Part II, Chapter II | Realization & Reunion

Year 702 A.S., Fall | City Vergalis, the Center of Culture & Entertainment

“Good morning, my lady. You were crying in your sleep.”

My eyes were heavy as I woke, reticent to open before the sun had risen. My mornings often arrived with drying tears, and the haunting remains of forgotten dreams. This morning was no different, and soon, even those small remnants would fade to nothing like the rest. I was forgetting the last of it already, and the early morning fog was lifting.

“Will I remember you?”

The view of the sea from inside the train was a nostalgic one. I stared at the dark, almost imperceptible waves as they rushed past, and it took many minutes before I remembered that there was a woman who sat across from me. My personal attendant, apparently. When I had first asked her who she was, she put a finger to her lips. “Lady Jericho has forbidden me from divulging that information to you,” she had said. Of course, that only made me more curious, but I let the matter go, and that was that.

It took me another moment before it struck me too that she was the one who had said good morning to me, so I replied in kind. The smile she gave in return seemed so bright that my heart swelled. Once the waves inside settled there, she moved onto items of a more practical nature. Apparently, we were nearby the Vergalis harbor already. She had already fitted, washed, and ironed my uniform, which was hanging in the powder room across the hall from our booth. She offered to wipe me down since half a day had already passed since I last showered, but I politely refused and entered the powder room on my own.

Unlike my own old school, Arys Academy had a nice school uniform. It came with a long-sleeved, collared white blouse. Over that, a short double-breasted waistcoat with four buttons and a notch lapel. Over that, a tan, 3-button blazer. Finally, a brown, plaid, pleated skirt, and a matching short tie. It took me ten minutes to put it all on, and I fitted the skirt to be around knee-length. I looked myself in the mirror, twirled, and realized that by far, these were the nicest clothes I’d ever worn in my entire life.

❧☙

The air in Vergalis was entirely unlike the air of the capital. It was not a difference I noticed when I was younger. No matter where you went in Pyraleia, the air always seemed to taste so stale. In Vergalis, there still blew the breath of life. Like a spice that drifted from all the little homes that still cooked their own meals on their own stoves.

It was colder in Vergalis, too, being further north and all. It was a half-hour walk from the train station to the nearest bus stop, and by the time we arrived, my attendant was shivering in her boots. I asked her where she would go once I got on the bus, but she refused to answer. Already, my time with her was ending, and I hadn’t learned a single thing about this woman. I didn’t even know her name. That irked me the most.

The streets were empty this early in the morning, so once we could see a single pair of headlights shine through the fog, we knew it would be the bus.

“Take care, my lady,” she said. She lingered for a bit before she headed back in the direction we came, leaving me to wait the final minute on my own. The cold felt a little colder by myself. It didn’t take long for the bus to stop in front of me, though, and the cold quickly scampered back off.

The bus door folded open with a hiss, and a warm rush of air spilled out. It frazzled my hair and fogged my glasses. With a deep breath, I stepped on.

“Welcome aboard!” the students all chorused, cheering and whooping at the top of their lungs. A mess of kids my age, so loud and so vibrant that any semblance of worry I held in my thoughts drowned out before their noise. It was so different from the quiet life I lived as Annamarie Areille, and so sudden that their warmth and energy made it so I couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear.

“Thanks for having me!” I called back, and they cheered even louder. They really were crazy.

“Hey hey,” a random girl near the front said. “You can sit next to me.”

The seat beside her was indeed empty, so I thanked her and took it, and quickly found that there was something odd about her. It must’ve been the witch hat in her lap. What was she doing, bringing such a thing to school of all places? She was pretty, though. With her wheat-colored bob that only fell to barely brush her narrow shoulders. She wore her uniform nice and proper too. It was a plaid skirt and beige blazer over a white blouse. She appeared normal by every measure, save for that witch hat of hers, adorned with ribbons and flowers, and a large brim that creased in such a way you could tell it was of an expensive fabric.

The doors to the bus slammed shut and the vehicle took off again, and I tried to sit still, but I couldn’t help but steal glances at that hat of hers until I couldn’t take it anymore and just asked. “I’m sorry, but are you a witch?”

She tilted her head at that, eyes wide with the kind of rare wonderment that one most often saw from infants or toddlers. “How could you tell?” Her eyes glimmered gold in the light.

“... Lucky guess?” Had no one ever asked her that question before?

“In that case, I should introduce myself properly,” she decided. With her elbow out, her wrist bent, and her fingers straightened, she gestured to herself in a most elegant display of courtesy. “My name is Sylvia la Veya, the Wetland Witch of Wistia. And you are—?”

Before she could continue, the brakes on the bus shrieked, and the momentum slammed her oh so elegant face into the vinyl seat in front us. Her cheek smushed first, then her wrist crammed her fingers into her sternum, and she made harsh croaking sound before she pulled firmly back into place, tears in her eyes and her hair completely frazzled.

“A-Are you okay?”

She glanced at me, cheeks red, and then pulled her head back with a sharp inhale like she were about to start sobbing, but instead she sneezed so hard it rocked our seat. Her upper body shuddered with the aftershock, and she rubbed her nose like a cat.

I couldn’t help but break out into hysterical laughter.

