Memory
Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow,
May looking back in memory help comfort you tommorow
When she is nine years old, Aura Starfire watches her brother die.
When she is nine years old, Aura Starfire loses the only remaining member of her family.
When she is nine years old, Aura Starfire leaves Mobius.
Every child grows up hearing stories and every child dreams their own.
Every child - as soon as they can speak - tells them.
Every child, when punished or chastised for what they consider an unfair act, will make up another life for themselves, one where they are in control, where there are no boundaries for them to cross, no consequences to their actions, nothing for them to fear or lose.
Aura is no exception.
She is, however, an exception to this exception - if such a thing can be understood, because while every child will at some point dream of another life, they will in time forget this and return to that which is real and lasting.
Aura cannot wake from this dream.
Most of the things from their home in Green Hill survived the fire, but Kharis takes few of them when they leave. These include a collection of photographs that span many decades and several generations, but it is the most recent that interest her.
Aura holds it in her hands.
In it, her parents are smiling, happy and alive. They cannot speak, but she can hear their voices just as clearly as if they were actually there.
"Aura?"
Hearing her brother, Aura wipes away the tears that are a mixture of happiness and sorrow and pushes down the sudden need for a hug. He always gets so sad whenever their parents are mentioned and she doesn't want him to stop smiling again.
Instead she takes the photograph from the box and slips it into her pocket before going to find him.
Leaving Mobius behind, Aura also leaves behind anything that can remind her of the family she had, save for a tattered photograph and the pendent hanging around her neck.
This makes it easier to create her new life.
Only a few months after leaving Mobius, when she has already begun to suspect the depth and breadth of her newly discovered teleportation ability, she is taken in by a human family on Earth, who teach her their language and customs.
When she can talk with them, they ask about her family.
She could have told them about her parents, decent, hard-working people who were overjoyed to have the second child they had longed for after many years of heartache. The father who would pick her up and twirl her around, high above his head as she shrieked with laughter, would kneel down on the grass to play with her and tuck her in at night after reading the same well-known story. The mother who would tut but smile when she came in with dirt-stained clothes, play hide and seek and pretend not to know where she was and always let her have the big wooden spoon to lick whenever they made a cake. She could have told them about her brother, Kharis, eighteen years older than her but so full of fun that there didn't seem to be a gap at all, who would bring back amazing stories about the places he had been to and who, when their parents had died, had taken her away to spare her the pain, only to be lost himself.
But she can't tell them - losing her parents didn't hurt quite as much as it did in the months after it had happened, but when she lost Kharis, just thinking of them felt as it somebody had torn her heart out. She has always been a quiet child and has never been comfortable crying in front of other people. She is afraid that if she thinks of them, she will be unable to stop.
So she lies.
In her new life she is still an orphan, but one who has never known her parents. When she is asked where she lived, she tells them Mobius, if only because she cannot imagine a whole other planet. When this question is repeated, but amended to ask where she lived on Mobius before coming here, Aura tells them in a children's home, inventing a story about being left on the doorstep in the middle of the night as a baby.
Was there a note, they ask.
No, she tells them.
She mumbles answers to their other questions, which they take as a sign that she finds the subject painful.
Aura does, but not for the reason they think.
She finds it painful because she was brought up to believe that lying is bad, that it can only hurt people.
She never thought it would hurt her.
They promise not to ask her anything else.
"Momma?"
Sapphire looks up from the bowl of cake mix they have been stirring together at her four year old daughter. "Yes, Aurora?"
Aura's smile is wide. "I love you momma."
"I love you too."
Aura spends a year living this new life, but instead of helping her, it is slowly tearing her apart.
She dreams of her parents and brother, who ask her why she is trying to forget them. In one dream she tells them she doesn't want to forget them, only the pain. In another she blames them for dying, for leaving her. In another she just cries.
It feels as if there is a wall between the new life and the old, the imaginary and the real.
It isn't long before the dam breaks.
Aura shrieks with delight. "Daddy!"
Her father grins as the swing goes back and forth. "Having fun?"
"Yes!" Aura giggles as she goes higher and higher. She's getting dizzy and her stomach feels strange, like it's turning around and around, but she's having so much fun that she never ever wants to stop.
