A/N: :P Sorry for the weird vagueness! And lateness! This was difficult to articulate for me. I own nothing but the plot?
Match girl, match girl, have you any goods?
Yes sir, yes sir, three handfuls!
One for my frozen fingers,
One for my feet,
One for my fun'ral pyre held by the street.
Act 9: Filibustering
It was the last night of the year, New Year's Eve. And it was so terribly cold! It was snowing, and soon it will be dark.
Through the cold and the darkness, a poor little girl wandered in the street, with bare feet and no scarf for her fead. She wandered along with her bare feet which were blue with cold. She was carrying several matches in her old apron and was holding one bundle in her hand.
Unbeknowst to her, a stranger in a flamboyant hat was following her, quiet as a shadow.
It was bitterly white and windy outside, and the little match girl huddled close to the walls of the buildings. Finally situating herself in an alley, she found a wooden crate to sit on and curled up there all by her lonesome. How she wished to be warm! She looked at her graying hands and was tempted by the little matches in her apron.
It wouldn't hurt, surely, to light one!
Fakir felt a sudden stab of cold air go through him, and he shivered as his surroundings swam around him. It was a whirl of gray and white and blue, and he distinctly heard the sounds of crunching snow. His feet found solidity, and his lungs were scaled by the sharp wind. Hard.
To his left he heard Ahiru coughing violently, and the tremor under his palms told him that she, too, had fallen to the ground. He squinted at the figure and saw her tan hands so different from the cobblestoned earth. There was frost chilling his palms, and blowing his skin bluer. He stood up slowly, his back hunched against the wind.
The writer's eye caught another shivering being, squatting on a crate. He looked around and saw signs that were not there before, streets that lay unfamiliar. There were people in the streets with long cloaks and strange animal-head-topped canes, and shoulders that were just as chilly as the hanging wisps of ice.
"W-where are" ...we?
Transparence. A sudden pinch of transparence hit his skin, and just like that they were phantoms. Phantoms that heard thoughts seeping poison into the diluting air. Thoughts that escaped from the crate in the alley.
I-I'm so l-lonely...s-so...cold...I want t-to...go h-home...
These trail of thoughts took the form of a girl, barely ten years old. She was dressed in rags and seemed to be carved out of blue-tinged chalk, so frail she was. In her lap was a bundle of matches, and burned out matchsticks dusted the snow at her feet.
Ahiru cried out for the poor child, and her arm was held fast. Oh, Fakir! I can't bear to see her die here. Can't we do something?
A sharp lurch in his chest told Fakir not to do anything about the poor creature, dying as she was. In the past few years he had become quite sensitive to the tiny pull of the magic that writers often made, and this one tried to rip something out of his middle. The intent was clear though: do not interfere.
...I don't think we should. She's...she's destined to die right here.
The girl trembled, indignant and scared and worried. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but her heart was dripping in every syllable.
H-how do you know this? How do you know her fate?
And for once, he gave her an unsatisfactory answer.
...I don't know.
The quite, sad thoughts were streaming again, along with wishes of being warm again, with the two travelers of times not being able to comfort her. This went on for some time, and it seemed as if she would light one last match to keep herself warm.
Suddenly an agonizing grind jolted these thoughts and polluted the air. Fakir actually felt himself clap his hands over his ears: the screech was audible to them, and it was ghastly. They were words of guilt, guilt and sorrow:
Your father would surely beat you if you waste any of those precious matches!
The girl's pale lips trembled.
Your mother would cry if she saw you hadn't sold a single one!
She clutched the match tighter.
And the house would be just as cold, and you'd go to bed hungry again!
Her hand fell slowly to the side, devoid of hope.
Fakir was still trying to stem out the noise when his companion flew forward. Ahiru heard the familiar, horrifying grinding of cogs and knew that these thoughts of death were inserted by evil hands.
She had to do something to-at least-keep him from interfering!
She embrace the little child with her ghosty arms and whispered tenderly in her ear:
Light a match, little one! Light a match!
The hand holding the match scratched feebly against the stones.
Go on! Be warm and happy!
Trembling, the girl kept the flame close to the bundle of sticks.
Feel the light!
As if hearing her voice, the little girl desperately set all the matches aflame. The bundle in her hand glowed like a bouquet of heavenly flowers, and her pallor was lessened by the glorious golden glow. Fakir was shocked to see the blazing aura that surrounded them, all through that tiny bundle of matches.
Then the golden aura visibly warped, and he knew then that he and Ahiru were seeing what the little match girl was seeing: an overwhelming glow, and a figure shrouded in inexplicable beauty; the figure was wrinkled and had white hair, but her dress was clean and pretty and her face was serene and fine. The woman, standing beautiful and tall, with the faded kerchief on her head and the smile on her face, lifted her hand towards her dear grandchild, with a beckoning hand.
