Aishiteru
Chapter Twelve
Diamond Dust
December 24, AC 201; 2:45 PM Local Time, Winner Mansion, L4-A01
"Come back here, you little hoodlums!" Five heads turned to the doorway as the command resounded down the stairs, through the hall and past the ajar door of the den. It was succeeded by childish shrieks of merriment. The adults were just about to return to their discussion when their attention was reclaimed by a muffled thud, followed by another shout.
"MOMMY!" Two shrill voices cried in dire unison. Relena, Une, and Hilde all looked at each other from their respective positions across the room before jumping from their seats. Relena was the first to exit the room and as a result became an unfortunate participant in a head-on collision with two very panicked small persons.
"I'm sorry, Mommy!" Hope wailed from the floor where she had fallen. Ezra had run to his mother and latched onto her leg while Hope issued this earnest apology. "We didn't mean for it to happen! It was an accident!"
Relena picked Hope up off the floor while Une dashed past her and up the stairs, Wu Fei a few steps behind her with Sally at his own heels.
"What happened, Nadey?"
"We were only playing. . . . Marie was chasing us and we were running away but then she fell down and we tried to make her get up but she wouldn't and then we got scared and, and, and ..." Hope paused to catch her breath, "and I'm sorry we killed her, Mommy!"
"What?!" Relena threw a panicked look to the staircase up which the other three had disappeared before snatching up her daughter from the floor and moving hastily to the staircase. Hope continued to sob into her mothers shoulder, her entire body convulsing with sporadic hiccups and Relena was vaguely aware of her hot tears beginning to soak through her shirt. She finally reached the top of the stairs, gasping when she saw Mariemaia lying face down on the floor while the three adults crouched over motionless girl.
The sight of Sally checking the young girl's throat for a pulse froze Relena to her very core with fear, and she didn't know how long she might have stood there immobilized by shock if Hope hadn't been wailing so desperately.
"She's fine," Sally said tersely, her eyes never leaving Mariemaia's prone form. "She's only fainted." Une released an audible sigh of relief, a sad smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she smoothed her adopted daughter's hair away from her placid face. Sally looked up and nodded to Wu Fei, who in turn nodded back and bent to scoop the girl into his arms. Sally stepped out of the way as Wu Fei deftly bore Mariemaia through the hall, back to her bedroom with Une at his heels.
"What happened?" Relena turned around to find Hilde reaching the top of the stairs, a very guilty-looking Ezra perched on her hip. It was Sally's turn to sigh as she began to explain the situation.
"Mariemaia fainted while she was chasing Ezra and Hope," she stated.
"What?" Hilde exclaimed in shock. "Why?"
"Back during the Uprising she was shot — the bullet grazed her heart. She managed to pull through, but her heart can't handle a great deal of physical stress. If she pushes herself too hard, her heart can't keep up, her brain doesn't get enough oxygen, and she faints."
Sally's explanation felt a little oversimplified to Relena, but it seemed to satisfy Hilde, so she didn't offer any extra details. Besides, the children didn't need to hear about how Mariemaia had caught a bullet meant for herself, or about how it had been Mariemaia's own grandfather who had pulled the trigger.
"Will she be ok?"
"Physically, yes, but I'm sure she'll be more than a little embarrassed when she wakes up."
*
Une's hands shook as she untied the laces of Mariemaia's shoes. Wu Fei noted this and stepped away from the young girl's side to help Une at the foot of the bed.
"Lady?" he asked tentatively as his hands replaced hers at the knots in the laces. Relieved of their task, Une's hands balled into fists at her sides, still trembling slightly. "There's no need to be upset – Sally said she'll be fine, and she will."
"I'm not upset – I'm mad." Wu Fei looked up and realized that what he had mistaken for sorrow and worry, was actually well-contained rage. "He beat, berated, and brainwashed her," she began angrily. "He used her biological connection to a man she never knew to mold her into the figurehead that he himself could never be. And when he thought that she was going to die – by his own bullet, no less – he told her that she was expendable. He cared more for his damn army than his own grandchild. And everyday of her life, she is forced to remember that horrible man and what he did to her. As she gets older, she may forget his face, his voice, his words, and his hands, but she can never forget that one bullet. Her own body won't let her forget."
