Mother II
The empty corridor revealed through the doorway fell eerily quiet after Alicia's footsteps died down.
With the bright, morning sunlight filtered through the mostly-drawn curtains, a good half of the chamber was drowned in shadows.
Not wanting to remain half-naked when Alicia came back with Mother, I untangled myself out of the satin bed sheets to get dressed. Padding toward the wardrobe, the floor felt cold under my feet. So did the clothes under my fingers. Soft and cool, like on a typical morning of a… highschool student…?
A second cherry plaid school uniform, much like the one Alicia wore, hung inside.
Okay, so not only was I consciously dreaming of living with my deceased mother and sister, it also seemed to be a trip back in time.
Suddenly, I caught something moving in the corner of my eye, next to the wardrobe.
Then the feeling of being watched quickly washed over me. Paralysed with the knowledge that there was nobody else in the chamber, not Alicia, nor Mother, my mind raced in the ominous silence.
Every smallest creak thundered in my ears, every swirl of darkness looked like movement. With my heart drumming in my chest, I opened the curtains one by one, casting the shadows away. They crawled, almost unwillingly, back into the corners. With the gloom gone, and the random movements and sounds coming to a halt, my shoulders relaxed. I hadn't realized how tense my body was until then.
Looking around for Bardiche (who was unsurprisingly nowhere in plain sight), I spotted a black robe hanging on a chair at a large, wooden desk. There was some comfort in not being completely naked in the face of danger after all.
I was tying the belt around my waist when one of the fountain pens on the desk started rolling toward the edge.
"Alicia?" I called out, catching the thing when it was just about to fall. "Please stop playing around like that!"
Back on the desk, the pen trembled for a moment before going still again.
"N- haa," someone whispered next to me. "Des-…rooy…"
"Alicia, please!"
The fear returned tenfold. The shadows were creeping back out, crawling toward me, climbing up the walls and swallowing the light coming through the windows.
"Okay, this is enough, I want to wake up now," I said out loud, but nothing happened. "Bardiche? Are you here?"
No reply.
With my eyes on the swirling darkness, I inched back and toward the door. I was almost at the doorstep, ready to turn to the hallway and bolt, when something grasped me from behind by my shoulders.
"Aah!" I yelped and spun around.
Frozen with her hands still reaching toward me, Mother stood in the doorway.
Knowing what was about to happen, suddenly, the thought of getting swallowed by the shadows didn't seem so bad. So I took a step back, but Mother did not move, she just kept staring at me with her mouth parted in surprise.
"Fate?" she asked. "Are you not feeling well?"
I dared to glance away from her. The room was back to normal and Mother still hadn't moved an inch. The pain in my head returned. "I… I'm good. Just… a little headache." How was I even supposed to reply?
"Mom, she has a fever," Alicia's voice came from the hallway. She stood further behind Mother, watching me carefully.
With a perfect mask of concern, Mother finally took a step closer. I avoided her hand that reached toward my head, putting another few steps between us.
Thinking about it now, I was being unreasonable. But back then, I was still acting out of fear. Whatever nightmare scenario it was, it was turning weird very quickly.
"Alicia," Mother spoke without turning back, not moving from her spot any further. "Go with Lynith."
"But Mom-!"
"It's getting late, go. I'll take care of Fate."
Alicia pouted from behind the doorway.
"Go where?" I asked her.
"Doesn't matter."
"Alicia's graduation ceremony is today," Mother said.
"Yeah, and you were supposed to go with me."
"I can still go," I blurted out.
Mother took a step toward me. "Don't worry, Fate, you can stay home and rest."
"No, I'm okay. It was just a little headache. Really."
It then started occurring to me that maybe something else was the point of this dream. Mother was getting closer and closer, so I tried to remain still this time. Her cool hand gently slid under my hair and pressed against my forehead, my mind stuck on "do not flinch" the entire time.
She bit her lip thoughtfully. "A little hot, indeed," she muttered.
Then her hand retreated and the painful tension in my shoulders melted away a little.
"Very well," Mother said. "But I'll be expecting you back home right after the ceremony. At least you, Fate, no graduation party."
I could live with that. The good memories of this house I had from Alicia did not outweigh the initial feeling of creepiness, and the shock of once again coming face-to-face with Mother. Mother. With how stifling the atmosphere around us felt, I was eager to leave this place, even if only for a while.
The entire time, Alicia's piercing eyes remained fixated on me.
We departed soon after that. The corners of the room, and the now-unmoving pen on the desk, all looked innocently normal.
