As the dying Guardian Moon shone brightly in the night sky above them with it's last few hours of life before the rising of the Pegasus moon, after many absolutely agonizing hours of waiting, her class had finally returned to the Monastery.
Flayn was ecstatic. She wanted to hear everything about the mission! She had seen them come up from the marketplace and enter through the main gate through one of the tower windows. Before she could control them, her feet were racing, carrying her towards where she knew Seteth was in the library.
"Fa-Brother! Brother, come quickly! Professor Byleth and my classmates have returned! Let us go promptly to greet them!" Flayn exclaimed as she charged through the doorway of the library, shoving both of the massive doors inward, wasting no time, she ran toward the figure of her brother reorganizing some of the shelves as he made preparations for adding new books.
Everything had to be reorganized well now that Tomas, now revealed to be the imposter Solon, was gone, and Garreg Mach now lacked a librarian. As far as she knew there was no one else Seteth trusted to do the task correctly, so as always he had taken up responsibility for that as well in addition to his other duties. She was beginning to worry at all the work he was taking on. All his duties to the church as well as who knows how many other things? How did he ever find the time to do anything but work?
But now was not the time for such tangential thoughts! There would be time to talk to her brother about such things later, but for now, they had a duty to greet her classmates!
"Do quiet down Flayn. Need I remind you that we are in a library?" Her brother looked down at her from the books he was shelving with a small smile on his face.
"But Brother, did you not hear me before? We must make our way to the Professor and her students! They have just arrived and I deeply desire to know what transpired in the mission that you forbade me from going on!"
"You know I was only thinking of your safety Flayn. I was of the opinion that the mission your classmates persuaded the Archbishop to allow them to go on had too many potential risk factors. What would have happened had the professor or your classmates not been able to protect you and you were captured again?" The smile faded from Seteth's face, his expression now looking like some bizarre cross of stern and concern, an expression he only wore when they were having conversations such as this one.
"But Brother, I can defend myself! I've made much progress under the professor's instruction." Flayn argued.
Seteth was having none of it. "I won't debate this matter any further with you Flayn. Your safety comes first and foremost. Had you been captured again and used in more of their heinous experiments, we would potentially have another incident like that of Remire Village on our hands, except on a larger scale. It is for the good of everyone that you stayed behind." The look on his face hardened into one that said Seteth couldn't be swayed.
Flayn knew she had to wrap up this conversation quickly lest her brother take up too much time on matters of the past and prevent them from doing what she desired to do in the present moment, so she dropped the issue and went straight for the heart of the matter.
"Brother, I understand, but I know you must desire to know what has happened as well, as to what fate Solon and his allies met in the Sealed Forest, as well as to the state of the students in the Golden Deer house."
"Yes, I suppose you're right." Seteth put the last few books in his arms into their correct spots on the shelf but stopped to stare at one with a displeased look on his face before taking out the offending book and switching it with the one directly to left. He stepped away and admired his work for a moment before turning back to her. "Now that I'm finished, let us depart."
Flayn grabbed his arm and tried to hurry him along, her own pace quickening as she ran towards the library doors, still open wide and at odd angles from where she had thrown them aside with her rather…explosive entrance.
She huffed and stopped at the doors, waiting for her brother to catch up. Unlike her, he didn't seem nearly as enthusiastic, refusing to walk faster than a stroll.
Fortunately, Flayn was quick enough that was able to catch her classmates just as they came into the Entrance Hall, Seteth lagging behind by a significant margin.
"Friends! You have returned!" She exclaimed as she ran up to the group of them.
Sylvain was the first to open his mouth."Well hello to you too, little lady-" Only to cut himself off when Seteth entered the hall a moment later, deliberately stepping away from Flayn to what was probably a safe distance, his sly smile falling and a look flashed across his eyes. Was that...fear?
She didn't focus too long on that before her excitement returned. "You must tell me right away what has happened! I have been beside myself with worry!"
She turned towards Claude expecting him to be able to answer. She trailed off as she laid her eyes on what-or in this case who- he was holding.
In his arms, he held a thin-looking child, a little girl with green hair about the same shade as her brother's wrapped tightly in the professor's cloak, still shivering slightly with the lingering chill from the winter night outside.
"Oh my! Who is this?"
From the moment she first laid her eyes on the child, she felt something. Some strange connection. This child reminded her of something she couldn't quite place. It was like a bell ringing in the back of her mind, but she couldn't pinpoint the source of the sound. But, she was sure of one thing, whatever connection she had with this child, it ran deep.