"Perhaps she is not meant to forget." Une glanced over at Wu Fei, unexpectant of a response. "Perhaps her memory shall one day be her strength."
Isn't she strong enough as she is? Une thought to herself as Wu Fei tucked Mariemaia's shoes partially under the bed skirt before exiting the room and leaving the females alone.
*
4:20 PM Local Time
Hope patted down another coating of snow on her sculpture. She had set out on mission to create a three-dimensional likeness of her mother, but Ezra had taken it upon himself to enlighten her on the standard for the gender of snowpeople. Apparently, (according to Ezra) normal people make snowmen. No one he had ever heard of made snowwomen. And so, with this knowledge, she had set about redesigning the simulacrum. Ezra, it seemed, was dead-set on beleaguering her despite her efforts to appease him. She managed to successfully ignore him until one renegade snowball lobbed off her androgynous snowperson's head.
She hadn't wanted to use her last resort, but Ezra had left her no option.
At the sound of screaming, Hilde had come running, no doubt expecting a missing limb or something to that effect. When she found Hope sitting in the snow and bawling her eyes out while Ezra stood frozen and bewildered with snowball raised incriminatingly, she sighed with exasperation. While Ezra was trying to think of an explanation, Hilde trudged out into the snow, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him inside.
Hope had been immediately silenced.
With tears still clinging to her cheeks, she'd stuck her tongue out at him when Hilde's back was turned. When what transpired finally dawned on Ezra, he had thrown a fit from behind the glass door while Hope nonchalantly retrieved the disembodied head of her snowperson.
*
"Hey." Hope looked up from her work and at the boy who had emerged from the evening shadows. He wasn't dressed very well for the weather, and she was about to ask him if he was cold but he spoke first. "Do you live here?" She put the question away for later and answered him instead.
"No. Just visiting." He frowned disbelievingly.
"Nobody 'just visits' the Winners. You must be a servant's kid or something." He inspected her in the failing light of sundown. "Nah, I know all the kids in this neighborhood and I've never seen you before. You must be some spoiled diplomat's kid."
"I'm not spoiled!"
"Oh so you are a diplomat's brat!"
"I am not a brat!" She snapped and then stuck out her tongue for good measure.
"Then ya wanna play a game with me?" he asked randomly, their quarrel apparently forgotten.
"OK," Hope acquiesced, content to forgive his earlier accusations. "What game?" she queried simply before packing more snow onto the body of her snowman.
"Have ya ever heard of 'hoolet'?" He didn't wait for her answer, though, and began circling her simulacrum. She looked at him again. He was probably only two years older than her – not too old to play with, but too much of a stranger to talk to. But you already talked to him, she reminded herself. Oh well, there goes that rule out the window. "Is this your first snowman, or what?"
She glared at him, forgetting again to ask him his name. "No it is not."
He just raised his eyebrows and surveyed the snowman again. "Your first without your mom helping?" Her face fell.
"Yes."
"Not bad," he appraised haughtily. "But mine's better." His hubris melted at the excitement of describing his own snowsculpture, and he turned to her with a smile. "His bottom is wider than you are long!" He expressed its great girth by spreading his arms wide.
"Fibber," she accused with hands on hips.
"Am not!" he spat back with scowl. "And Mom let me use candy for the face!"
"I don't believe you," Hope retorted and crossed her arms over her chest.
"I'll show you if you don't believe me!"
"Fine!"
"Fine! Come with me!" He grabbed her mittened hand in his own bare one and started pulling her toward the line of trees where he had emerged. She looked back over her shoulder while she was tugged further and further from the great edifice that was the Winner mansion.
"But what about Mommy?" she asked in a worried tone.