“Hey!” she said, pushing against my shoulder. Her fingers were really warm, or even hot, like a flame had been lit inside them, and when I looked at her again, I realized that her entire face had turned a light shade of red. “Don’t look at me.” Her tone had completely shifted from whimsical to serious and sort of mean.

“Sorry,” I said.

She tapped her finger against the aluminum frame of the bus, and I could tell from the slowing rhythm of it that her color was fading and her embarrassment with it. Eventually, the tapping stopped, and she spoke. “You’re Annamarie Kavesta, aren’t you?”

No, I wanted to say. My name is Annamarie Areille, and I was raised at an orphanage in the Ends of Vergalis, then adopted by a kind couple who live in Pyraleia. But I didn’t say any of those things. I knew that in order to succeed, I needed to stand out here in this academy. How better to stand out than to claim my heritage, once and for all. Even though they had stripped me of it since before I could remember. So I answered this strange witch girl by nodding.

She giggled. “Well of course you are. Pale skin. Red eyes. Those aren’t exactly popular traits, you know. And they’re not natural either, of course. Natural for a demon, maybe.”

“Ehhh?” I droned, ignoring her comment. “Really?”

I wanted to let the conversation die there. I figured there was no way I could get along with a girl so comfortable with insulting someone like that, let alone one who seemed to have so many screws loose too. That would’ve been that, and I would have never spoken to her again, but after some minutes passed, Sylvia started to tap on the metal with her fingernail again. Then with each tap, she grew more restless until she finally jerked her head back to me.

“Do I know you?” she said, almost vindictively. Like I’d done something to upset her.

Her golden eyes sparkled again, and even though the shape of them were pulled into some spiteful form by an incomprehensible force, I couldn’t help but feel drawn to it. Her question didn’t make any sense to me, though. “Pale skin,” I said. “ Remember? Red eyes? Hellspawn?”

“Right,” she mumbled.

Oh, how her reaction made me want to crack her head open. Rend her skull apart and see the inside of it. Grey matter aside, I wanted to see all those threads I could sometimes see. I was certain her colors would be dazzling. Her thoughts would drive me mad. Thoughts—that reminded me. I could typically hear thoughts, just on their own of those who were nearby, but not a single thought of this roleplaying witch girl yet made itself visible. It frustrated me.

Thankfully, I noticed a curious thing then. A subconscious motion, where Sylvia nudged her skirt down on her right leg, just a touch. There was a mole on her thigh there that she wanted to hide. Just a little mole, a little something she found distasteful about her own body. The thought tickled me strangely. I almost giggled to myself. It was too human of her. And even though I couldn’t hear her thoughts, that little habit of hers made me feel like I really could.

I turned away first to pretend like I hadn’t been staring. “You could’ve ordered a longer skirt,” I said. “Although a mole is nothing to be embarrassed about.”

The way her face twisted up at that gave me immense satisfaction. I could see in real time how my words could hold dominion over the color of her face, the little wrinkles, creases, and shape of her. That sensation bubbled up in me and spilled out as a mischievous grin I hoped she couldn’t see.

“Why are you looking at my legs?” she bit back. The redness that traveled from her cheeks to her neck betrayed her again. “What, do you like what you see?”

“Yes,” I said. And there it was. A little thread sprouted from the center of her chest, and like a rabid animal, I scrambled to grasp it. Sylvia shrieked when I got it between my fingers, and yanked on it to get it to unravel. For Sarah, her thread would often swirl around her unbidden, in pretty waves like she wanted all her thoughts to be mine, too. Was it so strange that I wanted this girl’s to act the same way?

But what I received instead was a cacophony of screams and shadows. Shrill and piercing screams that cut through me and cast me into a blank expanse of an empty thoughtscape. A place where rotting flesh and howling winds filled the senses, and a starless sky blacker than night rained upon me with steel. Each drop a needle that pierced the skin and burned me into scraps of flesh and then into nothing.

“Hey, are you okay?” The voice was worried. How was it that I could still hear? “Hey, Anna—”

The feeling returned to my fingers, then to the rest of my body again. I was apparently holding my head in pain, and Sylvia was trying to comfort me. She held my shoulder and rubbed my back. Oh, I realized. I’m crying. My whole body shook with those silent cries, and the tears that wouldn’t stop.

“Will I remember you?”

It was that voice again. Even though it had nothing to do with Sylvia. What happened to that thread I caught of hers? Did I lose it? My eyes scorched with a familiar pain, and I kept crying as remnants of that old dream infested my thoughts once again, but this time they didn’t disappear right away. I felt so dizzy and almost nauseous, but also so lucid. More lucid than I ever felt in my entire life, because for the first time in it, I remembered a dream I had about someone else. Someone I had never met before.

The door to the bus hissed open again. Sylvia pressed me up against her chest to hide my ugly crying face from whoever was boarding, but I could already tell who it was. Their threads splayed out like wind itself and draped everything in its web. This must’ve been the first time. For all these years before now, I often believed that this ability of mine were mere delusions I had. Schizophrenia or some such thing. A testament to my insanity. But now, there was living, breathing proof in front of me that I was not crazy.

For the first time, I met someone from my distant dreams in real life.