"Hup," she softly exclaimed as she jumped down a small rise. The soil here was very pungent, with a marshmallow-like texture.
It was certainly the sort of place for wearing boots, just not the fashionable kind she was wearing. She didn't much care about that though. C.C.'s centuries of life had come to impart her with a certain frivolity when it came to material possessions. They were easy enough to replace, if you cared to. It helped that she was often in the company of those with wealth. But that meant her seemingly material-less outlook was actually reflected as a staunch materialism whereby she spent lots of money on replacing stuff she quickly wore out or let get ruined.
C.C had lived that sort of life for a very long time. It was a flippant lifestyle whereby few things mattered outside of a momentary desire. All things in the world eventually crumble and disappear… except her. Clothes get worn, ripped. Metal turns brittle and cracks. The trees, flowers, animals, people, all age and turn feeble until their time is up and they too are gone. It was a difficult thing to come to terms with in the beginning, but at some point it became much easier. Never easy… just easier. Watching the world around you die is not something that ever got easy, C.C realized at some point. That's why she accepted isolation and loneliness. Even if it were maddening, the loneliness was easier to tolerate than the repetition of getting to know people, coming to care about them, and then watching them die.
That's what she thought… but it turned out she was wrong. The loneliness was just as crushing as the loss. She began to crave connection, affection, with others. The form didn't really matter to her. What could harm her anyway? She was immortal. She'd experienced every form of murder and death imaginable. Even blown up and plunged to the deep ocean depths, in time her body heals itself and she will come back to the surface as if she were merely taking a dip in a pool.
She'd become cold. She'd become so cold that the only motivation in her non-life was pursuing someone who could grant her death. But she was learning to become warm again. Meeting Lelouch changed that. She wanted to try again at living, not merely avoiding death. That bit of selfishness was what led her out here.
"C.C.?"
"Don't look at me like that, Nunnally," C.C. chuckled. "An empress should have a more stern expression."
"C.C.!"
"Now you're just pouting," C.C. said in the midst of a full-blown fit of laughter.
"It's not funny at all, C.C." Nunnally protested.
"S-Sorry," she answered, still unable to quit laughing. "But really, you're worrying too much. I'm your witch, didn't I promise you that? Let this fickle witch do her part and help you out."
"But I'm worried. If anything were to happen to you…"
"Thank you, Nunnally. Despite knowing what I am, you still treat me like a normal girl. But it's okay to remember what I am every once in a while. The sooner I figure out what's really going on, the sooner you can relax and get back to doing what you're supposed to be doing. I'll be fine. I'm your immoral witch, remember?"
"Don't you mean immortal?"
"That too."
Nunnally was Lelouch's treasure. Now that he was gone, C.C. wanted to protect that treasure. For someone to be claiming to be Lelouch's other treasures, pitting them against one another, was an affront to C.C. She could not abide having Lelouch's legacy tarnished this way. He gave his life to redeem Euphemia's honor, to avenge Shirley's death, and most of all to protect Nunnally. Lelouch died and left her behind to carry on that legacy. She wasn't going to silently let it be dragged through the mud and burned.
"Strange rumors? No, nothing like that I don't think. Certainly nothing like what's been goin' on in Pendragon and with the military."
"Nothing at all?" she pressed with a man at a shop in a city about four hundred miles northeast of Pendragon.
"Nope, nothing I can think of."
"I see. How about before the trouble in the capital?"
"Before? Hrm… you know, I guess there was a bit of something not too long before then. Yeah… I guess with the stuff goin' on in Pendragon everyone forgot for a bit.
"Some kids were playing in the Danvers Forest late, near nightfall. Story goes they went home screaming their heads off about a witch."
"A witch?"
"Yeah, yeah, a witch," he ruminated, searching his memory for the bits of information. "I don't remember any details or anything, but I heard the sheriff went and checked it out. Only thing they found was a burnt-out shack. They figure kids caught a sight of some illegal stuff and got spooked. Probably some kind of trafficking operation, or drug house."
Mystery authors were an interesting lot. In her long life, C.C. had chance to meet many. They offered an intriguing perspective on the world, a detective's wit and shrewdness where it came to tracking enemies and the like, but a freedom of imagination that allowed for the improbable as an answer. Herself being an improbability that would sooner be written of in their books than in any biography or historical record, it was an entertaining pastime to listen to them wax philosophical or contemplate potential stories. And in the process, she picked up a few tricks when it came to tracking and being tracked.