"Don't worry about it," he reassured her over his shoulder. "You'll be back before she knows you're gone." Hope decided to risk it. She threw one last look over her shoulder at the yellow light over the glass door and thought she saw Ezra watching from behind the pane before she plunged into the deepening shadows of the copse of trees that ran along the edge of the Winner property. She had a momentary impulse to run back to the safety of the familiar, but the boy sped up, pulling her along with him, and then she couldn't see the door anymore.
*
"MOMMY!"
"Ezra! You are in time-out!"
"But Mom-mieeee!"
"That's enough out of you!" Hilde called over her shoulder while she finished hanging Ezra's wet outerwear up on the shower curtain bar. If it wasn't one thing, it was another with that boy. And they might be having another. That was it, she decided. She was never letting Duo touch her ever again.
*
Duo happened to be walking within earshot as this exchange transpired and took it upon himself to find out just why his son had been put in time-out for the third time that day. Luckily for Ezra, the first room he walked into was the one where he was being detained, and also the one with the sliding glass door overlooking the snowy playground recently abandoned by Hope.
"So what did you do this time?" Duo leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arm over his chest. "Stash a snowball in the freezer? Bury Hope in a snow cave? Try to make spit-cicles?"
"Daddy!" Ezra frowned and pointed out the door in frustration. "Lookit!"
Duo followed his son's finger and looked outside. "What? The snowman?" Duo was suddenly gripped by a horrible thought. "You didn't make it anatomically correct again, did you?!"
"Da-ad!" Ezra scowled, not entirely sure what his father meant, but knowing that it had nothing to do with what he was trying to tell him. "There was a kid out there!"
"A kid?" Duo frowned, half relieved and half confused. "You sure?"
"I'm telling the truth! He was playing with Hope!"
"But Hope's not out there."
"She left with him."
"Woah. Back up. . . . She left?" Ezra nodded his head vehemently. "OK, you just ... um ... stay here. I'll go bring her back." Duo was about to walk straight out the door when two facts struck him simultaneously. One: he was not dressed properly to go scour the colony in a snowstorm, and two: he did not know his way around the colony. "But first, I'll go get Trowa."
*
How humiliating, Mariemaia thought to herself as she stared up at the cream-colored fabric of the four-poster's canopy. The room was devoid of any stimulating characteristics, instead an obvious exercise in unobtrusiveness with its off-white walls and carpet, and stained oak furniture. She found it repulsive in its restraint.
With a sigh, she sat up and slid off the coverlet, nearly tripping on her own shoes which had been left by the side of the bed, half hidden by the bed skirt. What a perfectly parental place to put shoes. Sitting back down on the edge of the bed, she tugged them on and quickly tied the laces, already planning how to avoid the rest of the household for the remainder of the day. She stood again and walked out of the room and into the deserted upstairs hallway, quietly closing the door lest anyone be alerted to her awakened state.
Carefully looking around corners for servants and guests alike, she made her way downstairs and into what Mariemaia had come to call the "display hall." One side was doors to the smaller rooms for diplomatic or social guests while the other side was a wall covered with portraits of the extensive Winner family, along with some scattered statuary and landscape paintings. It had not escaped Mariemaia's attention that all of the current guests of the Winner patriarch were being housed in the upstairs rooms, which were officially reserved for family members, but she chose not to mull over that at that moment, instead inspecting a worn corner on an oil paining of one of the exquisite Winner women. She walked past the various artworks slowly, enjoying the reprieve from babysitting the four-year-olds.
She reached the end of the hall and turned the corner, smiling as she was met with the huge picture windows that made up the south wall of this wing and faced the large inner courtyard of the complex. Placing her fingertips against the cold pane gingerly, Mariemaia smiled at the winter wonderland that stood before her, just a few centimeters of glass away. The bushes and trees were stooped with the weight of several centimeters of snow, which smoothed their outlines into a rounded, white world without angles. Only the constantly moving water of the fountain in the center of the courtyard was seemingly immune to the snow, as the powder clung to the surfaces of the stone masonry that housed the water, but was unable to grip the fickle liquid.
