Watery Memories

It was very bright, at first. So bright that Miyu couldn't stand it. It terrified her. She shrank in on herself due to it. The figure, almost holy in how bright and petrifyingly angelic, kept approaching her and until it phased through her chest then…

Nothing. Pitch blackness and she was swallowed by an all-consuming sleep. It drained of her all energy and she collapsed. She hadn't awakened since.

Her mother panicked as soon as it happened. She had been emotionally fragile ever since the Incident had occurred. Even from before the Incident, her mother had been overly protective. After all, she didn't want Miyu to continue associating with that thieving little girl she had been tricked into befriending. It had to have been a trick, all to get to her family's nice things. She was a dirty girl, that one. She had to be. She was often left, by herself, for hours a time and seemed to live without parental guidance.

After that encounter with that girl which had resulted in her wedding ring, which she was never able to recover, being stolen, and then the actual Incident – which had left her daughter with severe mental and emotional disorders, it made sense that Miyu's mother would become frail due to such things. And now this. After a seemingly quiet decade, her daughter becomes comatose after some sort supernaturally bright light?

Of course, she was going to become protective. And a little relieved. After all, surely no harm could come to pass to Miyu if she were kept in her own room, under lock and key, and sleeping ever so blissfully.

But it wasn't bliss. Her mother didn't even pray for sweet dreams. She thought prayer unnecessary in her ignorant certainty that Miyu's sleep was peaceful. But, Miyu was not dreaming anything sweet in her comatose state. It hurt. It hurt a lot.

The darkness was scary. The hallucinations she was having in such darkness were petrifying. Every moment caused her memories to stir and awaken. The phantom electric shocks that Miyu could feel, despite her coma, felt as fresh as the times she had taken them with a brave face: she had to survive, she had to survive so she could live another day and she had to live another day so that she could apologise to her dear friend Aoi.

Yet, it was in that deep and terrifying darkness, that Miyu soon found herself drawn to something which seemed to heal her. She could feel a presence upon her. Something which was extraordinary. Ever since she had succumbed to the coma, she couldn't feel a thing outside of her own head. She could not feel her mother or father, she could not feel the nurses or doctors and yet, she felt a presence. For the first time in so long, she felt the outside world and she was able to connect with it.

The presence was small and calming. She felt it upon her chest, it was as though water dripped unto her but there was no physical liquid, so she did not grow wet. It felt how looking at a rippling pond felt. It was blue, for lack of a better word. It felt blue but not a depressing blue. A serene or calm blue which pulled her from the darkness and from the light and submerged her, as though in water, in something tranquil and healing.

She could hear a voice. Tiny and sweet; concerned terribly for Miyu, too. And she could hear the movement of fluid. Bubbling and gurgling like a brook. Miyu liked it. Even if there was a hint about it which made her uncomfortable despite the peace it brought her.

It was familiar. Disturbingly familiar. As though they had met in another time, another life, or perhaps… the traumatic past, not too far away despite better attempts to escape it…

And from the depths of her soul, soothed, a memory came through. It surged through Miyu and gave her the first burst of colour in a long, long time. There was blue and white and a little bit of pink. It hurt. Not just the colour, but the formations the colours took as well. They were memories of her trauma and Miyu wanted to scream.

Every inch of her wanted to scream but she was so deeply unconscious. All she could do was think, over and over: Aoi! Aoi! Aoi! Miyu wanted, so desperately, to scream the name of the one she loved most. The one who had given her the courage to survive. That single-minded determination had given her the will to live in hunger and squalor and electrocution.

Aoi was the one she loved.

The one she imitated even when her mother had struck down such affections. And had tried to do everything in power to keep her from her. After all, the morning when Miyu had gone missing – had been taken – it had been the day she had done up her hair in twin pigtails and her mother had been distraught by such rebellion. She thought Aoi to be a hellion girl and a foul influence upon her daughter, so they had fought and fought over Miyu's hair and her seeming defiance.

A fight which had ended so disastrously that Miyu ran away. And then became vulnerable to the designs of something grand and sinister. She encountered a boy who promised her that he would help reunite her with Aoi…

Those memories and all in the wake of them tortured Miyu as they resurrected inside of her. Her arms, staunchly by her side and beneath the tight folds of hospital linen, remained by her side but they prickled. Miyu's whole body clenched as she was forced to relive the horrors of her past.

All whilst, strangely soothed by that presence whom she was so keenly aware of despite the pain. The healing feeling pooled around her chest and she could hear the lovely chimes of moving water, but it wasn't enough.

Miyu wished she could know what was happening, but her eyes would not open. She felt as though she intimately knew this presence. It felt as though it were apart of her soul but something else entirely. She wanted to know whom was responsible for this feeling upon her – conflicting: soothing and painful – and she wanted to thank them.

She felt as though they were connected so close and dearly. She simply had to know because it was so alien. Miyu was certain of who it could not be. She could eliminate her parents and the professionals who failed to understand why she had fallen comatose. It had to be someone else.

Someone not unlike… the light. The horrible light which had caused all of this.

The presence disappeared from over her. The memories faded, and she calmed down. Yet her heart began to beat so quickly and erratically that the monitor was confused and alarmed with concerned, incessant beeping.

Still, Miyu yearned to be able to open her eyes so she may come to understand the visage of the presence and she yearned to open her mouth, so she may come to apologise to her dear friend. She wanted them to both know the love that she had for them, the thankfulness and apology: all of it. Be it with watery eyes or a whimpering mouth. She wanted to know them, and she wanted them to know her. As the presence left, her heart pounded as she slowly closed herself off, once more, to the outside world whilst all consumed with these yearnings.