Reality Pt. 2

“Had to go, sorry everybody- Mahou” Mond pulled the note off the windshield of the van, flipping it around for any more text. “He certainly has a way with words doesn’t he?”

Roses rolled her eyes, leaning against the van “ I don't blame him for bailing, he always had an uncanny ability to make connections, he probably knew what was going on the moment he read those notes.” She kicked up a handful of pebbles, dust flying off with them. “Guy was probably too afraid of Sonne to say anything, so he just snuck off”

“Afraid of Sonne?” Mond didn’t know what to feel, all things in retrospect now he knew Otto, as Roses had called him before, really was broken, but dangerous? Roses’s fist tightened, till she pounded it back against the van door, "Dammit Mond, the man takes people at their most vulnerable and gives em’ reckless ideas, people like you and me!” her eyes watered, “People like Oyster… Ito”.

Quite, only a weak breeze blew by, both wondering what to say next. Roses finally broke the silence, “What’s your real name Mond?” “What’s yours?” he said right back. She looked a little frustrated, but snickered, “Fair point.”

She traced her foot in the orange dirt of the construction sight lazily, deep in thought. “I used to have a family you know… a husband and two beautiful little runts.” Mond saw the longing nostalgia in her eyes, surprised such a woman could be a mother, but somehow it made total sense.

“Doctors said I had lung cancer, one in two chance of living. I’d watched what it did to my own mom, I didn’t want my kiddos to see me turn into that..” She stood up with her hands stretched, an action that reminded Mond a bit of MF, “But hey, guess I won the coin flip.” Roses laughed to herself under her breath, sadly. “I tried to get in contact again, I really did but… they were just gone. That's when Otto found me”

She had traced a four cornered symbol in the dirt, like a featureless butterfly. “He told me the name came to him out of thin air, the Alphatlas.” Her eyes blazed with anger at the knowledge she wished had never been told to her. “Heaven and Hell on one side, up and down, “ She traced her foot across to the symbols other side, “Fantasy and Reality on the other.”

“But which is up and which is down?” Mond asked, a desperation hidden in the question even he wasn’t aware of. She scattered the symbol with a kick into dust and clay, orange powder flung on the wind. “What do you think Mond?...”

A moth fluttered about in the cloud, and the two watched it in silence, until the dust settled and it had flown off in search of light. “So, what now?” Mond asked, he felt weak asking for direction, but weak is what he’d been all night, next to the people he had met. “Now, you catch a bus back to Ibaraki, they usually run late around these parts so you should be all set.” Roses took his hand and put a couple hundred yen into it, folding his fingers around the coins, “I don't want you ever seeing Sonne’s face again.”

Mond scoffed, “You don’t need to give me money.” “Did you bring your own?” she questioned, smugly squinting her eyes. “I-... thanks” he pocketed the coins, embarrassed.

“What are you going to do though?” he asked her, the concern in his voice pulling at her heart more than she had felt in a long time. Her dark hair hung around her face, unreadable, before she pulled it back and brought up the practiced smile of a mother, “I’ll find the old man, I suppose he’s my responsibility for now, and he has the keys anyway.”

Her eyes went to the moon, amber meeting ivory in the night sky. “Then I'm going to find them Mond, my family” Her pitch black hair flowed in the wind like a war flag. It was true this time, Roses was going home.

“And then Mond, we’ll invite you for a meal, how’s that sound?” her eyes shut in glee, Mond couldn’t help but smile back.

______________________________________________________________________________

“What were you… really?” The bottom of Mond’s already worn sneakers scraped open along the sidewalk, holes forming in the rubber. But he didn’t mind, he never did, his focus was on the Moon.

That night, when his childhood began, was it the start of something bad? Mond thought about the fear his father must have felt , when he found him unconscious in the snow. He thought about his friend's panicked face, pushing him off the street. He thought about MF.

“MF”, he muttered up to the Moon, one step after another, painting the night with his ponderings. “What would he have been without you?”

What was Mond’s place in his life, the short time he had known the man? Or maybe, maybe he didn’t have a place in MF’s life. Maybe MF had a place in his, MF and Vertigo and Sonne, Mahou and… and Roses. A moth followed along the boy, whose thoughts lit up the darkness, reflecting the Moon’s magic.

He stopped under the bus sign, holding one hand up to the sky. “You really never change do you? The stars shone bright as they ever did, and the moon directed their symphony. A moth flapped its wings under their glow, and landed on the bridge of the boy's nose, it had found its light.

The End.