A devil for detail

 “How?” asked Washi.

“How do you know it's her?” said Toshi at the same time.

“You wouldn't understand,” he said after a long moment.

“Try us,” they said in unison.

“When you've spent that much time with a person, there are things only you pick up,” he said slowly. “They way they walk and talk, like Ko said, but more than that.”

I somehow felt his gaze flit in my direction despite my closed eyes but I was too engrossed in coaxing stomach acid back down my food pipe. We were in the air, moving at an unknown speed, and I doubted they had an air traffic control system here. Were we the only ones with a flying wagon? The skies were clear now but what about storms? Why were my fellow travellers so calm about being that high up in such an unstable vehicle?

“Then why doesn't she remember us?” asked Toshi quietly as if I couldn't hear them talking.

“And why is she calling herself Sheila?” added Washi.

“Because Sheila comes from a world without flying wagons,” I said, finally opening my eyes. “And she can't remember you because she's never met any of you before.”

The doubt and pain that rolled across their faces stung like hailstones upon my skin. I kept my expression neutral above the lavender bunch covering my mouth.

“You might have worn that name somewhere else,” said Tatsuya, his stare steady. “That doesn't mean the one you had before it isn't real.”

“I'm not saying this to be mean,” I replied, allowing my own eyes to rest on his left leather shoulder plate that was decorated with a dragon insignia. “But please don't look for someone who's not here in me. I know I don't look anything like my real self right now and this is probably – uh – really hard for all of you to deal with. I just don't want to disappoint anyone including myself.”

“I know,” he said with the tiniest smile. “Because that's exactly what Shizuka would want too.”

“Hopefully Uchi will be able to give us the answers all of us are looking for,” said Yua softly before I could refute his claim. “Until then, maybe each of us should remember to keep an open mind about all of this, hm?”

She was indirectly warning me not to be stubborn about my own beliefs either. But how could I do that when doing so would open up so many doors including the one beneath my feet? Accepting the possibility that I really was Shizuka meant accepting that I had died twice. It meant considering the possibility that I had somehow made enemies of those around me in not just one but two worlds. That I had failed to succeed in both lives and now the two had merged to form a third one.

I might have appreciated the complexity of the concept once. Before I had been thrown out of home at the age of eighteen because I was old enough to look after myself and I had no skills deemed valuable by my parents. Before I had been forced into a job that didn't suit me by dwindling finances and into a relationship by a loneliness that couldn't be contained no matter how many pets I housed in my heart. Before I learnt that betrayal of the blood left a stain far worse than any other and that a diagnosis of terminal illness could seem like a ticket out of hell.

The griffin lookalike swept its wings downwards, possibly to pick up the pace, and a gust of air briefly blew the thoughts from my head. I turned to flatten the silk curtain and caught a glimpse of the view beyond its flapping edge. The blue of the sky was softened by thin threads of cloud as was the green and brown of the landscape beneath us.

Holding onto the curtain, I leaned forward slightly and tracked the route of a larger river that had several smaller ones splitting off from it like nerves from a spinal cord. The best part was the sunlight that gave almost everything a light golden sheen. I had once seen a cake that had white icing dusted with golden edible glitter and nothing that simple had ever looked so amazing to me before. Up until that point, I had always considered myself a devil for detail.

“It's breathtaking, isn't it?” said Yua, nodding meaningfully at me with a secretive smile.

“Yeah, it is,” I breathed as the wind rushed over my face. “Definitely not something you'd get to enjoy in an aeroplane. Not for very long at least.”

“An aeroplane?” Questions glinted behind her stare.

“It's like a big tube with wings that can carry hundreds of people in the sky,” I replied.

“Hundreds?” asked Toshi, eyes wide as she looked at Yua.

“At the same time?” said potentially older woman.

“But you can't feel the breeze like this in an aeroplane.” I nodded and laughed dryly. “In fact, it's the last thing most people want to feel mid flight.”

“That sounds very interesting,” she said slowly. “Hopefully I'll have the chance to ask you more about it soon, if you don't mind.”

“Sure,” I replied, lowering the lavender so it wouldn't get blown out of the wagon by a stray gust of wind. “Do you like learning about machines and things like that?”

“You could say that.” Her mouth opened in a half stifled grin.

“Yua's the one who made this wagon,” said Washi suddenly.

“Yor's the one who made it,” she corrected him. “But yes, I'm the one who designed it.”

“You did?” My eyes drifted towards Tatsuya and he nodded straight away as if he had expected me to look at him. I cleared my throat and shifted them back to Yua. “Are you like an engineer or something?”

“That's right,” she replied. “I specialise in creating easier ways for people to travel.”

“Wow, that's amazing.” The words sounded flat and insincere but I was surprised by my own apparent prejudice. I had expected her to be the kind of person who hosted famous and extravagant balls and tea parties, not someone with their eyes glued to a book or with hands that could form such functional masterpieces. “Is your brother an engineer too?”

She shook her head and said, “But he's very good and bringing my ideas to life. He always has been.”

“He sounds cool.” I sounded more authentic this time.

“We're almost there,” announced Kohaku through the curtains. “We'll start going down in about –”

A loud bang cut off the rest of her sentence. The wagon lurched as if a huge fist had slammed into it from below and I let go of the lavender in favour of Tatsuya's arm. Instead I lost my grip on both and dropped through the opening at the front of the wagon right before he lunged for my outstretched arm.

“Shizu!” he cried out, framed by the metal and slowly shrinking as I dropped towards the ground.

The previously pleasant breeze tore his voice away from me and his features blurred beyond a veil of water and sunlight.

As I waited for the impact of my supposedly third death, the first of Shizuka's memories slammed into me instead.