Mostly, she knew how to keep from being found when she wanted to hide. Finding those in hiding was a matter of working that process backwards. It was surprisingly difficult to do so with a target who was a pink-haired young woman dressed in black, who looked like a late princess, and was in the company of a large, black, winged beast.
Children are brutally honest. They do lie, but it's simple lies. They tend to lack the sophistication to invent a story on the spot. So, the idea that a couple of kids stumbled on a "witch" was not to be overlooked. Sure, the adults decided they found a hideout being used for illegal activities. The rationalism of a detective would say that the kids were going to be in trouble for staying out so late, saw the illegal activity, and blew the story up to something bigger so they could get out of trouble. But if a child saw a bunch of boxes of drugs, they weren't going to allege a witch was at the house. The logic of the author would say something made them think there was a witch living there. As a being that shouldn't exist chasing another being that shouldn't exist, the author's rationale was the better one to stick with for C.C. What that thing was the kids saw was not as important as the fact that it existed. And if it existed, the chance that it led to something other than the rarity of an existence outside the bounds of the rational world other than the one she was chasing were too small to contemplate.
When you have lived a very long time, and travelled to very many places, C.C. discovered, almost anywhere you go or anyone you see is bound to illicit memories of some other place or person in your past. This place, the Danvers forest, brought with it memories of a time long ago in Europe, travelling through the forests there. The forest was always a great hiding place, and there was so much more of it back then. Narrowing down leads to those centered on forests was the most logical place to start, and made infinitely more sense than rumors about the Dragon Witch being in a hotel in a big city, or secretly hiding at an imperial villa. Sure, you could invent a rationale for that, but at that speed you'd quickly eliminate the purpose behind trying to narrow down your search in the first place.
What did the kids see? C.C thought she knew. It was a part of why the police assumed a nefarious house, rather than kids playing with fire, or something like that.
She once was on the run herself; honestly, she had spent most of her life on the run from one person or organization or another. But in this memory, she had been on the run for some days from a noble who took a fancy to her, and apparently had a hard time understanding the word "no," no matter how many languages you could say it to him in. So, she ran from him. And he sent his knights to get her back. In days after first running off, she came upon what she thought was an abandoned cottage. Except it wasn't. A hunter came home while she was washing herself. Apparently, he had a mind that she should use her body to repay him for the privilege of using his cottage; she disagreed. After a struggle, he accidentally killed her. And then she got up. That sort of thing tends to scare anyone off from whatever they were doing. The man ran off, and so did she; him to tell anyone that would listen about a woman who came back to life after she died, her to avoid the area lord's knights coming to drag her back.
C.C. was relatively sure that something similar happened here – the kids saw the Dragon Witch doing something that a normal person should not have been able to do, and it terrified them. They then ran for their lives, told their parents, insisted to their parents that it was the truth, and their parents, living in a small town as they did, told the sheriff and asked them to dispel the kids' lie so they could get to the punishment phase for the kids who stayed out too late. Of course, the Dragon Witch was likely gone by then, and she probably burnt the cottage for good measure.
The details weren't terribly important to C.C. All they did was affirm that someone, at a minimum someone worth meeting, was there at some point. She could do without having to trek through all this pungent nature, but for Nunnally it was an acceptable trade off. After all, when it was all over, Nunnally would welcome her back, and they could return to idyllic pastimes of talking about their memories of Lelouch while sipping something sweet and eating pizza or cakes or whatever they wanted.
It didn't take long to find the spot where the cottage once was. After rain, sunlight, more rain, and all else that fall weather might bring over the course of about three weeks, the site was mostly brittle charcoal of wood. It looked mostly like a big bonfire's remains. That was unfortunately less than she was hoping for, though a confirmation she was on the right track.
It was no ordinary fire that took the cottage. The surrounding trees didn't show any sign of burns, so the fire had to have been contained to only the cottage. But for it to be reduced to mere ash would indicate a fiercely powerful or enduring blaze. That was sounding an awful lot like the flames of the supposed dragon.
The question was where to go next. If the Dragon Witch had been here, that will mean nothing except that three weeks ago she stopped for a time in the Danvers Forest. Normally, anyway, that would be true. But C.C. was hoping for a small break.
