For the eighth time in a row, Magilou dreams.
She has gone a long time without dreaming until now. In the past, Magilou would hold a guardian near her lips and breathe an arte out from it. This spell would go into her lungs first. Her mind second. It dissolved her dreams and night terrors alike.
This had been one of the first artes Melchior had ever taught her. Magilou had felt so small back then. One of his hands alone would envelope both of hers. His other he closed into a fist. She could feel all that dreaming would bring her crumple inside his hand. These are not meant for you, he had said to her then. She believed him after she slept deeply that night.
But something has changed in the last eight or so days. Magilou wants to say that she is not exactly sure what that change is. She forgoes the arte and dreams of things long past made present. Like the way a belt stung her back. The thrown stones that would scrape her shoulders. Graze her cheeks and legs. Like the burn of rope against her wrists.
She dreams of the wonderful places Beinfu had led her to during those occasions she was otherwise unsupervised. Like that stretch of sandy bank down by a creek. Dreams of the first time she caught sight of him and his hat as he scampered underneath one of the caravans. Dreams of all the flowery meadows and mountainsides Melchior had ever shown her.
Magilou dreams of Velvet.
Her face bubbles outward from inside trees. It half-forms in the ripples of water. Velvet has pulled herself into being from out of walls and broken blades. From out of the circles of artes and the shadows cast by the slow-moving cavalcade.
But this is all that Velvet has ever done in her dreams. She never acts. Only watches. Velvet bears witness to Magilou as she stumbles, crawls, and flies through places fictitious and remembered. Magilou wants to say that she is not exactly sure what Velvet's presence might mean. She has a tendency to cut truths into two and hide the halves from each other. In this case, she hides one half in her lungs first. In her mind second. It evaporates with her dreams and night terrors each morning.
Now Magilou stands before her father. They are above a floor of clouds. It looks like a place she might dream of. Only she knows that this is the Calix. Melchior had brought her here before in those final few weeks before she had been stripped of her title as a legate. Stripped of her title as a daughter.
With the same hand that had once crumpled up her nightmares and dreams, he unfolds them for her now. Each one opens up inside her being. The first ones are like blisters. They sting when they pop. But the next few scrape her mind. Burn her heart. Melchior unfolds them one by one. Every one-half she has ever hidden away in this part of her mind pulls as a magnet would for its other half.
A half is pulled free from its hiding place inside her. It is a tangle of black hair snapping in the wind and the light of an overcast sunset.
Beinfu calls out to her then. She hears the terror in his voice but not what he says.
"Don't..." she starts. That she is answering at all is due more to habit than anything else. "Don't worry..." A half near its other. "If Velvet could do it... there's no way I can't..."
Except that Velvet lost, she must remind herself. It had only taken the wrong words from the right combination of body and voice to fell her. Including that hate, that ugly malevolence in you.
Years ago, Melchior had called her ugly too. Just like Velvet, Magillanica was no more.
One-half finds its other. The binding on that tangle of black hair comes loose in the wind. The unbound strands bleed out of memory and across her mind. Two halves become one truth: this is not the end. For either of them.
The Velvet in her dreams knows that she is something more than all these fragmented things.
They spill out of the rift behind her. Rokurou, Eizen, and Eleanor. Laphicet.
Velvet.
Magilou wants to say that she is not exactly sure what it is that blooms in her chest at the sight of them all. Except that she does know what.
These are not meant for you, Melchior had said. She had thought he was right once. He might still be right now.
But Magilou is willing to give her dreams and nightmares a second chance. Just as she is willing to give herself one.