Scream's Notes: Sorry to say that I had erased my previous story for a couple reasons: the character I has made, a Fanalis by the name Malik, well, she couldn't be a Fanalis because I just found out that they can't produce magoi like everyone else. While I did want to make Malik special, I didn't want to make her too special because then the bad guys would have found her easily (Muu is half Fanalis, and she's pure breed, so that's out). The other reasons was that I wanted to see the Alma Torran arc finish so that way I could understand what's going on (which is about what everyone wants, to understand what's going in the world of Magi). So, I announce to you that Malik will no longer be in the story... and instead, I made a whole new character to lead the story. I hope you guys will like her as much as you had liked Malik. Also, I give you kudos for catching a reference of a completely different fandom and say it the reviews, otherwise, enjoy this chapter!
Dislcaimer: Magi belongs to Shinobu Ohtaka, and my original character(s) belongs to me!
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Dying was a strange thing.
Still, it was pretty freaky and a tiny bit horrifying to watch your own body bleed over on a white-tiled floor like some sort of fountain. The crappy radio that the manager of the convenience store kept continued to play some classic rock while people began to crowd around me, doing everything they could to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile, near the counter of the register, I saw the man who caused all this turmoil struggling under the bulk of two teens (probably football players if their Packer's jersey was anything to go by).
People were crying and screaming into their phones, and I even saw a man try to speak to me to keep my eyes awake, oh God don't you dare die like this little girl, got a lot to live for. My body twitched, barely alive with my eyes fluttering open and close. I couldn't feel anything, all I could do was watch as I laid dying on the floor of a convenience store surrounded by total strangers.
The noise around me sounded almost as if a thick door was closed shut from all the noise. The old classic rock humming in the background and the voices of the people barely comprehending. The only think I could hear was my heartbeat; it was slow, unnaturally slow, and I could see my body barely catching breath. It was like watching a bug being shut away in a tight jar with air holes barely the size of a needle, it was like she—I, I meant I—was suffocating. It slowly dawned on to me the more harder it was for me to breathe, the more clearer and soundless the world grew.
I was no doctor or nurse, or anyone with a remote degree of medical training, but I knew that was something pretty bad.
I blinked when red and blue flashes of light came seeping through the windows, practically blinding everything. Five people came in, three of them policemen that went after the struggling man, and another pair being the paramedics.
But it was too late.
Even as I watched one medic reached for my neck, their mouth moving to talk to me, everyone just knew.
I had stopped breathing a few seconds ago, and I could no longer hear my heartbeat.
Total mute silence. No ringing, no nothing.
They threw a blanket over me before putting me on the gurney.
It was surreal to continue watching. Just eight minutes ago, I was talking on my phone with my dorm mate about our English teacher's thesis assignment while waiting in line to pay for my snacks when the dude in front of me pulled out a gun. He demanded money from the poor, scared-shitless register girl and everyone soon started coughing up their money afterward.
Having just watched a money a few hours earlier, I had done something really stupid that had me bleeding on the floor a the next few minutes later: I kicked him.
The back of his knees were wide open, but the they immediately folded when I kicked them. The trick worked, but the man only feel to one knee... which gave him enough time to pivot his body to one side, aim the gun, and—Well, you know the results.
I watched them carry my body away, and the farther they took it... the more darker the world became. I felt disappointed in it all because dammit I was just one year away from graduating from A&M University, one year away from proving everyone that yes, I can do it.
'Well,' I thought benignly. 'I hope the newspaper talk about how fucking awesome I was.'
I hope she holds on a little longer
I didn't remember when I had closed my eyes, but the faint songs wringing on my head made me feel like I had fallen asleep with the radio on. Sluggishly, I closed my eyes to return to the comfortable darkness that I had momentarily escaped from, wishing for the peaceful slumber...
Made of silver, not of clay
'I better turn it off or someone's going to get after me.' I thought sleepily as I reached out to shut off the radio.
There was nothing but air.
I opened my eyes to try again for the radio but I paused from the blind search. What I previously thought was a dark room were actually billions of stars twinkling beautifully. For a moment, I thought maybe I had somehow fallen asleep outside... but then, where was the grass?
In fact, why in Newton's laws was I floating on nothing but thin air?
