For a moment, I thought I heard the sunset screaming at me.
I didn't have much time to think about it, though. Because the setting sun meant a much bigger problem than something wailing abstract in the distance.
"Blow on it! Blow on the twigs!"
Boy. I sure want to hiss at her, but I'm hissing at the dying flames instead. Meanwhile, Yorick is hopping around anxiously, and the "two" of us try to keep the embers alive for just a moment longer. Which is to say me. And really, it's a stretch to call Shiori's wailing fretting moral support. We were lucky to even get this thing going, since Shiori's flame magic can only make as much heat as a cheapo gas station lighter. Which... great. In this cold? In this wind? It's about as reliable as you'd expect.
Matching our expectations, but shrugging at our hopes, the small candescence dancing on top of her index finger just flirted awkwardly with the boughs and leaves we gathered up. At first it was frustrating. It's been about an hour now, and it's started to get scary. My throat hurts. I'm sure Shiori's throat hurts. But it's so crisp and cold before the sun's even set, that if we don't get this newborn fire healthy, we may well freeze to death tonight -- if that's even possible in the Tower.
Yeah. That's right. Tonight. Guess what? Tonight's the first time "night" even means anything to me. Least as far as my magic abridged memory goes back.
I'd love to bask in it, for real: the open sky, the earthy scent of leaves decaying in autumn, mixing with woodsmoke, mixing with ocean salt. The gentle lick of sea evaporating on skin, the soft pleasure of soot on my hands. Everything's so beautiful and vermillion, really, especially for a girl who's been living a half-existence for who knows how long now. Aces for whoever my Jepetto is: I'm a real girl, apparently, packaged with real, genuine lore.
Or baggaged with, depending on how you look at it.
But the problem with being real, and feeling "real things" is the real threat of hypothermia, because all those nice things I just mentioned have their crappy counterparts. 'Cause if you're cynical, Autumn's really just "near Winter", and that "gentle lick of evaporating sea" is terrible, shivering air passing right through our wet clothes.
Right now, I want to die. I'm serious. That's how cold I am. Once the adrenaline wore off, our bodies remembered that we were freezing, and that we were ten. Which...
"Keep going, come on! K-keep going! This is c-certainly...expressly..." Shiori stutters around her apparently and suddenly diminished vocabulary. "I'm really cold!"
She's really wailing more than saying anything useful, and I can't help but scowl at her for wasting breath on NOT contributing to firestarting. If she's going to whine she should whine with her face closer to it. Without um, you know. Burning herself. But the squeaky girl gets the grace, and Yorick's nuzzling against her hands to comfort and enable her increasingly babyish behavior, while I'm working my tail off.
So, I stick to the task, desperately trying to coax these tiny embers into growing up. I pick at the twigs, trying to get bits of dry leaves to catch. You make a teepee, right? The fledgling flames need room to play, and channels for oxygen to flow. It's all too delicate a task for the suddenly colicky Shiori with her trembling hands; the fire needs freedom and space, while she looks like she needs to be swaddled in a security blanket.
The fire's starting to crackle with more confidence, in wonderful contrast to Shiori's quieting whimpers, and I keep feeding the bigger twigs until they can properly be called sticks. Soon, our newborn flames are starting to look tougher and hardier, like they just hit their terrible twos.
I relax a bit, which almost feels like a mistake. God. I am so tired. Now that the fire, and our lives with it, don't seem so fragile, the temptation to just lie down and sleep is awful. But I'll settle for sitting on this scratchy log we got.
"Y-you should get some more b-branches and stuff before we run out..." Shiori says.
"Mmhmm, sure," I say a bit irritated by her helplessness. The good news is the flash of annoyance wakes me up a bit. And then a jolt of guilt gets me all fresh and alert, because I hear her sniffling beside me, still clearly shivering. It, um, kinda feels like the shoe's been on the other foot since we've reached The Heart. My foot, I mean. I'm all business, and Shiori... looking at her now, she just looks like a terrified girl who really hates camping.
Is it because of our regressed bodies, or is she just this bad with the great outdoors? For that matter, does this mean that I'm just that good with the great outdoors? I guess being a genius at navigating magical environments doesn't mean much when they end up being perfect simulations of the "real" freezing wild. But still. Feels like her mentality's gone back to match her younger body.
