2. Legends: Imagination

The sun was boring into her eyes as Ariesa woke up on the Lorant Tableland, and all she could think at first was, that she had a splitting headache.

She reached up, and found the source of the problem. At some point, she had fallen asleep with the wooden sticks she used to hold her hair underneath her head, and two pressed awkwardly into her skull. For the millionth time, she wondered if she should braid her hair instead and be done with it, but she quickly dismissed the thought as a minor problem, straightening the messy gold hair into something presentable once again.

For a moment, that was all that was in her consciousness, and then she started to wonder what she was doing here high up in the hills instead of at home in her nice warm bed. Not that it wasn't beautiful; there was something about the way the sun fell over the hills, and the view that stretched for what seemed like forever, that made her feel at home all over again, and absolutely at peace. She sat up to watch the sun peeking over the eastern mountains, a glimmer that might have been the sea visible beyond.

And then she remembered. She had come up here to get away from the dream.

It had been the same dream every night; she could no longer remember when it had begun. Nor could she remember it all, however many times it recurred; all she could remember was a faintly envisioned tree, and the feelings she saw when she saw the tree - fear, hope, bone-deep sadness. And then, clear as day, a wail that seemed to last forever and pierce her soul.

Remember me!

Need me!

Find me, and walk beside me.

It was that wail that was in her head every time she woke up from that dream, often awaking with a start, sometimes drenched in cold sweat. That plaintive voice was begging her to remember something she was certain she had never known in the first place. But there was the odd feeling as well… not memory, but perhaps a figment of her imagination… that sparked an odd familiarity.

It was bugging the hell out of her.

The Tree, she thought. It could only be the Mana Tree. But that tree had burned to ashes centuries ago, the Goddess dying with it, and the brilliant power of Mana had dimmed to a mere flicker of a candle flame. That much, everyone knew, as well as they knew that slowly, over time, as the tree became more of a legend, Mana had snuck back in to become more of a reality. Some said that meant the Goddess was with them once again, but she was not so sure.

Actually, she wasn't especially convinced there had ever been a Goddess at all.

But what did this have to do with her, she wondered? She lived on the edges of a small town that itself lived far from the edges of a great empire. Yet she could not escape that dream, and eventually insomnia had started to get to her, as she paced the floors and stairs of her little home, afraid every night that this night, once again, she would be tortured by a voice she could do nothing to help.

Finally, she couldn't take it anymore, and late three afternoons before she had thrown together a handful of things in a bag, and hiked into the hills, hoping getting out of the house would get her away from the dream. She had peace for a couple of days until she had made her bed here, under the stars of a gloriously clear sky.

The dream did not come. But a different dream took its place, and in it was a young woman who looked not terribly unlike herself, but holding a spear instead of the sword Ariesa carried. Yet somehow, the woman urged her with the same message the other dream had, telling her to remember, to imagine, to dream. Ariesa shook her head slightly as if to either remove the memory, or clarify it, but no answers occurred to her, nor did she have any idea who the strange woman might be.

It must have been this strange location, she considered, said to house ghosts of the past. Rumor had it that an ancient king and queen were buried here together, forever overlooking the canyon from which Ariesa had received her name. (Though sometimes, she thought with a giggle, she liked to think that Ariesa Canyon had been named for her.)

No one really remembered how the canyon had gotten its name, she realized, as she began shoveling things into her knapsack. The ancient civilization that had been here had died with so many others in the wars that had followed the loss of Mana. Nothing remembered, though every once in a while one could find a souvenir of the past: a utensil here, a wheel there. Little was remembered, and less written down, and the names were swept away with time.

What had Lorant been? she wondered. Who had lived there? And what might they remember, if their memories lived today?

And why was she thinking of this? It was unlike her. Queens, trees, Mana... these had nothing to do with her. She loved reading these things in books, but she was just an ordinary person, and that was something that happened long ago. She must have led her imagination run away with her.

It was up to her to figure it all out, she knew; her mother had told her that a hundred times before she passed away. "We are women, in a difficult world," her mother had told her, when she was a girl. "Ultimately, we have only ourselves to rely on."

Her father had left long before she could remember; all she knew for certain was that he had returned to Granz, and its people's strange beliefs on the return of the Goddess. Cultists, all, but truly it did not matter; she knew she had to take care of herself, for better or for worse.

Ariesa finished packing her things, and began the hike back down the Luon Highway through the mountains, to the lakeshore grasslands where she made her home. But even as she climbed downhill, she could still hear the voice from her dreams.

"Remember me..."