I squirmed, and my body began to spin around like I was in space. It was surreal and concerning. It was unbelievable! I panicked because I was surrounded by nothing by darkness with blinking stars keeping my floating self company, but gravity must have taken pity because it ceased me from spinning around like an unstoppable lunatic.
'How in the world...?' I thought to myself frantically.
But something caught my eyes. I looked up and saw—
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow
It was huge. Probably bigger than the coliseum, and it was spinning in lazy circles. There was something about it that set me off, but I could not truly tell what about the spinning ginormous object that made it feel an air of great importance.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'
'Jesus Christ, where's the freaking off button?!'
The music became clearer and louder as time went on. It was a wonder that my roommate hadn't woken up to hear all this racket for—
Store. Gunshot. Bleeding. Dying. Dead.
I was dead. Not tripping on whatever my roommate's boyfriend brought to the apartment. Actually dead.
And I found something else incredible to stare at.
There was a world that continued to rotate on without a single care. While I could have called it planet earth, it was not what truly caught my attention the most; what caught my eye was the pillars of light that seemed to shine from the waters and terrain of the world, and they almost covered the entire spinning globe.
However, there was something about this scene that nagged at the recces of my mind. Like a name that was at the tip of my tongue ready to be used if I had the will to say it.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'
The afterlife was truly strange if all I saw was a planet-sized disco ball and a huge-ass windmill with Journey playing in the background.
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Everything felt like a dream.
A dream that seemed to have lasted on for many years. Years spent in the darkness while everything around me went on and on without trouble or hindrance. But the darkness made you forget everything, from the troubles and worries to the things you could only barely recall from the tip of your tongue.
The chance of awareness was there, but it continued to slip through my grasp every time I got too close.
Until finally, I actually caught it.
The moment everything came back to clarity, I was looking at the stars.
A moment of déjà vu came to me, and I slowly sat up to look around.
I was sitting on an endless field of green grass with the occasional rolling hills spotted in the distance, and further away were mountain peaks the stretched across like a wall to shield away outsiders from the great green valley.
Why was I expecting a disco ball though?
…
And why was I sitting on grass in some valley? In fact, why was I sitting on grass in some valley when I had come been deep inside a city that didn't have green valleys and mountain ranges to begin with?
"Hello," a voice interrupted my thinking process. "You finally woke up."
I almost slipped on the grass from how fast I turned my upper half of the body to face whomever was behind me.
There was a strange man with an odd-looking fishing pole sitting a few ways behind me with an innocent smile plastered on his seemingly gentle expression. I didn't say anything and just stared at him, but his smile widen which meant he didn't mind the rude, wide-eyed staring.
"Are you alright?" he asked, and I felt somehow he wasn't talking about my reluctance to talk.
'Was I alright?' I wondered.
I looked up to the stranger.
"Who are you?"
I blinked in confusion, momentarily paused because something was something very wrong all of a sudden.
Since when did my voice ever sound so... so squeaky?
I looked down at myself, and that's when everything just stopped making sense. Instead of two adult hands that were slightly wrinkled from age, work, and stress, I was looking at two tiny hands that looked as though they belonged to a toddler. They even felt soft when I brushed them together, as if I had been using baby oil to keep them smooth. Sinking horror grew and grew as I searched more of myself.
A short little white dress with red cloth that went across my torso and wrapped itself securely around my waist like a second skirt, and these slippers that wrapped comfortably around my chubby feet.
'What the fuck...?!'
"What's your name?" the stranger's voice cut through my panicked thoughts.
He was still wearing that creepy smile. My answer, from either my fucked up thoughts or moment of panic, came to a reply that I didn't mean for it to sound like.
"I... I dunno!"
I sounded so tiny, so vulnerable, and it was worse because now I was beginning to cry my eyes out. It was an adult and yet I was acting like—like a little lost girl.
I barely noticed arms wrapping themselves around my tiny frame, and I didn't care that I was sobbing into someone's chest. I needed comfort, and as creepy as the stranger with his fishing pole was, I was glad to have human contact when I was having a crisis.
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A child. A nameless one at that.
It was there, a name, but it was like something was blocking me from saying it out loud. After that night I met the stranger, I refused to say anything more because...
There was just something wrong about this whole thing.
I knew I had a name, I knew I wasn't in the right area, and I knew I shouldn't have the body of a little kid, but I didn't know how and why. An adult mind stuck within the confines of a three or five-year-old little girl who found herself lost in some foreign place with a weirdo.