Hmm. But I got younger, too? And I'm way, wayless of a wreck.
Watching her try to calm her own anxiety, right leg shaking, both feet on tiptoes, I bite my lip and chastise myself inwardly for ever acting so very, very put upon by the girl who reached out like an angel and took my hand. Led me all the way down here, patient and happy to see me. And what? She gets scared helpless by the actually dangerous cold and I'm too good to take her hand back?
Stop. Don't think it. But I do. Right there in the back of my head, I hear it softly: 'I really hate myself sometimes.'
But I sigh and shake the thought off. That's not helping anyone right now. Not me. Not her. And not Yorick who seems to be trying to comfort her by nuzzling against her flushed right cheek. Rather...
"Shiori...?"
"...yeah?"
"Who am I exactly? Why are you here? How do we know each other?"
We can't keep skirting it. Even she realizes it, clearly, given the way her eyes flicker toward mine before she glances away, rigidly fixing them on the fire, blinkless and bleary. It hurts to look at her like this. And a pregnant gloom settles over our little camp. Made all the worse because the sun chose a choice moment to completely disappear behind the horizon.
But all around us and continuing deep into the woods, pink and yellow flowers start shaking from the stem. They open up prettily. It's almost like the plants themselves want to comfort her. A veritable Snow White?
"This isn't where you belong." Shiori says it with soft conviction, surprising me. "You shouldn't be stuck here, M..."
She stops herself with a sad look.
"Can't you just say my name?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "Your soul doesn't own your name right now. I... don't know why. If I say it right now, it'd be like sniffing smelling salts. You'd be sucker punched magically every time I say it."
Hmm. Really? I think about it a little bit, before coming to the obvious solution. "Can't you just give me a new name?"
"No! Absolutely not. We can't do that. Names are important. Your name is... important." She hangs on the end of the sentence gloomily, seemingly sad she ever had to tell me something so obvious. I demur, but honestly? I can't even bring myself to care. It's sweet that she cares, but seriously, who needs a name?
I've haven't had mine for as long as I can even remember. I'd be happy to play the wandering amnesiac forever if it meant I could keep going on adventures with Shiori.
But she seems irritated by my attitude, apparently picking up on it when I didn't even say anything. Even Yorick's hopping mad. I mean, he's literally hopping, and it's got a faster pace than his happy hopping.
"I didn't say anything."
"I didn't say anything either," she fumes, her golden eyes taking on that yolky appearance again. "And besides, I don't think right now you'd be able to leave, I don't know what's going on. Your soul's too bound up with this Construct. Reclamining your name's... a good first step. Yeah. If we could do that, I could figure out what to do. Definitely. I'm sure of it."
It's amazing, the somber conversation we're having while roasting marshmallows on a fire. They were the only thing she had with her spatial magic. Not that I mind a sweet dinner right now. I'd forgotten what 'sweet' even was. The evening primrose that opened up, meanwhile, are the sweet dinner for moths flying into their inviting petals.
"Do you remember?" she asks out of the short silence. "That time you kept calling moths butterflies and I kept laughing at you? And then, you PUNCHED me? And then you were the one that cried?"
And it's like something flashes in my brain. The small pebbles thrown into the cave of my memory finally come back as an echo. The evening primrose, looking like a watercolor painting, and my eight year old self telling Shiori all about the butterflies local to Sussurokawa Cove. Having that illusion shattered by a laughing brat I just met was too much.
"O-oh, was that something that happened?" I'm feeling embarrassed, because I can feel it coming back to me. Figures. My memory's been entirely erased by magic, and the first thing to come back is gonna be the embarrassing memories. Please no. "You... you shouldn't have laughed so much."
"I wasn't laughing AT you! I thought it was cute!" she says.
"Being condescended by an eight year old is even worse," I mutter. But I lean back a bit and stare into the air.
It feels nice, getting that one back. Kinda. Maybe reclaiming my identity can actually be wonderful. Maybe this will be some kind of beautiful heartfelt adventure. Or maybe not.
There's a LOT going on here. And it's just a nightmare to sort through. So, we're back home. Great. Usually a good thing. And this place is called Sussurokawa Cove. I remembered that name before I remembered before my own.
