left hand to the glass and looked outside carefully.

There were clouds, and everything else felt too dark to differentiate, but it felt different from the usual colosseo rain... Something was spooking her. She felt that she was not alone, and she heard her name whispered.

She turned around in a jolt, and found herself facing a woman she didn’t know, holding a lamp of a different kind by her side.

Mary-Esther screamed in sudden fright, and suddenly woke up in her usual bed.

~

Mary-Esther gathered her senses back, pulling her wings back under the sheets. She didn’t have her wings in that dream. Another nightmare... But that woman’s face she had too shortly seen, she felt that she knew it from somewhere...

Years ago perhaps, but she had seen her before.

A few minutes later, she had finished waking up and dressing herself, now using these strange attire with leather garments and lacing. She laced her shoes, and went to the near balcony under the rain.

She looked upward. She could see the light coming from a few other places above, amidst the rain, always the rain...

Mary-Esther spread her wings upward and kneeled. She had trained for this.

Her feet left the ground in a forward jump and her wings flapped with her entire strength, propelling her a good distance ahead. Accompanying the movement with her arms, she flapped a second time as strongly as possible, making a dizzying noise with her wings and hurting her shoulders.

She was reaching the opposite wall with quite good speed, and quickly took a turning step against it as if she was swimming. Pushing as fast and strong as possible in a jump, along with another flap, she managed to get herself a little higher than her starting point, pushing herself thus.

Slowly and at the price of terrible exhaustion and strain, she was now able to climb the levels not yet linked by rope ladders simply by flying through the rain and flapping her wings.

Mary-Esther kept going up this way until she couldn’t anymore. She grabbed the ledge of the balcony reached after her last leap across the giant well, and climbed onto the floor behind. She was now pulling a heavier weight as she carried a good amount of rain.

She took a moment to catch her breath and let her heartbeat calm down.

She then walked inside a temple with a large mosaic tiling of a sun, both on the slightly incurved ground and on the ceiling. The sun temple as they called it, lacking any better reference for its peculiar architecture.

Mary-Esther was still catching her breath back a little, and sat plainly in the middle of the tiling, only lit by the lamps on the distant walls of this wide room. It was still lit as if it was plain daylight.

She was still dripping rain water on one of the two symmetrical suns.

When she felt ready, she pulled out her wings in a stretch, as far as she could possibly, in order to help them dry better. She was sitting still, head lowered and hair dripping wet, lost in thoughts and lack of oxygen as if she was yawning.

Darkness and chimeras were silently floating around. She could hear the ticking noise of a watch nearby. It was the slow music of time and doubt. And she could hear the walls better than ever when she was in this state of sudden exhaustion.

Their thoughts floating around could merge, almost sounding like words, gradually becoming real.

Only when she could actually comprehend their talks, she was then able to realise how much they did talk, all the time.

Their voice was very low and inconsequential, and the rain noise covered their whispers and moans easily, but the more careful she was to them, the louder and clearly they spoke.

They were expressing what she and the others felt and experienced, repeating their soul searching and doubts. They were mostly repeating Mary-Esther’s own past thoughts and emotions, mostly randomly.

But they also sometimes shared Elise or Scarlett’s insights and private thoughts as well.

And if the chatters were mostly random; it was mostly the ones holding some specific emotions that took most of the scene and front room. Especially hearable, was all their shades of fear.

They were repeating the words they sometimes kept to themselves, betraying their mouths, and even some words from long before all this...

Why the walls were even doing that talking, she was not sure. They were like a haunting presence with dementia, not exactly speaking to hold a conversation, but express something broken like a record and incomprehensible soul.

Since nothing logical or meaningful had come from these exchanges of a kind so far, Mary-Esther thought better keeping quiet that aspect of their jail to her two companions.

She just made do with this illusion of a presence around her.

Their words of fear in regard to Mary-Esther’s wish were numerous. They felt like pleas from lost souls sharing their circle of hell. They never stopped repeating the same concerns, which at times were beginning to bother her.

When Mary-Esther was talking or with someone else in a room, the walls returned to silence. And when she found herself alone or tired, their whispers would slowly come back and grow.

So when things became unbearable, she raised her voice alone, in order to shut them up for a little while when she was too focused on their talk already.

She muttered a few words not even the walls could have heard, and that was enough to make them turn quiet.

M - With one wing, I will bend you to my will. With two wings, I will reach you in the sky...

Some peace returned to her, quickly replaced by the music of the constant rain.

Mary-Esther lifted her head slowly. She saw a ghost disappearing in front of her. A silhouette vanishing into the picture of the sun.

Mary-Esther pondered about it for a minute, but then the walls’ voices were already coming back. Afraid, wondering about her doing, her being, her existence. Who was she, how old was she again? The questions kept falling without any rest or time given to reply. They were broken records, and just as soulless as the mechanical instrument that would otherwise play music instead.

Most things still were familiar to Mary-Esther as they came from her. A few others however clearly came from Elise or Scarlett she could tell. They were things she could recall them saying.

