15. Reflection
Prompt: Wretched
Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is permanent.
Ironically, both can be used to wash doubt away. But once you know something you can't unknow it. You may forget it; its meaning may change. But it will stay there. Always.
Celia knew this. She figured out the best she could do was to make herself comfortable with her demons.
Ignorance is blinding, so knowledge is permanent.
To forget it is to invite trouble. And troubled always arrived at one's doorstep. Always.
When it does, it causes a commotion. A commotion such as the one Celia felt first in the air, then at her feet. The mountain spoke a language her demons taught her. A language of pain and fear.
Such language lured lost souls into Celeste Mountain whether they understood it or not. Especially if they didn't.
Such as it did with that red-hair girl and even redder spite. It had been a long time since Celia had seen someone so hot-headed. She knew for a fact that may be as well the sole reason she had made it thus far.
Until then. Celia could feel it.
The mountain told her. That stubborn girl had tried forget.
And fell she did because of that. She fell long and hard. Deeper than she's ever seen someone fail only to throw the towel and leave the mountain.
Trouble is like pain and fear and life: It finds a way, Celia remembered well as she made her way down into the deep caverns of the mountain. She knew where to search and it was not where Madeline fell.
Why search on the only place she knew she won't be at? She knew that girl was too stubborn to settle with defeat; she recalled the look filled with determination when she first saw her at the feet of the mountain.
It was funny to Celia how Madeline carried her struggle now so deep in the mountain in contrast to back then. There was a fine line between determination and stubbornness. Stupidity and braveness. But it didn't matter to know which one was which at the end at the eyes of fear and pain—in a blizzard all snowflakes came from the same breeze of wind.
Celia found Madeline fed up with her failure, or rather, Madeline found Celia at the deep and never-ending blue and colorful caves after the older woman descended in an elevator.
It was even funnier when she heard Madeline was unable to address her problems to herself and created this whole story about how "someone" threw her down there. Experience told her this was all Madeline's doing.
The icing on the cake was Madeline not realizing she meant the mountain as a whole and not just where the two of them found each other at.
"This girl you're talking about. It sounds like she's holding you back. Talk to her. Figure out why she's so scared."
"You think she's…scared? I guess I never thought of it that way."
"Stop wasting both of our time and ask her. What have you got to lose?"
Celia may have lived many years in solitude in the mountain by now. Her way to update herself of the world outside was to learn from adventurer visitants through the years. It amused her to know things haven't changed much.
Yes. She was aware her advice to go and "find yourself" was one of the most—if not the most—regurgitated piece of self-help advice out there.
She was also aware Celeste Mountain was unlike any other place; so were the rules that dictated this place; so were the ways in which one interacted, failed to follow…and bended its rules.
Celia's wretched knowledge didn't make it any less applicable.
Ignorance is unapplicable. That is how knowledge is permanent.
Still, ignorance was durable as long as one wanted. Celia had saw previous climbers who believed by reaching the summit, all of their problems would be magically solved.
They were so encaptivated in seeing the forest they forgot to see the trees.
A journey's last step was as important as any other.
"A glimpse at the truth is good for people. Even if most can't accept what they see. There's no shame in running back to your car and driving away. Someday you'll be ready and then you'll come back."
Madeline looked at the elevator next to Celia with a dreading temptation. Her breath became heavier for a moment before she shook her head. "No. I'm going to see this through. No more running."
"I thought so. Good luck."
Madeline breathed in as deep as she could and exhaled. Her eyes got lost in the distance deep into the caverns. Her expression turned cold as snow and hard as rock. She was seeing something. Celia was convinced of it. But she was not one to ask such things.
"How can you stand living here? Isn't hard to deal with this all the time?"
"It's true, you never really get used to it. But it keeps me sharp. I like that about it."
Ignorance is dull. That is the way knowledge stays permanent.
"But the mountain is so…confrontational." Madeline gulped down as memories of recent days flashed in her eyes. Celia could tell it did.
"Sure, it doesn't beat around the bush. Celeste Mountain is a place of healing, dear. The first step of healing is confronting the problem. Is never easy."
Madeline's face filled with an expression of being done with it all. Except she wasn't. "Tell me about it." And with that, Madeline went to chase shadows.
So Celia didn't told her about it. She didn't tell her the second step of healing was to hurt.
To hurt her comfort zone? To hurt her limits? To hurt thefragile calmness?
To hurt all her non-sense problems she dealt with?
All of the above. In the eyes of pain, they were all the same.
Celia didn't tell her the third step was to hurt until she shattered herself, so she could rebuild herself from the broken pieces, like a broken mirror. If Madeline made the mistake of arranging the broken pieces in the same place, then they would break in the same way in the future.