As expected, Alicia didn't know what or who Bardiche was ("Weird name, that a new friend of yours, Fate?"), much less where he was. It was unnerving, to say the least. Being left without my device in the face of potential danger made me feel more naked than the actual lack of clothes earlier on.
I tried not to think about that too much while we walked through a shaded path among the trees, dressed in our school uniforms. Plaid cherry blazers and skirts, complete with black collar shirts. At least the clothing was cool, even though the idea of going back to school seemed as surreal as the dream itself.
The road we took led us through a small forest. The sun was already well up and shining through the leaves but, aside from the sound of our footsteps and birds, the way between our house and the town was peacefully quiet.
Alicia finally broke the silence between the two of us, "So how's your headache?"
"I think I'm okay now."
The stones on the road crunched under our feet.
After a couple of steps, Alicia seemed to pluck up the courage and picked up once more, "So what's with you getting so spooked earlier?"
"Spooked?"
"You turned pale when you saw Mom. I thought you were gonna faint."
"Oh…" Out of all possible topics, we were about to have this conversation.
"Still gonna blame it on a hurting head?"
"No, I just-"
"Fate, you have to tell me," she was suddenly in front of me and I halted, just barely avoiding crashing into her. "Something's up with you, I know. You have to tell me what."
"I… don't exactly know myself." It was the truth. Other than not waking up from an apparent nightmare, I didn't know what to tell her.
Alicia stared into my eyes for a moment longer before scoffing and going on her way. I had little choice but to follow.
She suddenly spoke up, "Up until this morning, I felt like I was going through the motions. Everything felt blurred and hazy. Today it's like I regained my clarity. And then you-" she stopped abruptly and shook her head.
"What about me?"
"Nevermind."
"No, please tell me."
"It's nothing," she turned to look at me. Her smile didn't really reach her eyes. "I guess I got a headache, too."
The town was closer than I initially thought, and so was the academy. All the while the scenery remained on the verge of Alicia's childhood memories that I had, filling me with a strange sense of nostalgia I had never felt before.
Alicia still acted distant and we barely talked during the rest of the trip. I didn't know what to say to her either. Not in that setting, and telling her she was really dead seemed all too cruel, dream or not.
Her graduation ceremony was really just that, too, though I was grateful to her for covering for me in front of people I was apparently supposed to know. It was like she knew how out of place I felt there.
When we left the academy building, the sky drowned in the vibrant gold of the setting sun reflecting off the thick layer of clouds high above. It looked almost like time played an elaborate trick on us in the meanwhile.
"How long were we inside for?" I mused, gaping at the (beautiful, I might add) scenery before us.
"Dunno, an hour maybe?" Alicia shrugged.
The light bouncing off her golden hair was slowly turning orange and before I knew it she was already a good couple dozen meters ahead.
"Does this happen often?" I asked when I caught up, gesturing at the sky.
"What, the sunset? I mean, usually it's not as spectacular… Fate?"
"Oh, coming." I stopped again to watch the light patterns on the wavy surface of the clouds.
While finding it weird that Alicia didn't notice anything, I still shrugged it off as part of the dream. And yet the time flow once again seemed normal as we made our way back. When the house came into view, it was still basked in the reddish glow.
Lynith greeted us with a bow at the door, "You're just in time for supper, perfect. Master was worried since you left without breakfast."
Or maybe that's just how the days went normally, it seemed that skipping dinner was not an issue in this place.
"Come, everything is hot," she said and we followed her to the dining room.
"Welcome back. Everything went well, I take it?" Mother asked from her spot at the head of the table.
"Everyone was all over Fate," Alicia pouted, then stuck her tongue at me and skipped to give Mother a hug.
Mother looked at me and took a more serious expression. "Fate? Are you feeling better?"
"Yes. I'm… better than in the morning." I was still standing at the doorstep.
"You look tired. Surely you must be hungry, leaving without food like that."
"No, I'm okay. Not feeling very… hungry after all."
"Then why don't you rest a little before eating?"
That suggestion came as a surprise. "Is it okay if I do that?"
"Naturally," Mother said while Alicia took the seat to her right.
"Excuse me then, I'll be back soon."
Surprisingly, I still remembered the layout of the house as I found myself back in Alicia's and my completely normal-looking bedroom. Maybe being here alone was not the best idea, what with all the voices and creeping shadows, but Mother's presence made me feel no less tense. Seeing her again reminded me of some wounds I hadn't taken enough time to attend to.