She wanted desperately to go out there and experience the snow in all its glory, but simultaneously did not want to disturb the natural perfection that had settled over the manmade haven. Her reverie was interrupted, however by one of her young charges barreling into her as he hastily turned the corner of the display hall at a dead run.
Both children fell to the floor in a confused and tangled heap, but Ezra was the first to recover.
"Marie!" he screeched delightedly. "You're not dead!"
"Of course I'm not!" she snapped in annoyance. "And where's my magazine you little hoodlum?"
"What magazine?" Ezra asked from the floor where he sat, the cause of Mariemaia's assumed demise already forgotten. "Oh that magazine," he said, remembering. The small boy shook his head earnestly. "There's no time for that! Hopey's missing!"
"Hopey?" Mariemaia pulled herself up. "What do you mean she's missing?"
"I mean she's missing," he repeated, following her example and pulling himself up as well. "Daddy and Uncle Trowa went out looking for her just now. I'm going to tell Uncle Quatre. That's my mission." He was about to run off again, but Mariemaia grabbed him by one shoulder, halting his escape.
"And where is Quatre?"
"In his office."
"Aren't we taking the long way around?"
"No we are not. I am."
Mariemaia sighed. "Why are you taking the long way around when you could have just crossed the entryway to the office?"
"Because the entry's all cluttery. No room to run."
"I should have guessed," she muttered to herself. "Continue," she directed, lifting her hand from his shoulder. Ezra smiled and started off running down the hall gleefully, despite the gravity of the situation.
"So what do you do when the former Queen of the World's daughter goes missing?" she whispered to the perfectly still courtyard. "Is a coincidence even possible?"
*
Sally scuffed her booted toe angrily at the coating of snow that had buried the cobbled walkway, watching as the white fluff was scattered in front of her, marring the perfection of the pristine snow. She sighed, feeling guilty for sullying yet another beautiful thing.
"I'm so melodramatic, sometimes," she muttered to herself, watching the fog of her breath rise and dissipate into the darkening sky. She was really being quite silly, she told herself. They hadn't even had an argument for at least a month, and she was out here moping. But she couldn't help but feel like a cradle-robber when they were together in front of other people, and it made her guilty, angry, and act utterly ridiculous all at the same time.
First of all, she reminded herself, a handful of brief, romantic encounters do not a relationship make. Second of all, she had no proof that anyone even knew that their pseudo-relationship had ever started. She had barely even realized it herself, at first.
At first, she was his superior officer. They had held a mutual respect for each other, but she was still protective of him and he was of course offended by it. It had been terribly fun for her to treat him like the teenager he had been, but then all of the sudden, she was no longer looking down at him, but staring him straight in the eye. He had grown up while she hadn't been watching and their arguments, once nearly nonexistent with such a gap between their positions, heated up and he began to grate on her nerves.
Then one day they had been assigned a mission. As partners.
The experience had been excruciating, but highly effective, and as a result from then on, they were permanent partners – and virtual equals in the Preventer hierarchy. They bickered and argued as once she never would have imagined, but also they became less guarded with each other, and that had been their downfall, she supposed. Before she had realized it, the attraction was there, spurring her on to find some new way to vex and annoy him. She had decided that he must possess the same strange fascination with nettling her, as he grew more and more adept at pushing her buttons and driving her absolutely nuts as their partnership progressed.
Eventually, this had culminated one day as she had sat down at her desk and found all her neatly organized case files scattered about the top of her desk. She had simply lost it. She had barreled across the room to his desk and leaned over it, screeching at him about his unprofessionalism and immaturity and the rest of the gamut. When she had finally run out of breath, he had just sat there staring up at her. Then he had broken out into laughter and she had been stunned. It had been the first time she had ever seen so much as a chuckle from the stern man and she wasn't sure how to react. Still smiling, he had stood up and leaned across the desk until they were nearly nose to nose. Then he had told her how beautiful she was when she was angry and they had kissed for the first time.