"It's not Geass," C.C. had told Cornelia. She was eating a slice of pizza, which annoyed Cornelia to no end, as she was sitting with Nunnally at the Mars Villa.
"Is that the word of the same witch who hid the existence of her and that infernal power for so long?" Cornelia questioned bitingly.
"Cornelia…" Nunnally softly called, her way of scolding her sister without resorting to an imperial tone.
"It's fine," C.C. excused on Nunnally's behalf. "Given what you've both experienced, it's no wonder you'd assume Geass is involved, or that you'd have a hard time believing me if I said right away that it wasn't Geass."
"But you're saying it isn't," Nunnally said reassuringly.
"Geass, the power of kings, is a power of the mind," C.C. began explaining. "Every Geass I have ever known has only effected the minds of others. Issuing orders, altering memories, forcing others to kill… even the boy Rolo whose Geass seemed to stop time only really interrupted others' perception of time.
"At best, a Geass could make someone think they're seeing someone or something that isn't there. But that would still leave a number of things about this that don't make sense for a hallucination."
"You mean the destruction, and the dragon blood." Cornelia sighed as she drifted into contemplation.
"If you shoot a hallucination, the illusion falls apart when the bullet flies through them without causing any damage. It seems that wasn't the case with the supposed dragon those Knightmares were shooting at. And no hallucination, no matter how powerful, is going to create solid matter where none exists."
"But if not Geass, then are you saying Euphie really came back to life, as an enemy, trying to kill so many people?"
"I don't know…"
As powerful and deadly as Geass could be, C.C. only knew of the power of a Code to grant immortality. She had never heard of nor seen anyone use the power of Geass to somehow resurrect. At the closest, Marianne's power was able to transfer her being into the body of another; essentially copying her mind into another person's. She told Nunnally and Cornelia that it wasn't the case that someone could completely resurrect from the dead, that it couldn't have happened. But the more she thought about the potential the less certain she was. After all, if not Geass, then what? What other power could be out there? How was it she had never come across it before? There seemed to be nothing but questions, and few in the way of answers.
But there was also hope. It was one of her benefits in being the holder of a Code. When near other users of Geass, she could sense them. It wasn't anything so clear as to say she could read minds, or even know precisely what their Geass was – that only worked with those whom she herself granted the power – but she could tell if they were near enough. She was hoping that even if this so-called Dragon Witch were not a Geass holder, but something else she hadn't known of before then, she might be able to at least pick up a little something.
She walked around the charred remnants, eyeing them curiously. There was… something. It wasn't clear. It did almost feel like something similar to a Geass was there not long ago, but it was strange. It was an indistinct feeling, like something was wrong with the Geass. She'd never felt anything like it before, so putting it into words was a struggle for her.
But it was what she had been hoping for. There was definitely a trail, a residual feeling in the air and in the ground, like a sprinkling of the magic that empowers a Geass left behind. That itself, however, was something odd. For that to be the case with how powerful that trail seemed would mean that the owner had to have been there recently – in the last day or so, not in the last three weeks. Was it possible another Geass user was also chasing after the trail?
Either outcome was less important. If it was another Geass user, that was a serious thing to contend with, given there were only a couple she knew to still be alive. But if it was the enemy she was trying to chase down, that would certainly save much time and effort if she had already grabbed their tail.
She wondered if to continue the search now, or hope that the trail would remain and restart it in the morning. It was still a couple hours until the sun dipped far enough down that it would be dark in this part of the forest, but if this trail was a lengthy one, she was liable to find herself stumbling around in the dark. Even if finding her target that way, it would make for a poor setting to start talking, perhaps even fighting. Not impossible – she had a phone with her – but a bit odd to consider.
"Are you certain there's no way a Geass could bring a person back?" Suzaku asked C.C.
"I didn't say that."
"But you said you were sure Geass wasn't involved." Cornelia challenged.
"Those are two separate things. I am confident a Geass was not the cause of this, but it's not impossible for a Geass to cause something like Euphie and Shirley at least."
"What do you mean?" Suzaku asked with urgency.
"If Lelouch or Marrybell were alive… the possibility – only the possibility – would exist. If they were alive and they could confront the collective unconscious, there is a small possibility that their Geass could force it to return a soul to a body. If Euphie or Shirley's bodies had been preserved, and the collective unconscious could be compelled to do so, it's theoretically possible the soul that left a dead body could be returned to it, or even another body entirely."