Claude handed the girl to Leonie as he stretched his arms, wincing at a probable sore muscle. All of her classmates looked so tired and worn out from what must have been a difficult mission. Thankfully, none of them looked injured.
Claude raised an arm and scratched the back of his head. "Well, that's the weird thing. We don't really know-"
"What our house leader means to say is, it's quite a long story, one that could be better relayed in the morning when we are all sufficiently refreshed," Lorenz stepped in before Claude could speak more.
"Wow, Lorenz. That was exactly what I was going to say." Claude raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, you two hush. You should have seen it Flayn! It was so amazing when the professor jumped out of that big rip in the sky!" Hilda gushed eagerly.
"A tear in the sky? Whatever could have caused that?"
Hilda was about to respond, most likely spilling the whole story, when Raphael spoke up. "Talking is nice and all, but the professor needs to get to the infirmary."
Flayn gasped as her attention was turned to the unconscious form of the woman. The professor had changed! Her hair color was now green, similar to her and her brothers. The professor and that girl, they were connected somehow.
To Seteth, who was observing the entire conversation, nothing made sense.
The moment he had come through the door, he had frozen at the sight of the two unconscious females.
It couldn't be. It wasn't possible.
Yet somehow it was.
The hair was the first telling trait. Upon further observation, The older of the duo's ears remained the same as a human, while the younger had the telling pointedness humans lacked. Unfortunately, it was impossible to tell their eye color while they were unconscious.
He knew he shouldn't get ahead of himself, but something inside him dared to hope.
Was it possible that there were more survivors than Seiros? Perhaps an enclave of the Goddess's children existed somewhere else, separate from Zanado and so well hidden despite all he and the other saint's endless searching across Fodlan during and after the war against Nemesis that they remained unfound?
Were they truly not the last remnants of Nabatea? Were others like them still out there somewhere, in hiding, just waiting to be found?
Would Flayn be able to meet others of their kind?
This would require research.
("In time's flow, see the glow, of flames ever-burning bright...")
If you have ever woken up someplace new, not just in a place or position you don't remember falling asleep in, but if the act of waking up in itself was foreign to you, then you might empathize with how the nameless girl felt when her eyes shot open the next morning.
All at once, brightness assaulted her retinas and her entire body tensed. Where… Where am I? This place...it wasn't dark. It was the exact opposite. She thought back to how she could have ended up in this situation, and the memories of the previous night came flooding back.
It worked. I'm free.
Happiness flooded through her systems. By all rights, what were the chances of that happening? She resigned herself to her fate of fading away, only for exactly what she needed to come out of nowhere.
She sighed. Now, to figure out where she was.
The nameless girl felt something soft beneath her and something else warm, shrouding her body. A bed and a blanket, she remembered from the knowledge she had borrowed. It was strange because that shouldn't have happened. She had honestly thought that the knowledge would go back to her after she was done creating her body, but she still had it.
She was grateful for it though, even though it seemed to be limited to concepts and not to memories. If she had returned to reality with no knowledge of how the world worked, then things would be very difficult. She would be like a newborn soul- baby, having to figure out everything about the world and her body from scratch would take way too much time for her liking.
The girl supposed it was okay if she kept it. After all, she had only borrowed a copy of it, that way Mother wouldn't have to relearn things and she got free exposition about existing. It was beneficial for both of them. A win-win as the saying went.
What struck her first about the bed was how comfortable it was. The mattress beneath her was comfortably pressed close to her body as her new weight sank into it with the pull of gravity.
Gravity. That took some getting used to, the sensation of having some force pulling on her, keeping her grounded in more ways than one. When she had just been a soul wandering through the nothing, there had been no such thing. Now it was omnipresent, always here, permeating everything and hugging it close to the earth.
Then she noticed the light bleeding into the room from the section of the wall that was cut out. The window as it was called. Light. Light. Light! Oh, how she had missed this. This was the warmth that had rained down from above! One of the few things she actually remembered! The warmth that made her soul resonate with joy. She wanted it. She wanted its warmth.
She tried to move her new body like the other souls from the night before moved theirs. Signals were sent to the corresponding body parts through her nerve cells, muscles clenched, and released. She had to move her muscles in a specific order to achieve that refined movement the other souls had over their bodies.
She raised a hand above her body. It was one of the sequences she had figured out the night before due to the abundance of sensory cells located in her hands. The night before she had observed the way the others communicated. Along with the verbal component to speech, they moved their hands quite a bit too. She supposed they were another important aspect of communication.