After that, they continued to bicker constantly, but they both knew there was never any venom in the remarks made, no matter how scathing their confrontations appeared to outsiders. Une had even asked her once if she would prefer to switch departments for the sake of being assigned a new partner. Sally had declined respectfully, but inside she had been happy to have her belief that their true feelings toward each other were unknown to the rest of the preventers validated. Since arriving at Quatre's complex, however, she had the unnerving feeling that the unintrusive blonde knew what was going on, but neither side confronted the other on the subject, and Sally was content to let sleeping dogs lie.
She had no desire to reveal the true nature of their partnership to anyone, let alone this particular group of people. Just being around them made the guilt she felt about lusting over someone so much younger than herself rise to the surface and spoil what was supposed to be a time of felicitous celebration.
She also had the sneaking suspicion that the twelve-year-old of the group was on to her. The way she had stared at her from across the dinner table that first night had made Sally especially self-conscious to the point of cornering Wu Fei after the meal over the girl's all-knowing smirk.
"Yes, she suspects," he had admitted, "but she doesn't know. That's why she was staring at you tonight."
"What?" she had hissed in angry confusion.
"She's testing you. She wants to see how you'll react under suspicion. If you let her get to you like this, she'll know her intuition is correct. But if you don't let on that you're bothered by her, then she'll come to believe herself mistaken and will let it go."
Wu Fei had, of course, been right. Sally had brushed off the girl's gazes, even acted slightly confused by them, and eventually Mariemaia had backed off. But it still disturbed her how well Wu Fei understood the girl and had predicted her motives.
*
Wu Fei looked up over the edge of the book he was reading and watched Relena slip out of the room, a determined look on her face. He knew where she was headed and made no move to stop her, instead issuing a silent prayer that this whole mess would get cleared up and that Hope would be brought back safe and sound. Relena had become very distraught at the news that her daughter had run off with another child, despite Hilde's assurances that children do such things and that her husband and Trowa would bring the girl back forthwith. Relena had never had to deal with such a situation before, since her daughter had never had the opportunity to play with other children, but still she seemed more upset by the scenario than the situation warranted and Wu Fei wasn't sure if that was due to the actual unfamiliarity of the problem, or whether this was a somatization of some sort of mother's intuition. Despite his outward damning of women's weaknesses, he was more than willing to admit their strengths, and female intuition was one intangible attribute of the sex that Wu Fei wholeheartedly believed in. He had witnessed it too many times to doubt its existence.
Hilde, too, was restless. She fidgeted in her seat, and her eyes nervously flitted from one object to another in the library. Dorothy, on the other hand, was the picture of aloofness. She sat perched on a corner chair reading a book and never lifted her eyes from the pages. It had not escaped Wu Fei's attention, however, that she had not turned a page for a good five minutes, at least.
All the women seemed to be acting abnormally, he realized. Sally had left him confused and annoyed after she had engaged him in a brief, one-sided spat and stamped off down the hall earlier. Even Mariemaia had been edgy at breakfast, watching the others intently and barely touching her food. He wondered if maybe the odd behavior of the females was an harbinger of something bigger to come and continued to muse over Sally's especially odd conduct.
Wu Fei was well aware of how self-conscious Sally could be in relation to the drastic age difference between her and himself, and had perhaps too hastily brushed off her agitation as a side effect of staying in such close quarters with former comrades in arms. Wu Fei knew that he himself had a tendency to act differently when surrounded by such strong memories of his past, so it had not been too great a leap of logic to assume that Sally could be similarly affected.
Or perhaps, he had pondered, seeing their friends making such progresses in their lives had made Sally bitter over the apparent stagnation of their own relationship. Their fist kiss had been almost a year ago, but the circumstances of their relationship had demanded secrecy, while his own honor had demanded marriage vows before they could engage in more intimate contact. Thus, they had arrived at an impasse early on and since neither was willing to abandon either their profession or their relationship in favor of the other, that which could barely carry the title of "relationship" became stunted within the confines of the title "Preventer."