"You mean like Marianne's Geass?" Suzaku connected.
"Exactly. But, as I said, the only Geass that had a chance at something like that would have been Lelouch and Marrybell, the only Geass that could compel another to follow their will. Even then that would assume the collective unconscious, the source of Geass itself, could be forced to do anything by the power of Geass. Charles thought he could do it, and he failed. Maybe Lelouch and Marrybell together could have better luck…
"But like I said, it's all pointless. It wouldn't reverse the decay of a corpse in the ground, so you'd have to say that someone took Shirley and Euphie's bodies and kept them for all this time, and then that somehow Lelouch and Marrybell also survived. But we all know that is impossible." C.C. looked directly at Suzaku when she ended.
It had been C.C.'s intent to be harsher with them, but it still came out a bit tepid. She had seen it too many times, especially those who had any inkling of the power of the supernatural. Once those with power suffer loss, the innate reaction is to amend or fill that loss with their power. Often that just isn't possible. As terrible as it was for them to endure the loss of their loved ones, it would only make sense that they would want to latch on to any hope for having their loved ones return to them.
Such obsessions consumed Charles and Marianne, and begot the very situation by which Lelouch, Euphemia, and Shirley, and many, many others, would lose their lives. She knew that Suzaku and Cornelia could easily fall into that same trap, swearing up and down to themselves and everyone that might listen that they would never make the same mistakes Charles and Marianne did… all while leading the slaughter of countless others in an attempt to make that dream come true.
She hadn't told them that Lelouch once considered this himself too. He had mused to her once, in the aftermath of the FLIEJA blast that wiped out most of the Tokyo Settlement, that he'd put thought into it; of using his and Marrybell's Geass to access the Sword of Akasha again, order the collective unconscious to bring their loved ones back. But he feared being like his father. He feared what he might become. And he asked her to never let him do it.
But it wasn't all just blanket denial on her part. It was factually true. Lelouch had tried to use his Geass on the collective unconscious when he was confronting his father. It didn't work. Would a stronger one work? Perhaps, but there was not a remote guarantee that it would. And even if it were potentially possible, it was a futile hope given that the only known Geass of a similar type and greater power was Marrybell's. They're both dead, however, so the chance of using their Geass' had long since passed.
There was another possibility, but it was one she didn't feel was necessary to shed any light on. Doing so would only inflame things. It was a remote improbability; a speculation on an infinitesimal prospect, almost laughable in the speculation that it even exists.
It was only about thirty minutes into her walk that her brief search came to an end. She had honestly expected this entire ordeal to take weeks. There was a sinking feeling, foreboding, that it was this simple.
"You must be C.C." Euphie said with the faintest of smiles. "I think I remember seeing you near my brother once. No one other than his trusted witch would probably be able to come this far to find me. It's nice to finally meet you."
Calmly looking at her, it was like seeing a ghost. There was once a shimmer in her eyes; an angelic sparkle that bellied the hope and optimism that was once her trademark. That was faded, as though a dimmer switch had been turned almost all the way down. Her vibrant pink hair was certainly duller too, as if the sheen had been sapped away. As she sat neatly on a large boulder, you couldn't miss the regal air that seemed to be her most natural state, jarring in that no true princess would be sitting atop a moss-covered rock near sunset in a forest in the middle of nowhere. And though like her eyes and hair her skin seemed to lack a certain luster, it was no less perfect as when she was alive and pampered daily more than half a decade ago. Leaning against the boulder, about as tall as where her calves touched the rock, was a large black sword with red markings inlaid along the broadside from the ornate cross guard to about halfway to the tip. That sword stood out as not something you'd see Euphemia li Britannia with outside a knighting ceremony. The hilt certainly fit the bill for a ceremonial blade, what looked like a thorny vine, dipped in liquid metal and allowed to harden, surrounding the area where a hand just about a young lady's size might fit in to hold a sword.
Her attire strangely suited her C.C. had thought for a brief moment. Certainly, the colors were a far cry from the bright and inviting colors Euphemia once wore; the sunshine yellows, brilliant whites, light-as-air greens. Perhaps it was just the mark of her beauty that made it so even in a plum so dark as to be black she looked as lovely.