Finally a few percent of the echoes coming from the walls, she had no idea who and when they came from.

She could hear warnings about someone, that wasn’t referring to her. And some unclear ideas and talks of sorcery and even queerer witchcraft she had never heard of before.

Some disgusting ideas were wandering around from time to time.

Thoughts of murders, and plain screams.

Terrifying sounds that felt they came from torture, or agony. Even once she could hear sounds she thought they must have come from a rape...

These older and more foreign voices were sometimes growing along the turmoils of this place.

This time she heard a series of terrified screams, echoing painfully through the walls as if some horror was occurring just behind her back. Mary-Esther almost felt that she might turn around and see them.

She stood up and shouted for them to stop. She was feeling uncomfortable again, letting these voices loose only grew poorly. Even she was feeling a little frightened and uneasy now.

When the short following time of peace ended, she heard again the usual whispers, more familiar in the beginning.

A baby’s cry then she could hear in the distance was another new one however...

Something was different on this time. She could understand that, as the walls seemed to have more to express and spread.

Something had changed through the walls since the last time the place had changed...

Since she wasn’t sure about what to do with the voices, and because she had come to a higher level in order to use her power to claim a new level, she began to do so nevertheless.

She might never know everything that could be of use, but she needed to move forward anyway.

She puffed her cheeks and chest out, opening her arms and wings. She focused her mind as much as she could on the world beyond her wings, and yelled as loud as she could, tensing every muscle she could.

The dust began to lift off from the ground around her as the sounds died.

Droplets of water fell out from the puddle at her feet, and rose to splash against the symmetrical ceiling.

Her senses were going num. It felt as if the sun painted above her became vivid, real and spinning, slowly making everything else vanish.

Everything became white as she was blinded, shouting endlessly and deafened, grasping with limbs beyond herself at the world above she couldn’t see.

As if lightning had suddenly struck her, the world reappeared fully, suddenly along her with a deep inner pain rising.

She fell down, stunned and feeling like nailed were piercing her head. She was still standing in that room between the two mosaics. She could only see one now, feeling shocked, unable to move right away.

She heard a child voice asking her something new, while the sun was once more growing and making everything around disappear in contrast.

- Then... Who was the clumsy artist?

Mary-Esther felt struck by lightning for a second time.

She fell to her knee and on the ground, feeling the rain no falling against her and hurting her back. She wasn’t in the sun temple any longer, but didn’t realised it right away.

When her body pain, unexpected and sharp, finally came under her control, she discovered that it was grass and dirt between her hands on the ground. It felt traumatic to feel that damp earth moving between her fingers.

She lifted her head to a rain coming from clouds in the sky.

She could only see grass around her, as far as she could see.

An endless meadow, an immense prairie and a lukewarm rain.

It was still at night, but she was outside!

She felt so liberated, she couldn’t help but let her joy explode. She began to jump around like a kid, laughing and yelling mindlessly.

It was her first taste of reality as far as she could tell, and she couldn’t get enough of it.

Even the feeling of the water droplets against her face and inside her mouth felt entirely different from what occurred below. The intensity of every sensation was a hundredfold what occurred in that lucid dream below.

Esther experienced a taste of reality. It was a sensation that ended too quickly unfortunately, no matter how long it could have lasted.

While she was still laughing heartily and clumsily dancing from joy, she fell suddenly, exhausted, and passed through the ground as if she was instantly dissolved in it.

A minute of hollowness later, she was recovering her senses where the tilling of suns met.

It was only carved in stones there.

Trembling, now a new cold sweat dripping on her forehead and temples.

She had a trembling smile, ecstatic from where she had just temporarily been...

For a few seconds, she had felt that she had fully been there.

She had felt the reality above, and it was a blissful collection of sensations...

She was trembling, and unable to contain herself.

She wasn’t even saddened by her return yet, because of how magnificient her short time outside had felt...

She tried to lessen her uncontrolled muscles spasms and trembling hands by clenching her fists.

Mary-Esther wanted to live...

And maybe she was now close enough to reality, to experience a few seconds of it once in a while.

~

She could hear people wearing heavy chainmail armours, running, carrying weapons. They were getting closer.

The dim light from the only little oil lamp was casting the largest monsters she could dream of as mere shadows against the limits of her hole.

The shadows were dancing against the stone and ground dirt.

She could hear the men in arms very well. They were in the domain.

She was terrified, and she could only pray. With despair, she was wishing with all her might that she wouldn’t be found, that she was elsewhere, that this hole in the ground where she hid could lead or move elsewhere, somewhere very far. Another place, another time.

Anything but there and now.

She heard screams and flinched. They had found someone. She blew her little light extinguished, and covered her hears, trying not to hear the horrifying noises she was likely to make too in a few minutes.

If only she could escape through her dreams. If only she could escape through the continents, the lands, or even time...

She heard them breaking the door open close by, even closer... If only she could summon these dragons and demons they were so afraid of, to protect herself.

