Part II, Dream III | The Winter Wendigo

RULE THREE of Needle & Thread

Dreams may be unlocked by a prick of her needle.

❧☙

It was a dingy bedroom. The windows had no curtains, and the years that the wood and paint spent facing it had faded them to paleness and cracking, although it was nighttime now. In the corner, the bed was lofted on a black steel frame, and black sheets ate its mattress whole. The rest was left barren. No blanket. No pillows. It was a wonder how she managed to sleep like that.

Most of the room was just as barren. The floor was hardwood and cold to the touch of my toes. How did I get here? I hadn't a clue, but I could tell it was a dream, like usual. And the dreamer couldn’t be more obvious, because it was her face that I had been thinking of before I fell asleep.

The desk was the centerpiece of her barren bedroom. Stacked with novels and textbooks, journals and boxes of accessories, it told me more about her than anything else there did. Although, the vacancy of the room was a curiosity in itself. At the center of the desk, there was a diary that was open to its first page, but I tried my best to not look at it. Already, I had traveled through memories with little regard for privacy, so why did I hesitate now? I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter anyway. I tried to make my way out of the room, but the door was locked, the window wouldn’t budge, and there were no holes to peer through. The dreamer herself wasn’t even here. It was a most peculiar dream. Or perhaps it was time to abandon that terminology. A peculiar memory? A peculiar past?

Eventually, I relented and sat down at the desk to read the diary. Everything leading up to this action was nothing but an excuse. I was already confident that I was meant to do something again.

❧☙

Dear Diary,

My friends said they wanted to start these and share them each week, so that is why you now exist. I'm not sure what I'm meant to write, so I suppose I'll simply ramble. My favorite show on Channel 11 is ending soon. That makes me sad, but I’m also excited to see the finale. I hope to see Lady Jericho on screen again. I nearly fell from my seat when I first saw her guest star in an episode two seasons ago. That might've been the most exciting moment in my life. She commanded the screen just as she commanded our attention in the real world. A hypnotizing beauty.

Summer break has just begun. My friends are all heading off to different cities for vacation, but my home is in Vergalis, and our family never goes on vacation. They’re scared of change, yet they still chose to go through with the biggest change of our lives. My brother has been betrothed to a lady of House Chiyoda, and they will be coming here all the way from City Tsuna. It’s so very lucky, people say, for a founding house like theirs to match with one such as ours. I can’t remember her name, and I’ve yet to find a picture of her online. She seems to be quite the shy person. My brother says he likes shy girls. Disgusting, isn’t he?

Everyone keeps applauding how they’re of a founding house, but she’s only tenth in line, and a girl at that. They’re not particularly important, though they are wealthy and they do live in Layer 1, and I find myself somehow excited to meet her. She may be my sister one day, after all.

❧☙

I sat back in my chair. Her handwriting was careful and precise, but it didn't read like the image I had of Loumelette. Not like I knew her all that well to begin with, but it was like she had more energy in her writing here. Thinking back, the Loumelette I knew had pale skin and dead fish eyes, and typically spoke in monotone. I had once considered the idea that she was a creature hidden in human skin.

When I took deep breaths in this room, I noticed how clean the air was. She must've dusted her room every other day at least. This wasn't Loumelette, right? It was Louisa. A distinction I wanted to understand. So I turned the page, and the room was suddenly different.

I wouldn't have noticed if the time of day hadn't changed as well. The sun shone through the window, though dimmed by pretty sheer curtains. A pink shag rug was laid out across the hardwood by the bed, and the bed had turned from a black hole into a wonderland of femininity, bordering on toxic. Pink, white, pink, and pink some more. Stuffed animals, plush and cute, blankets and pillows. If the identity of Louisa Alzara hadn't matched up with the image I had of Loumelette Alkazaraha before, it was an outrageous difference now. There was no way they could be the same person.

I did say I wouldn't have noticed the change, but even the desk in front of me had been rearranged to be more neat and clean. Many of the books had simply disappeared, though I figured they had only been stowed away into the confines of the desk.