"Suzaku must never meet this woman," she thought to herself wincingly. "She would absolutely ruin him."
"This is the first time we've met face-to-face," C.C. responded to the woman's greeting with an even tone. She couldn't deny that this woman had the beguiling charm of the late princess, but that was something that could be had by any young woman, even trained if she were born with enough raw talent. "I had seen the young princess Euphemia from afar when she was a child, when I was visiting with Marianne."
"Even if I were old enough to remember, I was probably too focused on playing with Lelouch and Nunnally to have paid much attention to who was with their mother."
"That's a rather detached way of thinking. I think I'm a rather attractive and interesting woman. I would think a princess would find me terribly interesting; an unusual woman you don't normally see about the castle or villa, having a chat with her mother-in-law… that would seem rather curious."
"That sort of thing was more of Nunnally's interest, not mine."
"Is that so? My impression was that Euphemia was the dainty one who would enjoy tea parties and the like, while Nunnally was the tomboyish one interested in play."
"That's true," the woman said, lowering her gaze and smiling a tiny grin. "I loved to play tea party and house and those sorts of games. But Nunnally was a more rambunctious sort. She wanted to run around and stick her nose into all sorts of things. If there was a stranger around, she'd be the one that wanted to go and spy on them to see who they were and what they were talking about. But I would ignore them, stay where I was and continue my own play. The adults would only be doing something boring that I couldn't take part in anyway. I didn't need their world.
"Maybe because I was like that, even when I grew up everyone assumed I had no interest or aptitude for it. While it was such incessant curiosity that caused problems for Nunnally and ended up with her being someplace she shouldn't have been. If not for that, Lelouch probably wouldn't have gotten angry with father, and who knows where things would be right now."
"Are you blaming Nunnally for everything that's happened?"
"No, not entirely. Father was always a bit too… selectively focused. Sister could be like that too, so I think she inherited it from him. But because of that, he never really saw us as children. Since we weren't children, our mistakes were not minor indiscretions. And Lelouch wasn't the sort of person who could easily let things go when he was sure he was right." She sighed and looked up at the bit of darkening sky not shrouded by canopy. "If not then, Lelouch and father would have ended up butting heads at some point. I can't blame Nunnally too much for being a child and accelerating something that was bound to happen anyway.
"It's funny, because Marrybell was treated the same as Lelouch. They even ended up with similar powers. Thinking that they may have been so close kinda irritates me, but I don't think they had the chance to see each other much when they were both still at home."
"Is that supposed to be some sort of jealousy?"
"Maybe a little. I didn't show it as easily as Nunnally, but I was a fairly selfish woman too."
"Well, I guess that's it for small talk," C.C. shrugged. "It's getting late after all. Why did you lead me here? You were here weeks ago, but you left. Why did you come back?"
"So you would find me."
"You wanted me to find you?"
"Yes."
"If that's the case, you could've just gone to the villa and waited. Or you could have chased me down."
"I stand out a little too much it seems, so I can't just go to see other people."
"Well, burning entire castles to the ground can do that."
"You're funny, C.C." she giggled. "Maybe if I took an interest in you like you said, you and I could have been close back then. Maybe we still could be."
"What do you mean by that?"
"The reason I wanted to see you; I want you to help us."
"Help you?"
"Yes. You were the one to grant my father his Geass, as well as Marianne, and Lelouch. You were my father's ally, and then you were Lelouch's ally, and now you and Suzaku help Nunnally. I want you to help me too, C.C."
"Help you?" she repeated, more baffled than the first time.
"Yes. I don't think it makes any sense for you and I to fight one another. I want us to work together to make the dream Lelouch and I shared a reality. Not a false happiness like this world is now, but really a peaceful world that is kind and loving."
"I somehow don't think we'd get along well enough for that to have a hope of working out."
"I thought the same thing at first. When I thought about you, I would get so upset. If it wasn't for you, for the Geass you spread all over this world, so many terrible things could've been avoided. My father and uncle wouldn't have been tempted to fall into such a sorrowful path. They wouldn't have obsessed with this unnatural power, or started all those wars just to get control of it. Lelouch wouldn't have been so isolated, and I wouldn't have been forced to do something so terrible.
