Athor's Notes: If I mentioned Yohane previously, no I didn't. There's a lot of weird references in this chapter that I try to avoid regularly making, and possibly maybe three people in the world will completely get. This is a weird chapter. I am finally, finally getting close to the Nozomi/Eli Regular Timeline chapter, which I have been putting off since 2018

The High Priestess I

A LONG TIME AGO, SOMEWHERE ELSE

Nozomi

Nozomi Tojo knew how she would die since she was a child. She knew the date, the year, the environment . She had set a countdown on her phone; she knew her death to its very day. Knowing comforted her. Every time she found herself dealing with something unbearable, she would think, it's only ten years until my death. Only six months. Two more weeks.

Details grew up like sick roses through the years. Right before high school, Nozomi knew she would die with a blonde woman. After high school, Nozomi knew she would die with her friends. The beach filled itself in with sharp rocks and an ever-watching lighthouse that would capture her in its beams when she finally died.

Nozomi knew everything that was going to happen. Not all of it would happen, most of it would not, but she saw the possibilities rising like branches of a tree, and she would select the most promising fruit for the most beautiful future.

.

Nozomi had met her spiritual mentor her freshmen year at Otonokizaka. The woman would grow to be the most prominent magical philosopher of their generation. Her father worked at CERN. Her mother was a high ranking official in an international occult organization.

Nozomi had just moved to Akihabara. Futures and deaths and spirits bumped her forearms and crowded her, leaning in, legs spread, begging for attention. Heartbreaks. Suicides. Years and years of dead marriages and endless grinding and twisted bloody feet. Each person had a barrage of information screaming at her. Nozomi had looked at a girl and saw flames coating her. Nozomi had made the mistake of telling a girl how her grandmother would die in a house fire, and Nozomi was right. The girl moved shortly after. Later, Nozomi would learn that it was the girl who had been playing with matches, and had set the apartment on fire.

A third year approached Nozomi. She wore a mantle of dark feathers over her school uniform. She had apparently bathed in a sweet perfume that Nozomi would later learn to be Hypnotic Poison. She had dark hair and pink eyes. Her name was Yohane.

"My little angel. You're drowning in the Other World, aren't you?"

Nozomi nodded. "Yes."

"Come with me. Let me teach you."

Yohane was a classically trained magician with a breadth of spiritual power that she could barrage like the strikes of a whip. She had been doing advanced ceremonial magic since she was in elementary school. She had met with the great hidden masters in middle school. As an adult, Yohane would become a famous occult writer and model. Yohane also believed she was a fallen angel, the devil incarnate, referred to herself as "the beast 666", would talk at length about chaos magic to anyone who would listen, and wore exclusively Moi-Meme-Moitie after school.

Yohane immediately gave Nozomi a copy of Psychic Self Defense and several more modern books. Over the course of Nozomi's freshman year, Yohane had begun Nozomi's true initiation, which required getting up at five in the morning every day. Nozomi had learned her right-hand basics from Yohane: meditation, body awareness, visualization, protection, ceremonial magic, advanced astrology and tarot. (Nozomi had passed on the chaos magic, but shortly before Yohane had graduated, Nico had approached her for a crash course.) Nozomi had stopped the constant begging of ghosts and futures.

"You must learn discipline as much as sensitivity." Yohane would often tell her. She would say this as they eat melon bread together under the tree in the school yard. The autumn leaves would be the deepest red, falling like love letters, the sky a comforting deep gray. "You must resist the siren song of time, or else you will become a twisted half-person, drunk on too much time. It will warp you, if you try to move into your predictions, instead of taking them under advisement."

(Afterwards, Nozomi had looked up " drunk on too much time, and Yohane had stolen the phrase from Dune Messiah.)

Yohane would have Nozomi act as her assistant in rituals in spells. Gathering (or buying) herbs, creating teas and poultices, doing research. Creating an atmosphere. Performing duties in rituals that Yohane could not have done alone. Nozomi would go on to do this, during her time in muse, to boost their successes, to look into the future, to create a clean line between her and the energy from the great beyond. The rituals was all done in Yohane's bedroom. It was covered in magical regalia: charts, books, charms. (She had a separate walk-in closet for her clothing.) The room reeked of incense and Hypnotic Poison.

After one specific cleansing ritual, they had gone to the nearby 7-11 to recharge. Yohane had gotten burritos. Nozomi had just gotten a single Arizona tea. As they walked back, Yohane kept giving her nervous looks.

"I can't tell you this, but I need to tell you this."

"Oh?" Yohane often said this, I can't tell you this.

"There's a ritual. A very dangerous ritual. One that opens up doors." Yohane struggled to find the right words, and her face twisted several times. "It can happen many ways. But always - always, it will include a great spectacle. And sometimes it's not obvious magic. Think about - a political rally. A trial. A concert. People gathered together, watching illusions performed for them. Just… watch for it." Yohane took a bite of her burrito. "Just… remember."

Once, Nozomi asked about her death. Her countdown.

"Master Yohane," Despite her gratitude, Nozomi said "Master" with a lilt of teasing that Yohane either ignored or never heard, "Have you ever known something strange about yourself? Something you cannot wholly prove? Like…" She knew death was far too absurd, too real. "Like who you'll marry."