Some dark, evil stuff went down. I remember that too. And most of the blame fell on Shiori. Right. Flashing through my head, vague images of a crowd yelling. A solitary, timid girl. It makes me sick.
You know what? This place was probably trash.
"I essentially, v-verily, want to warn you," Shiori says. "What e...engaged upon? Er, whatever happened to our town. It wasn't pretty."
I think the word she was looking for was 'ensued.' It seems like her vocabulary really has diminished to match her age. The sudden deficit of more scholarly words has her frequently stumbling. Or wait, was she just like this when she was ten?
"Six people were murdered from Sussurokawa," she continues. "People that both of us have account... acquainted. And were close to. And who you'll probably reminis...remember by the time you reclaim your name. I don't want it to shock you too much. And really, it gets so much worse from there..."
I can't help but feel touched by how tender and caring Shiori is, even while she's intellectually scrapping with the thesaurus.
"Alphonse Krabb, Hannah Crecer, Nick Otkropenko, Kyrie and Clarie Stodakis," she says, rolling the list off her tongue like she's said it a million times. "And um, one more after that. All the murder victims lived on Rumeuri... Rumeuri Hill that is. And... you lived there," she says a bit quietly.
But she continues on. "A few people disappeared too, before all the murders. No one knows what happened to them, except... um. A lot happened. But most importantly a middle aged woman named Prima Pagetto had disappeared."
So people disappeared, then other people got murdered. Got it. Lots of names. Wait. I count the names. Doesn't it seem like she's glossing over something?
"It almost doesn't matter though, um, because after the m-murders..." Shiori falters, clearly a little emotional. "Everything disappeared. Everyone. The entire town. As if it never existed. In the real world, no one even remembered it. Except me. And one other person. B-because the crazy thing is... Prima came back."
Huh. "She... came back?" I ask.
"Prima Paggetto came back. And the two of us were the only survivors. She appeared in the woods half frozen to death one day. She kept rambling about Sussurokawa, but, to most of the world, Sussurokawa didn't exist. But she wouldn't let go. Whatever happened left her unhinged. Almost... deranged. I-I don't really wanna go into the stuff, she did. But she got thrown into an asylum." Shiori says blankly.
"And she's still there?" I ask.
"Y-yeah. They may as well have convic... commiserated me too. I was obsessed with it. I couldn't even remember where it was supposed to be. Like someone struck it from my brain. But when Prima came back I thought that maybe... so could you. I... I kept looking for you. I knew you were still alive. Yeah. Yeah."
Seems like she's trying to convince herself more than me. But I can't help but notice something.
It's strange. It's such a strange reaction to it all. It's like I'm listening to someone else's story. Watching a juicy program on TV. Even I can't believe the complete disengagement of what I'm about to ask.
"Shiori, was I the sixth murder victim?"
"No! Of course not!" she flinches, and starts to babble bordering on burble. It's a fast and incessant pitter patter like a brook straying and making a small pond in the woods. "Y-you weren't killed. I don't know what h-happened to you, but you manifestoed... manifested here, clearly, and you seem to have mana, a - and none of this will matter anyway, because we're just here to resusci...rescue you, and get you out of here. We don't need to solve the mystery, okay?"
Not exactly reassuring behaviors. But somehow I mostly feel serene. Unlike my physical sensations which have gotten so much more vibrant, my emotions seem to have been muted. A lot. To the point that it would be upsetting if I could even feel upset anymore.
"... alright," I say softly. "We don't need to solve it."
"We'll get out of here... You'll get to leave this town, finally. We can go! Y-you always wanted to. We'll go and see everything... M..." she trails off sadly from her straining excitement, before whispering with conviction. "Just wait."
I'm happy to wait. It's what I've been doing for a long time. But I'm not holding my breath.
Somehow... I can't help but feel that it's fine like this. All the way down here, I'd been a neurotic mess. But the second I got here... It was like all the whispers that had been so vicious were forcibly calming me down instead.
There's a bored chorus in the air telling me that this is probably just one last adventure. The night's getting darker and darker, but my heart feels lighter than it's ever been, even while Shiori keeps worrying. I'm happy for this. That I'll get to have this much. After all that time alone, how could I possibly hope for more?
And as I think that, I watch one of the moths fritter around, scattershot through the air, spinning and panicking before tumbling into flames.