It was all hard to keep thinking without my head beginning to fry from trying to rationalize the whole thing.
The stranger, meanwhile, continued to patiently sit on the grass while waiting for who knows what. How could he? I wondered about him as I went about on the valley, how could he be so calm and serene while I was running around like some headless chicken because my thoughts and memories were out of whack?
A day after that night, I knew I couldn't go on how I was. I was getting hungry and tired as the hours rolled by, but my embarrassment from the waters works of last night prevented me from asking for help.
Besides, it's not like I was totally helpless! I may be a child on the outside, but I had brains, I could think of a situation to get my ass out of this one! It's not like I need an adult's help, I could figure it all on my own, thank you very much!
I didn't need anyone.
No one at all...
"Hungry?"
I looked up from where I was sitting, and my nose jerked at the scent of something almost familiar to me.
Beef jerky.
My mouth watered at the sight of the jerky suspended between the two fingers of the stranger. While I knew it was pretty much asking for trouble from a stranger giving away suspicious food, my survival mode was on the high bar that I grabbed the jerky without hesitance and chewed like a rabid dog.
It was already dark, having spent the whole day in a series of inner turmoil. While I had been thinking of getting up and leaving, my body hesitated on leaving the area and away from the stranger. It was as if the thought of leaving the odd character would suddenly leave me in a state of peril, and I didn't want to actually face that peril alone.
I flinched when a hand touched the crowd of my head. I hastily pulled away from the touch, staring at the stranger who somehow moved without having to lift his ass from the ground to where I had been previously groveling. He still looked calm and serene as ever, I wanted to tear my hair out of frustration because dammit just what the fuck was so calm about this strange situation.
"Look, the stars are shining very brightly tonight." he pointed to the sky.
'Who the hell cares about stupid stars?! I want answers, you asshole!'
I glowered at the man, but I found my eyes trailing towards the red tinted purple sky. Slowly, the purple grew and grew while red faded away as time went on, and the stars began to twinkle.
Something familiar in the sky caught my attention. Of the billions of twinkling stars that shined on without the moon hovering over, three certain stars called out to me.
Deneb, Vega, and Altaïr.
'Where have I heard of those names before...?' I wondered as I stared at the bright triangular stars.
"Are you okay, little one?" I heard him ask, and I nearly jumped out of my strange dress to find him seated right next to me.
"STOP DOING THAT!" I screamed at him, having enough of his weird antics.
The fucking moron had the gal to laugh. I glowered at him from underneath my breath, but I allowed him to sit close to me. I stopped glowering when he handed me more beef jerky, and I decided to forget about the whole strangeness in favor of filling my empty stomach with food.
"You're a long way from home, little one." he said as he stared at the sky. "Your family must miss you a lot."
'Pft. What family?' I mentally scoffed at the thought. The idea that I had some family for whatever reason felt stupid.
I didn't need family. I really didn't.
"Hm," the stranger hummed as he turned to look at me with a curious glint in his kind eyes. "We really should find a name for you. Having no name means you have nothing for yourself, don't you agree?"
This guy was very sentimental. I moved my gaze towards the sky once again, looking at the three stars that shined the brightest.
And didn't know what my name was, and it was hidden somewhere deep down inside me, but I needed a name for me to go on with or otherwise I would remain forever lost. I was already sick of feeling lost after a long day, anyway.
With that, Imade a decision.
"Altaïr."
The name sounded like shattered glass. But I would pick up each piece for every time when someone would say that name, and I would slowly recollect each piece until it finally came to a whole. The name didn't belong to me now, but I would find a way to make it belong to me.
"Hm," the stranger hummed beside me. "I was very sure you were a girl."
I nearly chocked when I had been in the process of swallowing a piece of chewed jerky.
"WHAT?!" I screeched as I gave the man a full on death glare. "SAY THAT AGAIN, YOU, YOU...!"
While in the process of trying to come with some awful name-calling, the man gave a laugh. Apparently, he found it amusing in pissing off little kids by purposely questioning their genders.
"Yunan. My name is Yunan," the stranger with his weird fishing pole said without a care that he was this close to being murdered by an angry toddler. "Nice to meet you, Altaïr."
And it was then that everything around me stopped being logical when I met Yunan, the Wandering Magi.