Yohane gave her a shrewd look. "I know many things."

"Something serious. That you shouldn't tell anyone."

A scarlet leaf fell from the tree, onto Nozomi's lap, simple and narrow, like a bloody wound. They were both silent. Yohane seemed to be pondering something, only looking ahead, and Nozomi closed her eyes. She wished she hadn't said anything.

"I know when you'll die."

Nozomi let out a hiss of a breath she'd been holding.

"And… I know who you'll become. What you'll become, across the void."

"Across the void?"

Yohane smiled at her. It was a wild, bright eyed smile of someone who had seen far too much. "You have a far stranger fate than I do, Nozomi. To hear the song of time sung in so many ways."

When Nozomi met Eli, she felt as if she'd seen another ghost. The blonde woman she'd died with, who she'd grown to dread and love, incarnated into a 15 year old girl.

Eli was also the most beautiful and elegant girl she'd ever met. Golden hair in a wavy ponytail.. A figure that made a part of her ache, that Nozomi took a strange personal pleasure in, to see Eli existing with it. Striking blue eyes and thick eyelashes to die for, to kiss. The face of a tragic princess, who would become a hero. Eli almost wasn't real. She was an idea, that Nozomi had latched herself on to. Nozomi had met many cute, friendly, nice girls, from the sidelines of life, who Nozomi had always known would be passing through. But Eli was the woman she would die with.

"She is stained in fate and black feathers. Not angel feathers, not just a bird's feathers, a swan's feathers. Odile in a looking glass." Yohane had said of Eli, after they'd met.

"What do you mean?"

"Across the void. Up your tree, among the many branches of possibilities."

"Right."

The first time Eli slept over, Nozomi thought she would cry. She had never been held before, never been touched, and suddenly Eli became so real, not just a phantom of a death or the dream of a woman, but a real person. Eli was full of smiles and jokes and kindness that Nozomi had been missing for so long.

After Eli had fallen asleep, wandering through her branches of the future like scrolling on her phone. An music group (Idols [pop, art rock, synthpop, symphonic metal, noise], a A strange science experiment [space exploration, abstract theoretical physics, explosives, time travel, biotechnology], a fashion line [skincare, beauty, a Bodyline collaboration, perfume, haute couture, vitamins], Conspiracy [a government cover-up, a cult, a new folktale, secret agents.

Nozomi followed the paths: a noise idol group became involved in a biotechnology experiment. They sold vitamins. This became a cult, that the government covered up. They became hyper idols who created a whole new genre of idol concept-concerts, performing elaborate stories and shows. A art rock group became mixed up with PSIA and the FBI and became models for a Spring 2020 fashion show.

Eli was always there, at the end.

Eli, the cult leader. Eli, the bassist for the band. Eli, the secret agent. Nozomi watched each version of themselves work their way to the same death, each in a unique way. Eli the ballerina, again was frequently tied to Eli the spy. She would go on the stage and perform as a swan, at least once, before it was over. Odile through the looking glass.

Nozomi kissed Eli's forehead. Her skin was wet. Nozomi frowned, and looked at her, breathing heavy and strangely. She looked strange, somehow. Like a doll of herself. As if a dozen little details about her had changed, and had become someone else, with different expressions and facial muscles and a different toothbrush. She was softer. Her Eli would become harder, a woman of marble.

Nozomi looked again, wondering if she was seeing ghosts.

Not a ghost, but another girl, no, a woman, that had her face.

Nozomi heard the song, then, low and melancholy, half pipes and fans, but it was a song, becoming realer and crisper the longer she looked. A piano whispered at first, then a violin by itself, a song for underwater, for swans sitting alone in lakes, who are really women.

Drunk on too much time.

Nozomi would have to plug her ears from the song of time, when she could. Because she knew she would be hearing it again, over and over, before she died.

She kissed Eli, and in the morning Nozomi had cried when they'd woken up together, entwined like swans.

"I don't think there's a real future." Yohane had told her, at her last meeting, outside the tree they'd always eaten at, in the springtime with pink blossoms veiling them. Yohane had worn a white dress with black ribbons laced around the waist. "We weren't supposed to have left the ocean. Everything since then has been a mistake. And we are just stepping back and watching the patterns of a

"Is that so?" Nozomi wondered if this was Yohane's way of apologizing for Nozomi's fate.

"This is a doomed planet and a doomed time. Across the void… there is hope. But here, there is only darkness." Yohane had pitched her voice low, and Nozomi knew she was putting on a bit, but there was a true nihilistic sincerity to it that scared her. "And I know what my goal is, in this darkness. But the question, Nozomi, is, do you? Do you know how to place yourself for the next life?"

"Eli. And Honoka. And…" Nozomi couldn't bring herself to say it all out loud. "And everyone else."

"Yes." Yohane stepped forward. "It was very important that we met, Nozomi Tojo. I have filled a much greater obligation for the universe, in teaching you these skills. You will need all of them, going forward."

Nozomi nodded. They shook hands, and briefly, Yohane gave her an uncomfortable hug.

"Look for misalignments. This world is full of such things, and the next world even more. Look to make adjustments."

"I will." As she said the words, she knew she was sealing a geass.

End of chapter notes:

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