You consider this for a moment, and then experimentally hum a few notes. Her soul shimmers in response, becoming a warmer shade of color.
You wonder if there's any chance something will happen if you touch it now, so you keep humming, and activate your magic in one hand, drawing out her soul and reaching out and making contact with it.
Immediately you feel something in your mind, like a question or an invitation. "Do you want to talk?" it says, but its language feels like words of music.
"ok..." you say slowly. You don't have anything better to do.
You feel something that's like the opposite of when you get woken up suddenly from a dream. It feels like you're going somewhere deep in your own mind that you can't normally access when you're not sleeping, but staying conscious at the same time.
When your vision clears, you know deep down this is some kind of mental landscape, even though from the sharpness of your senses it feels almost real.
Snow. You panic for a moment, before realizing that this isn't Snowdin, or the underground. This is the surface, with its wide expanse of sky, and you're near a road.
You recognize the style of the buildings as human. You put your hands in your jacket pockets, put your hood up, and start exploring, wondering where this place really is. It doesn't look like anywhere you've seen before.
As you walk next to the road, you glance at the houses on both sides of the road as you pass by. It looks like it's the winter holidays for the humans. You can see a lot of decorations, and there's a few families opening presents under trees.
Then you notice something odd. From one of the houses, there's a trail of small bare human footprints in the snow, coming from the front door to meet the road. You see the footprints continue forward on the side of the road in front of you.
Something isn't right. Humans don't walk in the snow in their bare feet, any more than you do, and you're a lot more resistant to the cold than they are.
There's a four-toed canine's prints next to them too, and a small solid line as if someone was carrying a blanket and they let it drag on the snow.
You follow the footprints as they lead into the forest, and there you find Rose sitting with her back against a pine tree on a rare dry spot on the ground. A dog is lying on her feet, their fur protecting her from the cold. A small quilted blanket is wrapped around her shoulders. But she looks much younger than before, maybe only twelve years old.
Her dog growls at you, sensing your presence even though you're too far away for them to see you very well. She looks up and calls, "Who's there!" in a frightened tone.
You come closer, and show yourself, putting down your hood. "it's just me."
She scrambles to get up, yelping in fear. "A skeleton!"
But she seems weak and clumsy, and as she started to run she trips and falls face forward into a snowdrift.
You shortcut in front of her, and use your blue magic to lift her out of the snow.
"i take it you don't recognize me? come on, kid, with a face like this, am i really that easy to forget?"
She looks straight at your eye lights now as she floats in mid-air, and you see her expression change. She trembles suddenly like she's shaking something off.
"You're someone nice. But you're dangerous too. You're going to hurt me! Get away!"
"do you remember me..."
"I can't...I can't remember. Let me go!"
"what now?" you wonder internally.
For now, you lower her down on the dry spot of ground, where she curls up into a ball.
"i won't hurt ya. i promise," you try to reassure her.
But she's crying, clearly terrified. Her dog guards her, head lowered, facing you and growling.
"Get away, get away!" she screams.
She scrambles to her feet, and runs from you, back through the trees in the direction of the houses you came from. Her bare feet are red and raw from the icy snow, but she seems not to care.
You follow at a distance, staying out of her sight, but keeping watch over her.
She runs fast but clumsily, finally stumbling up to the front porch of one of the houses. She peeks inside the window. From over her shoulder, you can see three people inside, an older man and a woman and a boy more her age. Her family maybe?
It looks like the boy is opening a large present, and the others are sitting nearby watching him with proud and pleased expressions. It must be the humans' holiday season.
But the child Rose seems curiously reluctant to enter the house. She walks away from the window with a blank expression, and sits on the porch, hugging her knees as tears travel their way down her face. Her dog sits next to her, licking at her face, apparently trying to console her. She pets the dog on the head and back appreciatively.
You try to think. You want to talk to Rose, but she seems to be in some kind of adolescent mental state, trapped in some memories of her own, but still cognizant of the way you threatened her before.
How can you get her to talk to you without scaring her again? Her last memory of you about to attack her isn't a pleasant one.
Can you summon here? You make the attempt, and one of your Blasters pops into existence next to you.
"would you help me out and try to make friends with her?" you ask it, pointing with your thumb at Rose behind you. "i've really scared her and now she just runs from me."
The Blaster nods in mid-air, spinning confidently once and floating away. Creatively, it decides to pick up a large stick, and bring it to Rose, still sitting on the porch. It cautiously and politely lays it down in front of her, and then nudges it with its nose.
She seems puzzled, but evidently doesn't have the same negative association with the Blaster as she does with you. She picks up the stick and throws it. Her dog and the Blaster race to retrieve it, and the Blaster wins this time. They play fetch for awhile and you see her start to smile a little.
Rose seems thoroughly distracted now from both her sadness over not wanting to go into the house, and her fear of you.
Gradually the Blaster coaxes her away from the house, and closer to you, still waiting at the edge of the forest. She follows it trustingly, but stops short when she notices you, tensing up like a rabbit. You unsummon the Blaster, letting it return home for now.
She starts backing away slowly, clearly thinking of running away again, but perhaps fearing that if she turns around, you'll attack her from behind. Her dog faces you at her side, head lowered and sniffing the air, apparently trying to figure out what you are. It's a little known fact, but you know that most dogs don't have very good eyesight.
"please." You try using her real name, that you know is important to her. "don't run. i need to talk to ya."
It makes her pause. "Nobody knows that name. My family doesn't know it," she says. She glances back at the house, and says lowly, "They don't even seem to know my normal name sometimes."