A violent and powerful yell petrified her. It was in that language she hated so much.

They were looking for the witch.

Even his voice sounded violent and ominous to her. Her hands were now shaking and sweating so much against her ears, she was hurting herself. But every time her fantasies were letting her hope that there was a way out, she was releasing her grasp, and another scream of agony from one of her friends or family, not far above, came to pierce her head and feel like torture to her.

A spear pierced the wooden ceiling door. She saw the shinning edge, so close and dreadful, petrifying her. The tooth of the walking Cerberus coming to take her.

She made her last wishes to escape, by any way or mean possible, vowing everything in the world to anything that could be there or beyond.

There was no more hope and she couldn’t dream anymore. The men in foreign armours came down and found her, despite her last attempt to crawl inside the ground and hide like a mole. They beat her down only a little, but each strike against her feeble body was knocking her unconscious for a split second.

Before she could think about it, she was dragged outside by her hair, screaming and fighting off in vain. The one who wasn’t pulling her stepped closer and kicked her in the head in order to shut her up. The pain made her faint.

Anything... Please... I don’t want to die...

Not here, not now, not like that... All my existence would have been... for nothing... Nothing, always nothing... I’ve never been anything... Not even a real human being... I don’t want to die as if all my life was meaningless!

A kick in the stomach woke her up, forcing her to almost suffocate with her stomach juices.

She ate the dirt as she was thrown there. It was cold and bitter.

Her body was roughly tied up, or it felt that way.

She couldn’t move, and her head was pushed into the ground.

She saw the bodies of people dear to her, bloody, lifeless.

She could still hear someone behind her, close. She couldn’t cover her ears anymore to stop hearing the awful noises and cries that followed. She began crying as well.

The man’s voice felt as disgusting as it could ever be, but didn’t bring any empathy. The violent voice yelled again against him. They killed the last one, leaving only her.

The house was burning. The flames were dancing. They brought away so many hopes of escape, of power, of living another hour!

She dreamt that something awful would rise from the smokes and help her. Anything...

With a slow but heavy movement, a sword pierced through her ribcage, ripping a lung and her heart, breaking a rib and reaching the ground below her chest. It felt awfully cold, and all that was done with little more noise than crushing an egg or two.

The sword was pulled out and warmth rushed out from her lung and stomach. She coughed, spilling some blood in her hair.

She saw the fire turning black, and everything else following soon after.

She heard them for maybe another second before everything fell into silent slumber.

Some pictures and memories crossed her mind. She was losing it for good and dying. She thought that a handful of poor people like them being killed would never change anything in the world. It never would...

Her last breath was short, and soon she was gone.

Her body lied there lifeless. In that cold night growing, not a care in the world anymore.

~

Mary-Esther could hear two women talking, without understanding what they were discussing.

They spoke in a language she had never heard before. It was something old, from an aged memory of the walls of this place, from long before her own time.

An echo from long before her... The memory of someone else before her, who maybe tried to walk a similar path as her.

No gods no devil, no daiûa... The past was recorded by the walls like pages to some extent, and with them the memories of the ones who came before...

Did anyone else before managed to reach the exit she wondered.

Mary-Esther was possibly far from being the first to try. And as much as her will was currently sculpting this place, the same souls that were around before, they probably did as well. Other souls had inhabited this place, trying desperately to escape their fate...

That odd construction they dwelled in was constructed with the memories from every of these souls who ventured toward that purpose in the past, against everything and every odd.

Maybe the first one who arrived there in the past found nothing but a cave? A hole in the sky, the night inside the deepest well of the world and underworld.

An adventure that many souls probably tried through history, gradually carving the walls and levels into existence...

How many might have succeeded in reaching the end?

Mary-Esther was recovering her senses, albeit feeling filled with doubts now. She was in the sun temple still, her head filled with questions and historical considerations.

Everything was a little darker and colder now there.

The walls kept talking and muttering things to her.

She was still exhausted and left herself fall to the ground softly again, falling asleep in this cold place.

The walls kept whispering and muttering things around her.

She was falling asleep, wondering when she might be able to see the real stars again.

~

Memories whispered. Imagination from her sleeping mind.

A voice from the walls coming out differently that time, while she was lying there.

There was a soft but cold voice, kind of like Scarlett, only older and without nearly as much spite. That voice talked to her.

Calling her a witch, and calling her Parsley mistakenly.

D - Parsley, young Parsley...

The voice shared some knowledge about the place they were in. Some surprising truth even.

And she said that she as a witch, still could not matter in the world. She was returning to nothing, the nothing she never left.

Some other women tried to reach a new life from there before, but likely none ever succeeded.

But a doll.. Well, a doll being here was already a strange first.

What kind of magic could have brought a doll there, she wondered.

If Mary-Esther could find where such magic came from, and made that power hers, maybe she could have her chance of becoming a real witch? And maybe then, as a witch, she would be able to find the real exit to leave this place...

To this disincarnate voice whispering to her dreams, Parsley was intriguing, and made the wait worthy...

~