Out of curiosity, I tried flipping back to the first page, and the room magically reverted to its original state. Then I flipped back and it changed into wonderland again. I did this for a bit while marking the differences until I got bored, and kept on reading.

❧☙

Dear Diary,

Her name was Moemi, with the characters for “peach,” “laughter,” and “reality,” and pronounced like mo-ay-mi.

When they had told us that she was shy, they were not exaggerating. Her back was already curled into itself when she walked in, and she refused to look anyone in the eye. She hid behind her mother’s back whenever she had the chance. It was difficult to believe the girl was older than I.

My brother was still smitten of course, even if we didn't let them talk one-on-one very much. After all, her very body seemed to reject the idea, from the curl of her spine to the tension in each muscle fiber. I’ve come to realize how cruel a trade that arranged marriage is.

The Lady Moemi of House Chiyoda was a truly gorgeous girl. Gorgeous to my brother and I, at least. She had short black hair, but it still glimmered wetly in bright light, and it curled prettily at the ends.

Her family is staying with us for a while. The journey between City Tsuna and City Vergalis is not an easy one, so we decided it’d be best to test the compatibility of our households before we set anything in stone.

They’re staying between our two guest rooms now, but her parents asked if I could share rooms with her. The idea made me unusually happy. I’m not sure why. Even as a child, I hated having to share rooms and moved into my own as soon as I could.

The Louisa Alzara of last year would have almost certainly cried if she heard that she’d have to share a room again. But the Louisa Alzara of today is again somehow excited at the prospect. And embarrassed as well. When I had first gotten my room, I used up my allowance to stuff it full of as many plushies and pretty colors that I could, exhausted of how droll my parents were. Yet as the years passed, the more affinity I felt to their taste, and so I stowed all those decorations away into the attic.

Tomorrow, the Lady Moemi will sleep here with me in this room. Tomorrow night. So yes, I was embarrassed of the state it was in. She had first stepped inside my bedroom for only a brief moment before I shooed her back out in realization. There was no way she would have complained out loud, but I knew she would silently judge me.

Why aren’t there any pillows or blankets? Why is it so boring and scary? I’d heard it countless times from my brother and my friends, and it had upset me each time. I don’t think I’d have gotten mad at her though, even if she said it out loud. I just didn’t want her to think poorly of me, so I dragged out all my old decorations and threw them back into my bedroom. It’s a mess right now, but at least it’s gained a little femininity. I’m sure that’s something of a prerequisite to becoming friends with her, paragon of femininity that she is herself.

Ahhhhh, I wrote a lot. I don’t think I can show this to anyone anymore. Diaries are supposed to be private anyway, aren’t they?

❧☙

Again, I took a deep breath before I continued.

The entries that came after were mostly plain mundanities, but I did have fun reading them. Whatever remained of my initial hesitance ticked away with each one I read, and my surroundings continued to change in accordance with the girl herself. Louisa wrote in her diary at a different time each day, and she often wrote a lot, but some days she wrote barely a sentence. Sometimes she didn't write for several days, and sometimes she wrote multiple entries in a single day.

A mattress appeared below Louisa’s lofted one on the third entry, but it disappeared again soon after that even though there was nothing in the diary that indicated any negative changes in her relationship with her soon-to-be sister. In fact, it was quite the opposite, and it was clear to me that they were still sharing a room. Moemi had brought many of her own belongings with her from City Tsuna, and they were obviously of cultural significance to her. They did not disappear when the mattress had, so were they simply sharing a bed now? If so, it was a truth that Louisa would not inscribe in ink.

❧☙

Dear Diary,

Tomorrow is the day I set sail to City Tsuna with Momo and her family. They've decided that our houses will go ahead in marital union, which by tradition requires a pilgrimage up the Empodio Frigus.

My brother was meant to be the one to go with her, him being her fiance and all, but he hesitated for too long at the idea, so I volunteered in his place. It still counts, apparently? The gods of House Chiyoda seem to be very lenient. I'm thankful it counts. I couldn't bear to be apart from her for the three months it would take. Now that I've taken his place, it's like I will be the one to marry her instead. A wonderful thought, naught but a flight of fancy in this world of Nine Cities that all seem to agree on this one thing, that it isn't right.