Never ever ever.
Aura is woken by a dream.
Usually the memories fade quickly, but this time they linger and she is seized with a sudden need to be outside, sneaking through the house and to the porch doors, where she turns the key in the lock and is met by the cool air.
From her pocket she brings out an old, tattered photograph and fingers the pendant around her neck.
How long she sits there, Aura doesn't know, lost in time as she stares at the captured image, but when she is startled by the sound of the door behind her opening, she jerks and in one move the photograph is torn in two.
For a moment she stares as it falls to the ground.
Then she starts to shake.
Finally she cries.
Strong arms enfold her and hold her close.
This just makes Aura cry harder.
It has been a year since their parents died and so many things have happened - she has learnt how to tie her own shoelaces, coloured a picture without going over any of the lines and started school, where she is the best reader in her entire class.
Aura is scared she is beginning to forget their parents.
Not what they looked like, because she can see them whenever she looks in the mirror, having her father's fur and ears and her mother's hair and eyes, or what they sound like, because they still have several of her father's 'home movies', where she can listen to their voice whenever she needs to.
No, what she is beginning to forget are the things they did together, the memories she clung to so tightly after they were gone, when she woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream and didn't want to bother Kharis; but then there is that day at school, when her teacher is worried enough to call Kharis and he all but runs into the playground to where she is sitting on the swings, a photograph in her hands.
"Aura?" Kharis kneels down and places both hands on her shoulders. "Aura, what's wrong?"
Aura looks up at him and despite her vow not to upset him she finds her lip trembles. "Mari was talking about what she was getting her momma for her birthday and I couldn't remember what I got momma for her birthday last year. I've been tryin' to remember other things about momma and daddy, but I can't." Aura's voice breaks. "I don't wanna forget them Kharis, I don't but I am and..."
Kharis wraps his arms around her. "I know it's hard, but you'll forget a lot of the little things about them, like I have, but you will never forget how much they loved you and that's the most important thing of all."
"Really?"
"Really."
In the end Aura cries herself to sleep.
When she wakes up it is mid-afternoon and she is in the bed of the room they have given her and sitting on the bedside table are the two pieces of the photograph, reunited by a piece of translucent tape.
She picks it up.
For the first time she truly looks at it, taking in the smiling face of her brother and her mother and father. Then she closes her eyes and pictures their parents, makes herself see and remember them and though this makes her want to cry again it also makes her smile and laugh at the fun they had.
Aura looks around the room.
She has been here for more than a year, at first recovering from a severe illness that she developed whilst in captivity, then learning their language so she could communicate with the human family that had taken her in, but why was she still here now?
Realising the extent of her teleportation early on, Aura had imagined travelling far and wide, to as many places as possible, excited at the very thought, but fourteen months later she is still here. Initially it was to recover from a severe illness, then to learn their language and finally because she was afraid of the danger, but now she can admit it was because she has been trying to recapture what she lost on Mobius in the extended family she had found herself welcomed into here.
Aura knows what she has to do. Her decision made, she takes the photograph and goes downstairs.
"You're going to look so beautiful for your birthday party, sweetheart." Aura's mother smiles as she brushes Aura's hair. "I can't believe you're five years old. Pretty soon you'll be all grown up and won't need me anymore."
"I'll always need you momma!" Aura swings around. "I never want to go anywhere or do anything without you!"
"Oh sweetheart, you can't have your mother hanging around you all the time." Her mother takes the brush and puts it down on the table, then picks up the clothes lying on the bed. "You've got to spread your wings one day."
Aura giggles. "I don't have wings, momma."
"Everyone has hidden wings." Her mother assures her, brushing aside a stray lock of hair on her daughter's face. "Nobody knows when they'll open, but it will only be when you're ready."
"When will that be?"
Her mother smiles. "Oh, you'll know."
Authors note: These are going to be a series of short stories and one-shots inspired by a 100-word list on the experiences and lessons of my fan-character, Aura Starfire, during the years she spends travelling in other dimensions. Aura has already been featured in my Star Trek:TOS/Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction - 'The Future's Past' - and will hopefully appear in many others and chapters here may be expanded in those stories.