Her kind demeanor felt so genuine, but it was like a part of me was waiting for the mask to break. Another part of me screamed to get out of there, that it was wrong to be there, that something… someone was waiting for me. At the thought of that, my head started to hurt again.
With a sigh, I plopped down on the bed. After the pain eased up, I gave myself a nice long stretch and got up to look for some pants. All I wanted was to replace my airy uniform skirt and little did I know I was in for a disappointment.
Deciding to stick to the uniform, I started pacing nervously around the room. The vague sense of apprehension from earlier returned and, at that point, a growing concern about not waking up joined in. Maybe it wasn't a dream in the first place…
Somewhat out of habit by now, I glanced at the pen on the desk. Only the pen was gone, replaced by a sheet of paper filled with neat handwriting. The letters, incomprehensible at first, soon turned out to say: Nanoha. Dream. Destroy pendant. Nanoha. Dream. Destroy pendant. Nanoha. Dream. Destroy pendant…
Suddenly I felt sick in my stomach. I took a step back, almost slipping on something lying on the floor - the missing pen.
Something was about to happen. Something terrible. Maybe it already had, but I couldn't remember a thing. Maybe that was why I was stuck in this place.
My back hit the wall. This sudden emptiness felt like a dark blanket around my head, suffocating. The pain returned in another wave and I clutched at my head again.
Somewhere along I slipped back into a rhythmical way of breathing and began to calm down, eventually returning to the desk with my thoughts more coherent.
The page was still there. The letters on it did not rearrange, the words did not magically become any less cryptic. Nothing I could think of hinted at whatever was happening, except the fleeting impression that this wasn't the first time.
"Fate?"
I jumped in my seat when the door opened and Mother stepped in. Half-expecting Alicia to follow, I watched her close the door behind her and sit down on the bed.
"I see you found the message," she said, putting one leg over the other.
Her eyes were on the page I was now holding in my hand.
"You wrote this?" I asked, then quickly added, "Mother."
She dismissed that with her hand. "Oh, no, I only aided the real messenger."
"Who's the real messenger-"
"Fate, do you understand the meaning of this?"
"This message?" I shook my head.
Mother stood up, strolling to one of the windows. In that moment, in her black robes, she looked old, almost tired. The dying sunlight dyed her face and a part of her steel-gray hair red.
"You better not ignore the words of a ghost trying to tell you something," Mother said, staring off into the distance. "Science has long since stopped explaining the mysteries of this world."
"What is this world?"
She turned around. The light was gone from her face. "It's a cage."
The true meaning of Mother's words became clear to me only when the morning came.
At first I tried to find more clues around the house, anything at all, but the entire place was drowning in darkness. In the light of a small, handheld lamp that I found, I could barely see my own feet. The gloom felt oppressive, even terrifying at times, and when the lamp finally flickered and died, I was forced to blindly pat my way back to the bedroom, fighting the urging sense of danger lurking at an arm's reach.
"That was one long trip to the bathroom," Alicia commented when she saw me stagger back inside our room, trembling from the cold.
"How are you not afraid…?"
"Afraid of what? Fate, you're acting- nevermind. I'm gonna sleep." She snapped her book close and slipped under the sheets, turning off the light that conveniently seemed to work only in our room.
Seeing no way out of this place, whatever it was, and starting to feel genuinely tired, I decided to wait until morning and tried getting some sleep, too. At first the sleepiness just wasn't there, like in some weird case of jet lag, and Alicia constantly stirring next to me was not helping. When I finally started drifting off, the sounds of sudden knocking at the door, or footsteps in our bedroom would just wake me right up.
Except for us, there was no one around. It was like the darkness had eyes and they were on me.
Eventually I must've fallen asleep; the next thing that happened was getting shaken by someone repeatedly calling me, "Fate? Fate, wake up. Fate!"
I groaned, swatting Alicia's prodding hand away and curling under the blanket.
"Fate, come on! Of all days, you have to sleep in today?"
The uncanny sense of deja vu jolted me awake right away.
Face to face with me, Alicia stared at me impatiently before asking, "Fate, are you okay?"
The previous day was slowly coming back to me. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, feeling way groggier than a teenager should be after missing a couple hours of sleep.
"Fate?" Alicia asked, reaching out to touch my forehead.
I caught her hand. She was already fully dressed; twin ponytails and her uniform blazer. "Your graduation ceremony, it's today, right?"
"Well, yeah? You're supposed to come with me, why are you still in bed?"
She looked at me expectantly.
"... Sorry, I'll be ready in a moment."