She turned her head to the side and stared at the ground. She was going to have to stand, wasn't she?
She'd have to learn how to move her legs eventually, right? How hard could standing be?
One after the other, in sequence, her muscles clenched and she moved her leg, inch by inch towards the edge of the bed.
She remembered how she had seen the others from the night before moving; it had a lot to do with the torso just above where the legs were anchored. She moved the muscles around there, feeling her spine flex and twitch upward before falling back to the bed. That was how the muscles there moved, a longer contraction should do it.
She pulled and heaved her upper body to a position where it was standing perpendicular to the surface of the bed. Sitting up, she discovered she could get a better view of the room. The walls were brown wood in most places, but white in others. The floor was also made of wood the same color as the walls. The window on the wall adjacent to her bed was framed by long white cloths. Curtains. They looked pretty.
Light. She needed to get to the light. She heaved her lower body to attempt to move her legs, which was easier than she had been expecting and inched her way to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Now, she just needed to lift herself off the bed and-
CRASH
As it turns out, standing was pretty hard.
The girl rubbed the side of her head in an attempt to get rid of the pain. Why was her body so sensitive? Maybe it had to do with her lack of fat and muscle mass? The others from the night before were meatier than her, even the boy with the clear round things on his face. Glasses, they were called.
Maybe I should have put more meat on my bones. She thought bitterly. Sure, there was only so much the godly power she had borrowed from Mother could create, which was why she didn't make herself an older form, but she probably could have managed that at least.
She heard the creak of the- door, that was the word- opening and footsteps as someone new entered the room. This new person's song was really loud. It was almost uncomfortable to listen to. No one's song she experienced ever since returning to reality sounded quite so obnoxious. Like a voice echoing across a canyon, but the pitch was fluctuating much too quickly.
A woman's voice came from the figure standing in the doorway. "Good morning-wait where did she go? She was just here when I left a few minutes ago…"
Her new body chose that moment to betray her. Some saliva had gotten caught in her windpipe and she coughed. Loudly.
The woman walked over to her. "There you are. What are you doing on the floor? You should be in bed resting." The woman, an older woman with light brown hair and dark green dress bent down to meet her.
"I don't suppose you can stand with those weak legs, can you?" The woman raised an eyebrow.
She sat up again and tried to turn onto her side and use her arms to help her stand, but ended up collapsing back to the floor as her legs gave under her meager weight.
"I'll take that as a no. I'm going to have to put you back in bed myself then."
The girl decided then that she didn't like this woman very much.
The woman picked her up and placed her back on the bed."Now stay here and get some rest. You're still weak. You can't even stand, so I suggest cooperating."
The girl laid on the bed and stared at the window desperately for the light. She wanted the light. She reached her hand towards the window, grasping at the air in front of her.
"Now that you're awake, I need to ask a question. What's your name? You looked dreadful when the students brought you in last night, and I don't think I've seen you around the Monastery." The woman dragged one of the chairs at the other end of the room to the edge of the bed and sat down on it.
This woman wanted to know who she was? She didn't even know the answer to that question. If she had a name it was forgotten along with everything else.
"I…I don't know," she answered truthfully.
"Ah, so you can talk. You don't know? As in you don't remember, or you just don't have one?" The woman leaned closer on her chair, the back legs of it rising off the floor as her center of mass shifted.
"I can't remember..."
"Hmm, amnesia? Great. Anyway, since you don't know, my name is Manuela. I'm the physician here at Garreg Mach Monastery. Is there anything you do know?" The woman-Manuela corrected herself- raised an eyebrow.
"I know I was lost for a long time, and then Mother came and saved me," The girl replied.
"Your mother? Why isn't she with you? Do you know who she is?"
"My mother is the person with the bright warm light. She had two souls once before she saved me. Her song is soft and gentle, but it is powerful. Not like anyone else's," The girl explained.
She raised an eyebrow at that. "What are you talking about? Her song?" Manuela's own tones gained more discord at her confusion.
What? She didn't know? Could this Manuela woman not hear the song? But she lived here! She existed! She had a body! Hearing the song was what made the nameless girl want to return here so badly. It filled her with joy, experiencing it again. Not being able to hear it was awful.
Perhaps Manuela was just kidding. She'd go along with it, at least for now.
Would it be better to question Manuela using what Mother looked like instead of describing her song to her, then? She had to be kidding. There wasn't any way that she couldn't hear the song.
