Chapter 53: Broken Memories
Heather stood just outside the Forest Gate. Mari and Jowee had already returned to the Village, but Heather stayed behind to say her goodbyes.
The elder – Heather's grandmother - was looking to her, smiling. The two stood there for a silent moment, regarding one another. Then Heather came over and hugged the old woman.
"Stay safe." Heather said. "And thank you for everything."
The elder chuckled. "No, no. Thank you. Thanks to you I finally got to meet my grandchild. And see my daughter again. It's a shame… what's become of her…"
Heather had nothing to say. She turned to leave, but the Grandmother swiftly grabbed something around Heather's neck – Circi's red pendant.
"I gave her this…" The old woman said in a melancholy tone, smiling sadly. "She used to wear it all the time…."
"What is it?" Heather asked. "I've had it for as long as I can remember, but I have no idea what it is or what it does."
"It is an old family heirloom." The old woman said. "My great-great-great-great-great….. hm, I do not seem to recall how long ago exactly, grandfather uncovered it in an ancient tomb in the Desert. It guides you to your deep and true desires. It glows brightly when you are near something you want to love and protect. I can remember how brightly, almost like a miniature, crimson sun, it glowed when she met ….. him…."
"Wilfre." Heather said. "My father."
"Indeed." The elder responded. She closed her hand around the pendant and looked Heather in the eyes. "Promise me something, my child."
"Of course." Heather said. "What is it?"
There was a long silence. And then.
"Save her." The Elder said. "Save my daughter. Save your family. Don't let her end the way your father did. Bring her home. Promise me you'll bring her home."
Heather blinked. She didn't know what to say. She didn't want to lie to the Elder, but she also didn't feel prepared to decide...
"….. Okay." She responded. "I promise."
The elder smiled, and knelt down to kiss her forehead. "Good luck, my child. I hope the pendant shows you what you are looking for."
At that moment, Heather's pet, Bakiyo, stuck its head out of Heather's backpack. It looked at the old woman.
"Oh." She said happily. "Who is this?"
"This is my pet Baki." Heather said. "You can pet her if you like."
The Elder scratched Bakiyo behind the ears and the creature purred.
"What a nice friend to have in such dark times…." The elder murmured
Heather smiled, and walked through the portal, returning home.
The sun was low in the sky, almost out of sight. In the dusk light, Heather could see Mari and Jowee discussing the first phase of the final assault on the darkness. But she was not interested in that. She needed answers.
She walked towards the house on the borders of the village, far from all others. The old, decrepit house that hadn't been inhabited in years.
The house where she would've grown up in a perfect world.
As she approached the porch and reached for the doorknob, she felt an odd sense of familiarity. She slowly opened the door. It creaked open with little resistance.
As she walked into the house, Bakiyo shivered in her backpack, as if afraid of the place.
Heather looked around. The door led into a hallway with two rooms to her immediate left and right. To her left was a living room, with a couch, bookshelves, and odd, cluttered steampunk devices hanging from ropes like laundry on a line, with papers taped to the walls and connected by red ribbons. Looking to her right there was a kitchen, with a coal stove and more devices and papers. Music sheets, weird tech and geared, propeller devices, the place looked like an odd hodgepodge of Watersong, Lavasteam, the Galactic Jungle and the Village itself.
Heather's pendant glowed so brightly that for an instant Heather was blinded completely. When her vision returned, the house looked different.
It was new. It was as if people had just moved into it. The sun was high in the sky, mid-day.
The door opened and two Raposa walked in. Wilfre and Circi. They looked younger, and far happier.
Heather watched them, apparently invisible to them, as this was just a vision caused by the Pendant.
Circi and Wilfre walked together and looked around the rooms, admiring each detail. Upon closer inspection, Heather realized that the walls had patterns carved into the walls. Hexagramic maps of constellations, the orbit of stars around planets, occult symbols signifying creation and beauty, the house itself seemed designed with the point of being esoteric. Wilfre and Circi smiled at each other and embraced.
The vision faded and Heather was alone again in the house. She stood up and walked down the main hallway more.
She saw on the wall. Vast views of Watersong, Lavasteam and the Galactic Jungle, more intimate viewings of streets and neighborhoods, portraits of people, of skies full of stars. They all looked like extremely advanced and detailed photographs, perfect images of the real world, and yet Heather could see that they were hand-painted. They all had Wilfre's signature emboldened into the painting frames, except for some, which were labelled as Circi's work. These were almost equally real and beautiful, but in each Heather could see several minuscule flaws.