I winced when my feet touched the cold floor. At the desk, two fountain pens lay unmoving. The message was gone, but the words made even less sense to me now than they did yesterday. Still, my insides twisted at whatever they could be possibly implying.
Mother was waiting for us in the dining room with the table ready for breakfast. Our eyes met briefly but she just smiled, nodding in acknowledgement of my greeting.
Alicia ran up to her, giving her a proper hug before she took her seat. I followed, albeit nervously skipping the hugging part, and quietly got to transferring some sort of porridge into my bowl.
Forcing in a few spoons of the bland whatever that was in my bowl (it sure didn't taste like porridge), I kept glancing at Mother now and then. Her attention seemed fully on Alicia.
When she finally caught me staring, she asked, "Fate, did you rest well?"
"Okay, I guess." Her questioning gaze pierced through me. "Not really. I couldn't sleep."
Without warning, she reached out and touched my forehead. "You do seem to have a fever."
"Oh, no, not today!" Alicia groaned opposite of me.
Whatever made her act so strange the day before, it seemed to be gone now.
"Alicia, Lynith will go with you," Mother said. "Fate, you need to rest. Your own end of term is not that far from now."
Alicia stayed quiet, ignoring my apologetic look. "F- fine," she said finally, then marched out of the dining room.
The door shut behind her, as if mocking me and this whole setting, all things considered.
It all happened so quickly that before I realized it, Lynith had already left with Alicia and I was alone in the room with Mother. Her hand on my shoulder jolted me out of my thoughts.
"Now you see," she said, taking her hand away when she saw my eyes on it. She didn't look offended.
"Are you the only one who noticed?"
She nodded, strolling toward the door. "At first I thought I was going mad-" she snorted with unamused laughter and motioned for me to follow her. "But when you finally did not dismiss the message, I started wondering…"
Finally? Just how many times had this single day happened without me knowing? Before I could ask, we walked out into the backyard, or rather a quiet meadow of a sort that stretched out with no end.
With the same, calm demeanor, Mother stepped onto the grass. "I've been coming here for days to see him but he never speaks. What if it's not me, but you, this world and its keeper have been waiting for?"
"Keeper?" I asked, following her gaze to a dark silhouette in front of an enormous, sandstone gate that suddenly appeared on the meadow.
A pair of pitch-black eyes met mine and a jolt of paralyzing fear shot through me.
I held back a scream, suddenly finding myself sitting on the bed in Alicia's chamber. Something moved to my left - it was Alicia scrambling on the floor.
"F- Fate, don't scare me like that!" she panted, holding her palm to her chest.
Shivering among the sweat-soaked bed sheets, I offered her my hand, patting her head when she sat next to me. "I'm sorry. What… happened?"
"Did you have a nightmare? I was trying to wake you up and you just-" she gestured vaguely at me.
"... Y- yes, something like that." For all I knew, it never ended.
"Oh, are you- hey, where are you going?"
In a daze, I stopped in front of our wardrobe. "Just wanted to change. Besides, I thought we're in a hurry?" I said, still trying to make sense of what actually just happened.
"Ah, yeah, kinda." Alicia walked up to me. "Hey," she mumbled, clenching her hands around my fingers. "That wasn't your blood, right?"
A chill ran down my spine. "What blood?"
She looked me up and down, then shook her head a couple times. "Nevermind, sorry for being weird." She smiled then, taking a step back and toward the door. "I'll be in the dining room. Don't take too long, Mom's waiting with breakfast."
Watching her retreating back, all I had on my mind were those black, lifeless eyes that sent shivers down my spine.
At that point, it was clear to me that this was no ordinary lucid dream, and that I had to get out of there as soon as possible. The message surely was more than a string of random words. The reference to Nanoha did not help me think any clearer, and maybe that's why I found myself alone again, about to do something reckless.
The adrenaline kept me on high alert as I walked down the long hall. To my relief, both Mother and Alicia were still in the dining room, accompanied by Lynith. Their voices reached my ears right before I was at the door, and quickly drowned out once I strode past them.
The entrance to the backyard was right where my still-hazy memory of yesterday suggested. I pushed it open and squinted my eyes at the sudden outburst of sunlight, then carefully took the same path that Mother did yesterday.
The silence around me felt eerie, unnatural. Even though I could feel the wind against my face, bending the grass at my feet, there was not a single sound, nor echo to be heard.
On the horizon, far away from the house, stood the giant gate, looking completely out of place with its squarish shapes and sandstone pillars. Like a mirage, it swirled, going in and out of focus.