Right?
"...She has hair like mine except it's lighter, and she doesn't have freckles. She let me use her cloak when she saved me. I was probably wearing it when I was brought here," She clarified, pulling on the white nightgown she was wearing.
Manuela blinked, a connection being made in her mind.
"Wait, wait, wait. Are you talking about Professor Byleth? Nooo...no, it couldn't be. She's far too young to be having children, let alone a child of your age at that. She's at most in her early twenties, and you're, what eight?" Manuela began to mumble. "But no one knows for sure, do they? She had a child and never told anyone! What must she be doing to keep herself looking so young...I'd kill for youthful beauty like that…''
groooowwwllll...
She felt something inside her torso turn. What was this sensation? It was like the nothing, only inside of her! Was she dying? She couldn't die! She just barely got this body! What would even happen to her if she died now? Would she be banished back to the nothing?
Tears gathered in her eyes as she held her aching abdomen. She hiccupped and wiped her eyes with the edge of her sleeve to stifle them.
Manuela was startled from her rambling by the sounds of the crying girl."Oh no, why are you crying?" She sounded exasperated.
The loud growling noise emanated from the pit of the girl's stomach again. "What is that awful sound?"
"Oh, you're just hungry," She said that like it wasn't a thing to be terrified of!
Was it?
"It is about time for breakfast. I'll bring you something from the dining hall. A broth maybe. You're far too thin to have much else at the moment. We can move you on to solid food later."
The nameless girl snorted and wiped away the snot gathering beneath her nose. Would it really get rid of the bad feeling?
Manuela stood up from her chair and went back to the door, opening it and stepping out. "You'd better stay in bed this time, got it?" She glared back into the room.
The girl gulped. Suddenly she felt strangely compelled to stay exactly where she was.
Byleth awoke late in the morning, the sun high in the sky. She had been having some strange dream about laying in Rhea's lap while she was singing a soothing song. She didn't usually have dreams unless they were ones about Sothis.
Her eyes slowly craned open as she tried to remember. From the fog of her tired mind came the memories, one by one. The battle in the Sealed Forest, Kronya dying at the hands of Solon, the darkness welling around the edges of the dais, then...she had merged with Sothis to escape. After that, there was the battle with Solon, and she was talking with Claude…
She passed out, didn't she?
Looking around, she found herself in her quarters in the dorms. That meant she had been taken back to the Monastery after she had passed out, and that meant she had to be carried back. How humiliating.
She expected Sothis to say something, but then she remembered. Sothis was gone. They were one now.
Her heart was filled with sorrow at that. First, she had lost her father, and then she had lost Sothis? She would be lying if she said she wasn't fond of the sassy amnesiac girl that lived in her head at least a little.
If Byleth hadn't been blinded by rage at the time, chasing after Kronya, she wouldn't have been caught in that trap, and Sothis would still be here. What would Sothis say to her at a time like this? Maybe something like 'You slept in you fool! You must get to your feet immediately! There is work to be done!'
But, if she had never fallen for Solon's trap then she would have never found that little girl in the void where the spell had banished her.
The child.
Byleth's eyes snapped fully open as a sudden fire surged through her veins. She quickly sat up on her bed, her blankets falling. Goddess, she had forgotten about the child! The child who was probably who knows where by now! How could she forget about her?!
Byleth was on her feet before another thought could pass through her mind. She remembered giving the small girl to Raphael before the ending of the battle with Solon. She had promised to answer all their questions after the fight, and her students had accepted and they sprang into the second and final act of the battle. That meant the Golden Deer had brought the girl home with them last night along with her.
She had to be somewhere in the Monastery then. She sprung to her feet, hurriedly threw on her day clothes, and was out of the door before she could think twice.
After rushing out of her room and questioning any random passerby she happened to run into along the way, the next person she went to was Claude. He would know.
Thankfully, it was Sunday and the day after a mission at that. There was no class and everyone would be resting.
From his past comings and goings, he was likely either in his room brewing up a new poison, scheming up something, or in the library researching. Considering all the strange happenings of the night before, the library was where he was most likely to be.
After checking his dorm first just in case and finding it empty, she hurried to the library on the second floor. Byleth pushed open one of the doors and quietly peered inside. Sure enough, there the yellow-clad house leader standing in front of a bookshelf fingering through a dusty looking book with a red leather cover and a pile of other books on the floor at his side, engrossed by what he was reading.
