Chiara has forgotten everyone, but she's desperately trying to remember the person who people say she knows the best.
A woman sat on a cliff, her feet hanging off the edge over the ocean. She wasn't sure why she was here, because she had business at home she should have been attending to. What had compelled her to come here, to Mérida, Spain? What was this? Whose house was that down there, and why did she feel like something important was there? Well, she couldn't just go to the door and ask if she knew them, she supposed. She turned her attention to what she was trying to figure out at the moment.
Chiara's hands gripped a photograph she'd found, the man in the foreground's green eyes serious and face devoid of emotion. It was hard, trying to remember what she hadn't known she knew. His head was covered by one of the old Spanish conquistador's metal cabasets, but somehow she knew he had short brown locks that were actually quite soft and fun to play with. The woman imagined him smiling, but the picture took on a life of its own— The men in the background started to move, shouting orders to each other and slaves who followed the group as they walked. The one in the foreground's smile fell from his lips, his expression taking on his more serious, composed features as he pulled his battle axe from where it rested on his back.
She watched as the unarmed people fled, but the conquistador and his allies stayed, a few of them taking up their arcabuz— How did she know that was the right term?— and others weilding swords and weapons of the sort. Suddenly, more people rushed into the picture, yelling and calling chants of war that she couldn't hear, waving sticks and their own guns that it didn't seem they knew how to use, arrows flying into the bunch of conquerors, several of them landing, hitting shoulders, throats, legs, anywhere not covered with armor. Chiara wanted to call to the explorers, to tell them to be careful, run, anything, but she couldn't find her voice.
And then the conquistador fell.
Her heart suddenly felt as if it were torn in two. One of the attackers pounced on the man, their blade that must have been traded for something at his throat, and suddenly, the fighting ceased, all the remaining conquistadors barreling their way to the one on the ground, frantically trying to shove the natives—She'd figured out that this must be in South America, a long, long time ago— out of their way, to pull the one off of the one her mind was focused on. One of the conquerors managed to do it, throwing them backward to its allies, and curanderos knelt by the leader, blocking him from her sight. She couldn't imagine anything but their backs, and what the other conquistadors were yelling in angry, rapid Spanish at the natives.
Slowly, one curandero stood up, shaking his head, the other one simply staying as he was, cupping the conquistador's face with one hand. He said something, the Spaniard on his feet, and another huge bout of rapid Spanish ensued, and still unable to know what they were saying, she forced herself to picture what she feared happened— It was true. The man's office green eyes were covered, the curandero closing them respectfully. His lips were parted in shock, and bloodied rags were wrapped around his throat, quite hastily, by the looks of it.
The man was painfully obviously dead.
Tears welled up in her eyes, blocking her sight, and she dropped the photograph, her hands flying to her face as sobs wracked through her body. "Spagna—!" The cry escaped from her lips, and she didn't pay any attention, to what rolled off her tongue, most of it senseless apologies for things she didn't remember or recall doing. Most was about things that had happened long before she existed, or her parents, or her grandparents, or even her great-great-great-grandparents. All she knew was that her chest ached, with longing, loneliness, terror, and concern.
Something else was there, but she couldn't identify it as something she knew the name for or understood. Chiara doubted that anyone did, somewhere in her subconscious. "Tonio… Antonio Fernandez Carriedo… Is that really you…?" she whispered through her tears, still not paying attention to what was being said. "Where are you, mio amore?"
The picture gave no answer, slowly sinking as the paper became waterlogged in the ocean below her, the ink running. She didn't see what her imagination would have shown her— The man's face lips moving to form a small smile after the other conquistadors drove the natives away, stiffly standing up and looking to where she would have been, had she been on the other side of a window, a few words of Italian being spoken to the water, the fish staring at the paper with unblinking eyes and no knowledge of Italian to give a response.
"Tornare a casa, mi amor. Tornare a casa."