Suddenly the gate was gone, only to reappear a dozen meters ahead, with the same black silhouette standing in front of it. My heart started pounding in my chest, as if it wanted to run away. In fact, every fiber in me screamed to run away. But I couldn't. The thing's eyes bearing into me filled me with genuine, incomprehensible terror.
Half-paralyzed by fear, and not really having a plan on what to do next, I stared at the ground in front of the unmoving creature, avoiding meeting its stare. Pain arose in my head again. "Who are you?"
In the omnipresent silence, my voice sounded deafeningly loud.
"Was Mother right? Is it me you've been waiting for?"
"Fate-" someone whispered in my ear.
My gaze slowly traveled upward, taking in the giant legs, covered with black fur and golden chains, gold-cast eyes on the shackles.
"Fate…"
Nanoha. Dream. Destroy pendant. But where was the pendant-
"Fate!" the whispers got louder.
Eyes on the shackles. Eyes on the-!
The pain exploded in my head and the next second I was on my knees. The pair of black eyes locked with mine.
"Fate!" Mother shouted behind me and the world around us turned purple.
Alicia's face entered my vision from the side. "Fate, are you okay?!"
A deafening roar drowned out my reply as Alicia helped me scramble back on my feet. The alien creature struggled to break free from Mother's binds around it.
To my right, Mother stood with her hand outstretched. "You will not touch my daughters!"
Anger like I had never felt before filled me suddenly at the sight of the struggling monster. With every piece finally back in place, I fully detested this heartless being for keeping me here, just so it could kill Nanoha.
Motioning for Alicia to step aside, my fist clenched where Bardiche used to rest on my uniform.
"Fate, wait!" she shouted, clutching my sleeve.
I tried to break free of her grasp when something familiar and sharp pricked my palm. She backed away, leaving Bardiche in my hand.
The binds broke when Mother collapsed on the grass and the beast lunged forward with the claws aiming at my throat. I drew my scythe, cutting the claws off, and stepped out of the way of the rest of the massive body.
With a thud, it fell and rolled on the ground.
I sprang toward it and swung Bardiche again and again, cutting through the remaining limbs - each disappearing one by one into thin air. With a grunt, I smashed one of the golden eyes into the purple grass with my boot, panting in front of the remains of the shackles.
Damn this thing for holding me here while-
"F- Fate?"
Behind me, down on the ground, Alicia had her arm wrapped around Mother kneeling next to her. Putting Bardiche safely inside my pocket, I dashed to them.
When she saw me, Mother just smiled and said, "I had… a good feeling it all was meant for you, Fate."
"You saved me. Why?"
"I've done enough harm-" she coughed, covering her mouth. Her hand was drenched in blood.
"Mom, don't talk, Lynith's gonna be here soon."
Alicia's palm kept pressing at Mother's bleeding side.
"How…?" I uttered.
"It doesn't… matter," Mother said. "The gate. Is it open?"
It did matter. Even more than when I woke up there the first time, I wanted to know why, of all scenarios, I ended up in this dream. But the massive construct behind Mother was now full of swirling darkness between its pillars and I knew that time was running short. I didn't know how long before this cycle, too, was over, and if there would ever be the next one. "Yes," I answered instead. Maybe the past was meant to be buried after all. Maybe if the circumstances were different…
Alicia turned her head away.
"You knew?" I asked her.
She nodded. Then sniffled and said, "I just… wanted to be with you for… for a while longer. I thought if… if you found it, you'd disappear… again."
I shook my head and wrapped my arms around her, one last time, then stood up and turned to them both, "I have to go."
With one more squeeze of my hand, Alicia turned away to hide her tears.
Mother only nodded. I didn't think she would say anything more but, just before I took a step, she caught my sleeve. "Fate?" Our eyes met. "I am sorry."
With that, she let go and next thing I knew I was leaping into the darkness of the gigantic gate before me. It swallowed me, then spit me out without warning into the ice-cold blue sky.
Whatever my tears were leaking for, I did not know. But there was no time to dwell.
Maybe if the circumstances were different…
Gritting my teeth, not only from the bone-chilling cold, I focused my mind back on the mission at hand and my sudden fall. "Bardiche, what's our location?!" Even with the shields on, the howl of air around me was deafening.
"Recalibrating… Searching for navigation points… Estimated location: Uminari City, Japan."
Below me, as far as I could see, a thick blanket of clouds covered the ground, getting closer and closer. Somewhere beneath it, Nanoha was waiting.