She reached for a string and pulled down a paper of sheet music. It was written by Circi. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect. Heather could barely read sheet music, but the Pendant played the piano in her mind, and she had to hold back tears at the sheer melody of it all. Observing another, it was written by Wilfre, and was indeed moving, but it did not touch Heather's heart as deeply as Circi's did.
Heather could see Wilfre helping Circi paint, and Circi helping Wilfre with the writing of music. The two were almost perfect in their art and genius, but one had what the other lacked and they complemented one another. They quite literally completed one another.
Alone they would have been legends. But together they were unstoppable.
Heather continued down the hallway, looked in one doorway and her breath caught in her throat. Inside was a small room with turquoise blue walls, and old, weathered stuffed animals.
They were surrounding a crib.
It was Heather's room. Or at least the room intended for her.
Above Heather walked around the room and looked about. There were shelves with children books on the lower rungs, and more intense reading higher: novels, spiritual books, writings regarding psychology and the arts.
The pendant glowed again, and Heather could see Wilfre and Circi planning the room out. The bookshelf would be like an outline of the child's life studies, the lowest rung being the first years and each rung above being a new period of research as he or she would get older and smarter. The final bookshelf was left empty, as a symbol that, ultimately, upon reaching adulthood, she'd be free to choose her own path.
The images faded and Heather smiled. They had it all planned out, didn't they?
She knew, however, what had ended it all.
Heather finally reached the end of the central hallway and found a winding stairway leading into an attic.
Slowly ascending the creeping stairway, Heather found what she feared to see.
The attic was divided into two rooms, two private studies. On one side was Circi's, dust-covered and and old, but organized. The other, Wilfre's, was ... a sight to behold.
All along the walls of his study were crazed and scrawled paintings, obscure and almost abstract art, as if an illustration of a dream. A nightmare.
Heather saw a flipped over car, burning in the forest, with two adult corpses burning inside and a teenage girl pulling out a younger brother.
Black ink was splattered on the walls, like Shadow Goo, with Wilfre's desk covered in papers and spilled ink.
This was where it happened. This was where the darkness was born.
She could see Wilfre, wild-eyed and smiling with a demented enthusiasm, reading old history books regarding the Book of Life, his obsession with the powers of a god building over time.
The Book of Life. The darkness. It was all there, clear as day.
Wilfre's art was so realistic he began to have trouble discerning what was real or not. He began seeing Mike's reality, the truth of his world. To know that his world was nothing but a coma dream ….. it broke him.
Heather found herself crying. She felt this pity for herself, for her father, and most for her mother, Circi. Circi had been through so much. Darkness, nightmares, watching the love of her life die, twice, and finding that her own daughter had been chosen as the hero to put an end to her madness.
Heather left the house weary-eyed, sat down under a tree, and willed herself to sleep.
Hello everyone, it's the author.
... *sigh* I'm sorry guys.
I really am.
I just took a look back at faraway previous chapters and... God, what was I thinking?
There were typos everywhere, references to other games, cheap 4th-wall breaking attempts at 'comedy' and now I can't even take the story seriously.
I thought I was writing a deep and interesting story about the Drawn to Life characters we all know and love. But then again, maybe I'm being too hard on myself. After all this is my first full-length story.
Still, I shouldn't have released mostly first drafts. I don't remember if I told you any of this but most of these chapters are first drafts.
I mean jesus christ, a literally musical chapter, AND a 'christmas special' that I wrote on the holiday? This story is as mutable as a puddle of clay.
So please, as readers, try and focus on the main plot. Ignore the weird philosophizing in previous chapters, ignore the idea of a second Creator, ignore the bullshit and ignore the forced 4th-wall breaks.
Try and focus on the three Heroes, on the relationship between Heather and Circi, and on the chapters to come. I will try to make them more like the story I want.
Maybe I'll release a Remastered version when I'm done with this one.
Oh, did I forget to mention? I'm also sorry about not so much as touching this story for months! Literally, I feel like I kept you people waiting far too long. I'm so sorry.
I feel like I need to rewrite almost everything, but you guys shouldn't have to re-read everything. That's unfair. So I'll just press on.
This was a experiment in writing. The results have been ... interesting, let's just say.
I hope you've enjoyed the ride so far, and I hope you enjoy the chapters to come, but...
I'm sorry...