"i know it ain't any of my business, but why are ya out here? i know you probably have your reasons for being out here in the cold while they're in there, opening presents."
She looks down. "I just make everything worse for them," she whispers. "I make holidays bad."
You consider that.
"did they tell you that?"
She shrugs.
"now, i just met you, but ya seem like a nice kid. so why do you say that you make things bad?"
It sounds like an oft repeated mantra she tells herself. She doesn't seem used to having it challenged. "I...I don't know. They say I cause fights. I'm rude. I'm mean. My brother is always polite and gets along with people. They like him."
You're starting to get the picture.
"you don't seem like a bad person to me," you say. "do you want to talk about it? how about we sit down for a minute? there's a dry spot here." Actually, there wasn't a dry spot there before, but you've been secretly making one behind your back with your magic.
She sniffs, following you to sit down under one of the trees. "Maybe."
Her dog trots closer to you, still tense from before.
She calls to her dog, calming them down. The dog approaches you, sniffing curiously, and you let yourself be examined through their nose. You understand that part of making friends with dogs is letting them memorize your scent.
Once the dog is content, they lie down closer to her feet, their posture relaxed, but with ears still alert to any dangers in the woods.
You decide to put on the charm. She is just a kid now, after all.
"your dog's pretty awesome."
She perks up. "Yeah, she's the best. She'll explore with me anywhere I go, and if someone comes, she always lets me know."
"she makes a really nice foot warmer, too, right?"
"Yeah..." She curls and uncurls her bare toes and hugs her feet with hands, trying to get the frostbite out of them.
You should get her somewhere warm soon.
"now, since i'm a skeleton, i don't get as cold as a human, but i'm not sure i'd want to go out without anything protecting my feet. do you think someone would be worried about you being out here?"
Her expression gets lonely, and empty. "I don't know," she says, hugging her chest and shivering.
You read a lot in that expression - a lot more than most people would.
"do ya mind me asking what happened to ya? if you're up for sharing that is," you ask, now concerned on a deeper level. She's not out here because she's playing some kind of childish game.
Her eyes fill with pools of tears, but she seems too overwhelmed by emotion to speak.
You wait patiently for several seconds.
"They hate me," she finally lets out suddenly, her voice raw. "They think I'm a bad person. Bad and selfish. They think I'm like a monster. Always out of control."
"i'm a monster," you say. The new idea breaks through her sadness and she glances at you, curious.
"but you said i was nice."
She nods. "You know my real name. I was really scared of something you did, and I can't remember what it was. But I don't think you're bad."
"so being a monster doesn't make you a bad person. what would your family think about me?"
That makes her grin. She's obviously picturing a funny scene where you meet them somehow.
"They'd be scared. They'd be too scared to bother me anymore," she says with some satisfaction.
You seize on the chance to make her feel better.
"right. so don't be down on yourself cause someone tells you you're bad. even if they're your family, that doesn't make it true."
You say that last part a little more fiercely than intended, because you're remembering a certain someone. She looks a little startled, but she nods again.
What now? She obviously somewhat recognizes you, but not completely, and she's not really herself in this younger form.
You need to talk to the real Rose. Maybe getting her out of this cold place will help. It probably represents a dark place in her own mind.
You know very well what feeling trapped in a dark mental place feels like.
"so. sounds like your family chills ya to the bone. if ya don't want to go home, how would you like for me to take you far away from them, to somewhere warm?"
She looks quite interested, but says in a plaintive, pathetic voice, "If I leave, does that mean I'm bad for running away? Does that mean they'll never love me?"
You know she would likely never say that out loud. It must be an inner thought that haunts the depths of her subconscious mind.
You try to make logical sense of that. "so...if you stay, are you saying they've never loved you before, but you hope somehow you'll be good enough to earn their love?"
"Maybe..." she murmurs. "But I want to run so bad. Some people showed up yesterday in suits. They made my dad angry. He scared me. Then I was quiet today during opening presents, and it made my mom upset that I wasn't being grateful. She chased me and locked me outside. She said I could come back in when I could be properly civil. I don't understand...what am I doing wrong? I tried so hard to be nice today. I really did."
She holds her hands so tightly it's making her knuckles white. "I just want to know why it's like this. Why am I feeling so bad? Everyone else in there seems happy. What is wrong with me? They don't even seem to care that I'm out here."
She points to the window, where, sure enough, you can see her crappy family smiling and laughing as they open presents.
"I'm so cold," she whispers, her voice breaking. You don't think she really means that literally.
This conversation is starting to hurt you with its painful familiarity.
She's smart enough to know her logic and assignment of blame to herself is absurd, but she can't break away from it emotionally anyway.
You swallow a lump in your non-existent throat, your voice feeling sad and dry.
"look..." you say slowly, "a long time ago there was someone my brother hoped would care about him."
"he tried so hard to be good enough. but it never, ever worked, and that person didn't care. things only got better for him when he got away from that person."
"now i tell him he's always been good enough. sometimes he believes me, and sometimes he doesn't. but it's still better than when all he did was hope and struggle for that person to believe in him."
You'd been staring down at the bony phalanges in your hands, but when you look back up at her, she changes into the real Rose, at her proper age again, and her dog disappears. When her transformation is complete, she looks back at you, eyes wide and brimming with tears of raw emotion.
The world around you has shifted too, from the cold wintry forest, to a sandy beach, with sunshine and blue foamy ocean waves.