Immediately a whoosh! seemed to enveloped the alley, and the huge clock tower struck twelve. She bathed the pale body in light until the warmth drew her wraith out of the fleshy prison. With each ring of the great silver bells the little girl-spirit became brighter and warmer and happier.
And at the last ring, a powerful wind blew the gold away; the vision was gone, girl-spirit and all. The little match girl's eyes remained open, glassy, for an obscene amount of time. The two phantoms took a moment to realize what had happened.
The girl was dead.
Ahiru shuddered as she looked at the corpse, and a little rattling gasp shook her chest. Amazingly, she did not cry, only shiver in the wind she no longer felt. Fakir stood there, feeling the lining of his throat tighten and turning away from another tragedy.
"Now that isn't fair!"
The gangly tragedist rounded against the creature that once again was very hazy to him, and hence should be even more difficult for us actual people to pronounce in the living realm. "I thought I was free from this infernal prison. Free to wreak havoc on all those whom I please!"
He tried to poke the insubstantial bard that presided the tale with his finger, and failed. The curly-haired man huffed angrily, allowing parts of the smoky poet to spread in the blackness. "Turns out I'm restricted to only meddling with their minds again? I wish to feel matter, to wreak physical destruction myself!"
Drosselmeyer was met with nothing but the odd humming that occurred when the bard was at work.
There is fate worse than death, you know, it quoted from the wise man at the train station.
"But it's terrible all by itself," He snapped, preparing his entry through another ominous gear.
Fakir sucked in a breath as they walked.
"I felt so damn helpless, Ahiru." The nail marks in his faint palms became more opaque.
"As did I. But you said it yourself. There was nothing we could have done."
But the redhead felt that she herself lacked conviction.
"..."
As the two phantomish heroes looked for a way out they spotted a curious bundle of dusty bandages. How strange. It didn't seem to faze Fakir very much (who was still figuring out how to get back to their world), but Ahiru did notice it being blown by the wind.
Hello.
The young woman jumped back and squeaked in fright! The bandages were moving, and from its dusty gaps and empty spaces there seemed to be a head, a head of nothingness. "F-Fakir, look!"
The writer was already there, and he scrutinized the head with his olive eyes. He carefully picked up the object, keeping it at arm's length, and casting his wary gaze. The odd headdress shape under the cloth made him guess it was the head of an official, one time.
Hey, don't do that young man, the thing protested. It feels like you'll burn my bandages off with all that staring.
"...Are you the Truth?"
I am not the Truth. The head spoke (although it may have been just a pair of eyes) with an eerie manner, and sometimes it coughed what appeared to be dust. I was misplaced here by a youth, who came looking for a seer. He took me, believing me to be a seer, and left me here after learning otherwise.
"What did he ask of you?"
He asked me where the great source of all Truth is, that he may make it his own.
Fakir's brows creased sharply, knowing that this prideful complex was typical of Drosselmeyer. "And did you answer him? And what do you know of the Truth?"
I tried, and my answer failed to please him. He took me from my own plane of existence, you know, because the Truth was very wise indeed there. And he tossed me aside when my answer was less than expected. Truth...is a difficult thing to grasp. Even I am not completely sure, although everything is a container of some Truth. It's a matter of...how one grasps things himself.
"You mean...like interpretation?"
Why, that's the word, it shivered. Interpretation. Different versions of the same essence. Now that essence, I should say, is the Truth. That is what is truly important, I suppose. I'm not entirely sure.
"My head hurts," Ahiru croaked, who had been listening quietly.
As does mine. But the Truth, if I remember correctly, controls the past, present, and future. It defines identities and so on. And that's what we all try to find, really. But since Truth is also present in all of us, we all have a sense of what it is.
The pair of eyes rolled about in phantomy space again, and sighed (perhaps in thought): I remember not so long ago when I was back in my own time. I was quickly discarded there, too; however not ungratefully. My performance actually stunned the church officials of the time-I believe one of them fainted, can you believe? And the head seemed cheered up.
Fakir looked at his companion, who only looked at his face with that quiet burning that meant questions and expectations. He nodded curtly before turning back to the head. Before he could inquire more, however, the head whistled low and flapped its bindings.
My existence here is up, I think. If you would be kind and toss me in there...
And Ahiru's eyes were drawn to a bin that was unexplainably full of freezing brine. As if it was prepared knowing that he would arrive. She would have to get used to these things, seeing as Fakir seemed the more well-adjusted to such events.
"...Thank you."
Goodbye and good luck.
And Fakir set the head (or was it a head?) afloat on the salty water, and the two watched the swirling dust drown away, and the water mysteriously drain into nothingness. They looked at each other now, and blue danced with green.
What was the Truth, then?
TBC