As Madeline walked away, the light coming from the hole above Celia flickered due to a blue bird passing by covered the light. Celia's shadow silhouette flickered along for more than a single moment, and then the shadow detached itself from Celia's body and positioned itself next to her, who reacted only enough to acknowledge its presence.
The shadow started to spread like a small mass taking form and growing taller until it shaped itself into a replica of Celia, with wrinkles, cane and a tan almost as white as snow. The two of them stared at the red-haired girl disappear in the distance.
"You truly believe she'll make it?" The shadow asked.
"Is a matter of time before we find out. The girl's got spirt I'll give her that."
"That's why you insisted on helping her that much?"
"Yes. And no."
Her shadow understood in a mild disinterest and disappeared back into the ground back to follow Celia's steps. The old woman turned back to the elevator. Even though it was only a few steps away, the effort took her breath away. In her way up to a much higher area she stretched the muscles around her shoulders as the nuts and bolts turning filled the silence.
Her shadow once again left her body and manifested itself next to Celia. "It was fun while the girl lasted."
"It was."
For a moment the elevator trembled, Celia used her cane for support until she could stand just fine. Both of them smiled in amusement. "Kid must really have a grudge against herself to have such effect."
"That reminds me of the time you threw me off that cliff."
"Ah yes. I had to drag you from the ridge all the way back to the cabin."
"You gonna apologize for what happened to him?"
"Don't tell me about it." The shadow mimicked Madeline's voice and the two of them laughed their breath off until the elevator reached right at the main entrance to the caverns and walked to a small outpost there.
Inside the cabin Celia found the frame of a photo of herself when she was younger next to a man in a suit with a small mustache and the mountain behind them. The black and white colors denoted its age. Celia rubbed the wrinkles in her face softly with her fingers.
"You think she will have something similar like what happened to you?" The shadow asked seeing how Celia took the frame with her.
Celia endeavored until she reached a chair outside the outpost to rest, upon sitting she left a deep sigh and making herself comfortable in her chair and waited. "Don't know. Don't matter. Either way she'll come around, then we can take it from there, and then she'll do as well."
"You think "he" will have something similar like what happened to him?" The shadow asked again with her attention now at the entrance. Small trails of snow went into the cave until they disappeared in its depths. "This it's not for him."
"No. If that boy is different than this old fool, then there will be nothing to keen about. I trust him, he seems like a good man."
"He. Seems." The shadow accentuated her words.
"That's enough Necia,"
And the two of them laughed.
Ignorance is ignorant. That is why knowledge is permanent.
Granny's chapter is finally here! I waited a long time to write this out and I'm extremely happy with the results.
Just in case you're wondering, yes. Celia is Granny's name. Funny enough, it was not only half way in the chapter I realized if I was writing this from Celia's Pov, then why the hell I was calling her Granny?!
Anyways, I wanted to make this one chapter a bit special.
I'm sure you can tell the reminiscence of past chapters in this one. That was what I talked about in previous chapters about the topics I wanted to ilustrate in here. It's all about sides of the same coin, I'm not talking just about Granny and Madeline, but Theo and Oshiro, even Badeline too. You see, I'm still fixated in wanting to show you what the game couldn't and that lured me to the question why they came to Mountain Celeste in the first place.
Why Oshiro and Celia stay?
Why Madeline and Theo don't?
What is Badeline to the mountain?
What did Theo's grandpa did in Mountain Celeste?
Among other questions, the most important of them all:
What do they ALL have in common?
What do they all have in common to have come to the mountain in the first place?
Madeline and Granny are not meant to be depicted as two sides of the same coin. Madeline is meant to be depicted as her turning to the same side of the coin Granny is in.
Also, the idea of Granny having her own "Badeline" was one I had for a long time. But I failed to notice I should have given some hints about just that sooner. There is this tip in writing that says that your readers being able to predict a plot twist or a sudden revelation doesn't mean you're too predictable, it means you gave off enough hints to make the something believable, and that, after all, is the main job of a writer.
Anyways, I failed to do just that, so...can I justify narratively Madeline had been just starting to understand the magnitude of the powers of the mountain and she was too busy with her journey to notice such thing? Anyways this little rambling here is nothing but a reminder to myself to not make that same mistake again in the future with other releases.
I kept myself to my word and I wrote as much as I thought needed to be written all for the chapter's sake, but still, the question of whether I should have done a novelization instead of these prompts-based chapters floats around my mind as I write this. Again, this gives us the benefit to explore sides of the game we could have never seen otherwise, but I have to remind myself this whole series of chapters, besides of a distraction of my other work, was meant to be an exercise to capture atmosphere in small spaces.
To polish my skills or to explore the unknown. To be or not to be.
I think that's all the rambling I have for now. You know what's coming next and by just thinking about it I'm having mixed feelings. Don't worry, the right kind of mixed feelings.
That's all, see ya.