"But I really do believe what I said before; it means the world to me that you offered Lelouch a helping hand in his time of need. Lelouch was always a little awkward. He probably never really knew how to ask others for help when he needed it, so it means a lot that someone was willing to stand by his side. You knew what kind of person he was, but you supported him and helped him. That's why I believe you will be a great help if you joined me."
"That wasn't it at all. I was only looking for a way to die. Lelouch was just a little unfortunate to be the one to find me and make a contract with me. Even then, I was mostly helping Charles and Marianne keep an eye on him."
"Are you trying to make me dislike you?"
"I only wanted to make sure I set the record straight."
C.C. pulled out a gun and aimed it at the woman. The woman's eyes darkened; not in anger, but in sadness. But she stayed where she was without flinching. "Why, C.C.?"
"I don't know who you are. You aren't a real Geass user, and you don't have a Code. But your appearance alone is dangerous. Whoever you are, you can sweet-talk Nunnally, Suzaku, and Cornelia just because of the fact that you look and sound so much like Euphemia, even if you're talking about something completely ridiculous. You're too dangerous, so I have to get rid of you before you ruin their future."
"Please stop this, C.C. There's no point to doing something…"
C.C. didn't wait for her to say any more. She pulled the trigger and sent a single bullet whirring through the center of the woman's forehead. Her head recoiled backwards on the impact, her body falling limp and sliding from the boulder, knocking the large black sword to the ground to rest beside her body.
"It would rip their hearts to shreds to have to confront this woman. Lelouch would've thought the same. Isn't that why you killed your first love, Lelouch?"
C.C walked over to the body of the woman. She was considering what to do about this woman. There was still the Shirley double out there, and the Marrybell double over in Londonium. That made it important to find out who this woman was, where she came from, who had trained her, so they could get to the root of this conspiracy. That immediately showed itself to be far more complex an issue than it may have first seemed – or perhaps as difficult as some thought it originally appeared.
The sight was not one she'd personally seen herself, but she had cause to feel it before. She watched as the bullet hole in the woman's forehead began to mend itself. The blood that had been oozing from the wound slowed and finally stopped as the presence of even a scar vanished. The woman placed a hand on the boulder and worked herself up to her feet. C.C. backed away a bit, the woman leaning over to pick up her sword.
"That wasn't very kind of you, C.C. Were you like that with Lelouch as well? I assumed that woman with the red hair was more likely to be like that."
"You're an immortal… how? You don't have a Code."
"No, I don't have a Code. My Geass is still intact, as you can see." Euphemia stunned, her eyes taking on the glow of a red sigil in either eye. "But I suppose I don't need a Code now."
"This doesn't make sense…"
"I didn't want to fight with you, C.C. I really believe that you and I can work well together. Besides, we can't kill one another, so our fighting would be pointless, don't you think?"
"What in the world are you?" C.C. questioned in rhetorical bewilderment.
"Euphemia li Britannia, the former 3rd princess of the Holy Britannia Empire, and its future empress." With that proclamation, a powerful gust beat down on them, dislodging a downpour of leaves, and breaking free some of the more tenuously attached branches. "It really was nice meeting you, C.C. Please reconsider my offer. I hope to have a more favorable answer when we meet next time."
Breaking through the treetops was the large black dragon that had become Euphemia's hallmark. It was an imposing beast, its body exuding incredible heat. Its scales like polished obsidian looked to have some deep, deep, red within them in some locations, as if superheated internally.
C.C. expected the beast to snarl and snap at her very presence near its master. A bit of fear did creep into her bones, knowing now that the creature's master was no to be easily vanquished. You would be hard pressed to find a means of death she hadn't had the sad and gruesome displeasure of experiencing. That said, burnt alive by, or eaten by, a dragon was not among them; and she had no desire to have it added to the infamous list.
But the dragon was frighteningly docile. It stayed very quiet, barely even a rumble emerging deep from its gullet. It did look at her for a moment, but just as soon redirected its attention to its master. With no hesitation, Euphemia placed her hand alongside the dragon's jaw, as if caressing a gentle kitten. The dragon then lowered its head and neck as close to the ground as it could manage. Using the boulder that was previously her seat now as a step, Euphemia climbed on the dragon's back.
As if glad to have its master with it again, the dragon uttered its first sounds, a relatively quiet, shrill, roar as it beat its wings, lifting itself and the formerly late princess into the air. C.C. watched as it gained height and eventually flew off. She was left wondering what to do next.