Now he suspected that while both were reasonable causes, another, less palatable cause loomed over the group. And while he itched to seek out Sally and keep her under his watchful eyes, he knew that his protective instincts would only chafe her precious independence. That noted, Wu Fei made up his mind to stay put and watch over the females that sat before him just in case that "less palatable cause" chose to materialize and threaten their safety. He knew neither would be appreciative to discover his defensive intentions, but Hilde and Dorothy, unlike Sally, did not know him well enough to realize what he was doing, and so he capitalized on their ignorance.
*
"Uncle Quatre!" a shrill voice greeted excitedly. Quatre looked up from his legal forms to see Ezra squeeze past the heavy office door and bound across the room to his desk. Quatre smiled and set the documents down on his workspace to watch the dark-haired boy clamber up onto the leather and mahogany chair opposite his own. "Whatchya working on?"
"Your Christmas present to your father," Quatre answered with a chuckle. Ezra's eyes lit up and he stood on the chair to get a better glimpse of the documents littering his uncle's desk.
"Really? Is it almost done? Will it be ready for tomorrow morning?"
"Yes, yes, and yes." Quatre pushed his chair back from the edge of the desk. "Would you like to see?"
"Uh-huh!" Ezra eagerly jumped off of the chair and scrambled around to Quatre's side, where he was adroitly lifted up into his uncle's lap. Quatre picked up the topmost document and showed it to Ezra.
"This is the building's certification as an orphans' asylum," he picked up another sheaf, "and this is the building permit to remodel the church."
"But the building's already put together, right? I mean, it's done isn't it?"
"Yes," Quatre answered with a laugh. "They wouldn't have given me the certification if it weren't. I'm just holding on to this for safekeeping."
"OK, I just wanted to make sure." Quatre was still laughing when something prickled the edge of his senses. Immediately his entire demeanor changed, as he felt the malicious energy enter the perimeter of the estate, steadily moving closer to the main building. Ezra noticed his uncle's serious, distant appearance, as if he were listening to something very far off, and grew still in his lap. The spidery feeling of malice continued to grow in Quatre's mind, and unexpectedly Ezra found himself standing on the floor by Quatre's chair again.
"I want you to go find your mother or father, Ezra, and stay with them," he instructed, standing up from his desk. "And avoid the south wing, if you can."
Ezra nodded dazedly, confused by his uncle's sudden mood swing. He watched as Quatre walked determinedly across the room to the door and exited without another word. It was then that Ezra finally remembered why he had come to Quatre's office in the first place, and upon his recollection, he too ran to the doorway, tugging the heavy wooden door ajar and squeezing through in an attempt to catch up with his uncle. When Ezra entered the hallway, however, Quatre was nowhere to be seen, and had left no clue to his destination.
Feeling dejected, Ezra reentered the office and climbed up into Quatre's chair, committed to wait there until his uncle's return.
*
Relena trudged down the hall, determination moving her limbs while anxiety filled them with lead. Conflicting emotions waged in her heart for supremacy, but in the end all were too equal in strength for any one emotion to win out over the others. So instead, she allowed her maternal instincts to lead her past the portraits of the deceased and through the desolate corridor to the small door she knew lie waiting at the other end. When she reached it, anxiety welled up in her and her hand shook as she reached out for the handle, nearly causing her to turn back. But she knew that for the sake of her daughter, this door had to be opened, and that she must walk down the stairs that were on the other side.
Finally, she opened the door and looked down the dimly lit staircase with mounting fear. She took the steps slowly, part of her still unwilling to admit her heinous mistake four years ago. At the bottom of the stairs, she was faced with another door, this one made of steel and even more imposing than the last. For a brief moment, Relena rested her forehead against the cool metal and took a deep, composing breath. When she had gathered her wits, she grasped the heavy bar handle and pushed the door open, letting the bright fluorescent light spill into the comparatively dark stairwell.