For three months only, I will be her bride-to-be, and when she becomes my sister instead, I'll burn these pages forever and forget.

❧☙

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❧☙

Dear Diary,

I had sworn to never defile her. Never tarnish the image of her intense but silken beauty. They claimed that she had simply disappeared over the night. Yet before the sun had gone down, they all still howled of their hunger, and by morning, they were silent. She was gone, and for a reason I couldn’t understand, my hunger had abandoned me as well.

But I did not eat her.

She had given me permission to consume her flesh for mine, to relinquish myself to hunger and take her beauty inside me for keeping. It was a permission granted by a voice so hauntingly gentle that I knew I had no choice but to refuse. My refusal was what attracted the vultures beside us in the mountain. The vultures disguised as men, who cherished their full stomachs and petty lives over the most precious and fleeting star in the universe.

I did not eat her.

How long did I trap myself in that madness upon her departure? After the skin of my fingers had scarcely grown again, no thought captured me more than outright rejection. She was already gone when salvation had come a day too late. Her bones were thrown over the edge, doubtless to placate my fury. Why did they fear me so? There was nothing a half-dead girl could do in retribution. Though in the end of course, this half-dead girl lived, and so she will have those vultures killed before the other half follows the first into hell.

I did not eat her, but I know with cold certainty that the others must have. They took the permission she granted me as permission for them all. How passive a life I lived before. How important that rage is all I have now. My love without question would have given forgiveness. A tragedy then, for them that she is now dead.

❧☙

I set the diary aside and rose from sitting. Somewhere between the madness and blood-stained pages, the mirror that leaned against the wall above her desk had been shattered from the center. It was almost too much to take in. I couldn’t grasp the fullness of the story with only what I had, but it was clear enough to me what had happened. In one moment it made me cry, and the next I wanted to throw up. What would I even throw up, here in a dream? Perhaps the memory of everything I learned here.

I recalled the ointment Oliver delivered to her everyday. I recalled and realized that it was for her frostbitten hands, which hadn’t yet healed completely. This had all happened so recently. Was it a reality I could change? I wanted to change it.

There was a pen beside the diary. The entire diary had been penned in ink, which gave it a permanence I was almost uncomfortable with. But the pen. It gave me an idea, and that idea gripped me and wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t leave the room to alter any of Loumelette’s other memories, but I had the diary here, and the pages sent me tumbling through time. I need only flip back to a page before their pilgrimage and write a note there for Loumelette to see in order to change the past. It would be the first time I intentionally changed something of someone’s past. I hadn’t a clue whether it would work or not, but I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t try.

❧☙

Dear Louisa Alzara,

Do not climb the barrier of ice at the end of the world. If you go, she’ll die.

❧☙

I turned the page. Where there was once writ the ramblings of a girl gone from her senses, instead sat a thank you letter, penned with more care than the rest.

❧☙

Dear Diary,

Words alone cannot express my gratitude. What would I have done had I lost her? How ashamed I am that I once thought of reducing you to ash. I'm not one to question a miracle or beg for its return, but if it isn’t too much trouble, make yourself known to me. Your warning has been my salvation.

❧☙

Dear Louisa,

You’ll find me at Arys Academy come fall. Who I am is for you to find out.

❧☙

I turned the page again to find her reply, but instead a loose leaf of paper slipped out, and the diary itself had no more pages. The page that slipped out was a different weight and color from the pages of the diary, and even a different size too. I leaned over and picked it up from off the floor. Again, my heart leapt at the sight of it. I should've been used to it by now. Every dream, they arrived. Her words for me to read. It made me feel like I was on the right path. I read it ten times over before I felt satisfied, then ten times more for fun.

Then I woke up.

❧☙

Dear Anna,

Are you doing well? I hope you’ve found some good friends by now. A part of me wants you to never make a friend you cherish more than you cherished me, though. Selfish, isn’t it? Especially since I’ve already fallen in love again with another. I miss you more every day. I do. It’s just that I’ve gotten to be very lucky. My dreams come true one by one, so maybe my dream to see you again can come true too.

Love,

your autumn girl.