Apologize
Pearl decides it must be a night with a full moon.
The date is not set from the start. It just has to be a full moon, to mark the occasion and close a cycle. She just has to wait for the right time, one of the many times she falls out of sleep before the dawn.
When she finally awakens to a full moon, and its light has the same ghastly paleness as that day, Pearl decides she is ready.
She is still somewhat clumsy around heavy clothing — when her mother was there, in the cold season, she never moved far from the braziers and the cheerful acolytes around them. Even so, the effort of tonight is too important to miss to that puffy woollen coat, no matter how tight its sleeves.
She eventually tiptoes away, not to wake Mystic Maya, and the cold outside embraces her.
Once again, the winter is freezing. Kurain and its spirits rest, not quite peacefully, buried by days and days of fallen snow. There is not much spiritual power in the courtyard, not in times like these — but she walks out with care, moving feather-light steps, and pretends the white coating on the world will shield her from the demons of the past.
It may be a game, but it makes things better. She can almost believe it, if she tries hard enough. Mystic Maya once explained to her that winter is a bad time for all their loved ones, and this year, for the first time, it is hard to forget she is included.
A light thud makes her turn around in fear. She does not sigh in relief when she sees it is just a leaf, broken and fallen from a nearby bush. She watches it in complete silence — it is a fragile thing, finally defeated by the weight of the snow. It reminds her of something, of a weight she feels inside. Her chest aches.
But the moon is nearly a ghost in the sky, and Pearl has no time to waste. She trots on to the Channeling Chamber, her small sheets of paper ready in her hand. She has something really important to bring along and something really important to say, which, in the end, is more or less the same.
She does not slow down, even though she is a bit scared and very sorry. She will not wait. And that, despite her body being less than one year older, makes her realize she is finally growing up.
Although an apology is long overdue, no one else is left to apologize. She must make amends for mistakes that were not hers.
She locks herself inside, leaving out the pale white that reminds her too much of a cold temple. She lights the candle with the help of nobody. The long overprotected years of her mother are gone, and so is the Pearl of those years.
The message she writes must be an important one. By the time she is done with the first words, she is happy to see there are no misspellings. They are the biggest, the most important words she needs to tell her.
After them, whatever else she would like to say comes in a flood. The rest, letter after letter, grows to be a fountain of tears. The jumble of ideas gets lost, pouring out, until she barely has enough strength left.
Experience interrupts her crying. Pearl takes in a deep breath, and starts the channeling.
When Misty Fey comes back to the world of the living, it is in a blur, dense with the distinct feeling of shifting to another dimension. After so many years of being on the other end, she cannot deny the sensation is somewhat disturbing — she perceives the intermingling of two different worlds, clashing yet part of the same reality. Consciousness during a channeling is a quite fascinating discovery.
Soon, her soul connects her back to the thoughts of this world. It is then that, like after a long afternoon sleep, she can recall the two most prominent facts she has on her hands.
She begins with realizing this is the first time she is been channeled, and then she understands she probably knows why.
There is much she left untold, too. It just piled up over the years of her exile. She barely had any time to see her last living daughter's face — for Maya, for Mia, she could never be there as she would have liked.
She must apologize for all that she could never do.
The setting, however, is not the one she would expect. There is no family, no beloved face to wait for her return. Misty feels the cold of the Chamber now, as if the body she is borrowing were her own.
It is a small body, with a small hand. It holds a soggy piece of paper.
The other sheets are scattered around her knees. She only needs a glance to understand that the one between her fingers holds all the meaning.
In the candlelight, she only sees three words, made blurry and uncertain by wet blotches of ink.
I am sorry
The small hand trembles. Misty cracks a smile. Apparently, the first thing she will mend from this world is the heart of a poor child.
She grabs a crayon, reaching for clean paper, and starts writing back. sss