She stepped lightly and made her way toward him in relative silence that had been trained from the time she was small. Stealth was an important skill to a mercenary after all. She tapped him on the shoulder and he jumped, unintentionally making him throw the book he was reading as he whirled around to see her, landing with a thump on the floor a little ways away.
"Aggh! Geez, Teach why'd you have to startle me like that?" Claude's eyes were wide and panicked, then they settled down as he realized who was in front of him.
"You make it too fun," Byleth replied without missing a beat, a small smile on her face.
"Why do you mock me so? I'm afraid my tender heart can't take it." He pressed a hand to his chest and he wore a fake face of distress.
Byleth rolled her eyes. Claude's eyes widened and an inquisitive expression crossed onto his face. Unlike earlier, she could tell this emotion was genuine. "Wait, did you just roll your eyes at me? Is this the first time you've done that?"
"Probably."
Claude smiled. "Well Teach, getting more and more expressive, are you?"
"I would be lying if I said no," she answered.
He bent down and picked up the book he had thrown from the place where it had landed on the floor next to a table not far away. "I see you've recovered from your little fainting spell last night. I thought you'd be out all day at least. You're a pretty deep sleeper."
Byleth nodded, and Claude got up again and folded his arms behind his head. "By the way Teach, you were in the middle of answering my questions regarding what exactly happened to you last night when you conked out, so whaddya say we resume that?"
"I have to find the girl. Where did you take her after we arrived back here last night?" Byleth was quick to shoot down his request with one of her own.
"I took her to the infirmary as soon as we got back. Wouldn't that be the first place you'd think to look?" When Byleth turned away, he promptly reached out his hand and stopped her. "Wait, you were the one who brought her out of that darkness, but you don't know her name?"
Byleth ignored him and walked out of the room, not caring that he followed her.
The mint-haired woman cracked the door to the infirmary open, Claude and Manuela following her as she entered. They had run into the Physician in the hallway carrying a bowl of savory-smelling broth from the dining hall.
The girl saw them enter just after she heard their songs. She sat up on her bed and tried to lean as far towards them as she could without falling over again. "Mother! You're here!"
Byleth stopped, thrown off guard before she regained her composure. "You must be mistaken. I don't have any children."
The little girl noticeably deflated. Manuela walked over and forcefully handed her the bowl of broth. "You can ask questions later. Now, make sure she finishes that, I have business elsewhere." The older woman left the room. The child stared at the bowl for a few beats, wondering what she was supposed to do with it. A realization bloomed on her face as she brought to her mouth and drank its contents quickly.
Byleth eyed the little girl in the bed with curiosity as she finished the bowl of broth. She turned to look at Claude who met her gaze wearing a similar expression. This girl was an odd one, not knowing what to do with food. Of course, that was understandable once considering how the child came to be here. She reminded Byleth of herself just a bit, an outsider not knowing how the world around her worked. She knew that feeling well.
She turned her eyes back to the child. She had called her Mother. Mother. She didn't know how to be a parent. The only example she had was her father, and he was not only gone but he was hardly the best example of one.
"Mother?"
The sound of the girl's voice pulled her from her stupor.
"Mother, your song sounds confused. Are you okay?" The girl looked up at her with those huge eyes in the same (stolen) shape as her own.
"I'm fine, and I'm not your mother," Byleth asked.
The girl put the empty bowl on the end table by the bed. "It's the truth. Why don't you believe me?"
"Because it's not. I didn't give birth to you, nor did I adopt you. You're not my child." Byleth's eyes narrowed.
"You're my mother because it feels right!" the girl growled, though her expression showed she was surprised at her anger.
Byleth inwardly cringed. She didn't mean to make her angry. Though, looking back on what happened, she could reason why the girl thought she was her parent. That thing she used to be in the dark world, it...it took her body and made a copy, so in some sort of strange, twisted way they were family.
The girl sighed. "You can't hear it either, can you?"
"Hear what?"
The frustration from before leaked back into her voice. "The song. If you could hear it, then you would know that I'm telling the truth."
"Didn't you say something about a song the night we brought you back?" Claude finally asked after a beat of silence.
"Yes, the song. Can't you hear the song of existence? Any of you?" Her expression fell by the second.
"I don't think we can, sorry kid," Claude responded.
The girl fell silent. Claude took that as his opportunity to pounce. "...So Teach, I know that yesterday you came out of that tear in the sky with her, so my question is, and please be honest with me, where did she come from?"