Within that metal room that glowed from the light of the numerous monitors that lined the walls, Heero sat in a high-backed metal chair, which he had spun around to face the door. He sat there, watching her as she stepped into the room tentatively and closed the door behind her. When the door clicked shut, Relena finally summoned the nerve to look up from Heero's boots and meet his cold gaze with her own, wounded one.
"We need to talk," she said gently.
*
Mariemaia stood by the large picture window, watching the snow fall gently and heavily while she remained lost in thought. She felt a profound protective emotion toward the child that had been following her around, doe-eyed for the past few days, and part of her would not have bothered hesitating, had it been given ascendency. Instead it would have leapt out into the snowstorm and joined the search wholeheartedly and without a second thought.
She wanted desperately to go out and help in the search for Hope, but her earlier fainting spell had so demoralized her as to hinder her from even stepping outside. The last thing she wanted was to faint out in the snowstorm and become an obstruction in the search effort. She didn't ever want to be the weak link in any team.
It was a terrible internal conflict, with neither side gaining or losing ground for very long. She wondered how the others were handling the situation, but still did not possess the courage to face them after her earlier embarrassment. Immobilized by ambiguity, she stood silently watching the snow fall and listening to her own breathing.
Several minutes passed as Mariemaia stood at the glass, musing, but abruptly she pulled her hand away from the pane and took a step back, face hardening with resolve. She turned away from the window then, apparently headed back the way she came, but froze as a deafening boom filled the air.
Mariemaia clamped her hands over her ears as if to stop the pain the explosive sound had caused, only to be knocked to her knees as the whole house seemed to lurch under her feet. The walls trembled and Mariemaia tucked her head down and covered her face with her hands. She could hear the art crashing from the walls fought to quash the panic gripping her mind as memories of the Brussels collapse trickled into her consciousness.
The scream of shattering glass filled the hall and Mariemaia felt the shards and slivers rain down on her. She inhaled sharply through her teeth as her back seemed to catch fire with the pain of the thousands of tiny wounds. After a few moments, the scene had apparently stabilized, and a shaking Mariemaia slowly stood, cringing as the glass cascaded down her back, slicing new wounds, opening preexisting ones, and imbedding itself in her flesh. When she had finally gotten a grip on the pain, she opened her eyes and looked out the gaping hole that used to house a window.
Trees trembled, their bare branches shaking, free of the snow that had hindered them just a few moments ago. Mariemaia could not see clear across the expansive courtyard, but over the tops of the newly freed trees, she could see ugly black smoke billowing up. An icy gust of wind rushed in through the opening, blowing snow across the broken glass that littered the floor and knocking a few pieces that had been clinging to the frame down to clink into their comrades. The wind brought with it the sour smell of burning and the dusty scent of crushed concrete. And then she saw it.
A thick cloud of murky, pale concrete dust seeped across the courtyard, swallowing the bushes and trees and statuary as it steadily approached Mariemaia. Slowly she backed away from the gaping maw of the window, eventually bumping against the opposite wall.
"Relax," she commanded herself, "it's just dust." No sooner had the words left her lips, than another tremor rattled the wall, and her nerves. It was then that she realized that the explosion hadn't ended with a simple detonation – it had created a domino effect by collapsing the south wing and inflicting more stress than the rest of the structure could handle. The mansion was by no means stable, nor was the incident anywhere near over. Looking out he window, she could see another, separate cloud of dust rising over the southeast corner of the mansion and realized the tremor she had felt had been its collapse.
Panic rose in her chest, gripping her lungs with steely claws and making her want to scream while coincidentally impairing her ability to do so. Another tremor rumbled, but this time instead of fading away, it grew in strength. Mariemaia had only a heartbeat to crouch against the wall and cover her head before the world came crashing down. Her last conscious thought was the realization that she longed for her mother to stoop over her and protect her from the falling rubble as she had all those years ago when another world of hers was in the midst of being destroyed.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*