--=-Chapter 56: I Don't Regret It--=-

The Gremlins, for most of the time I'd known them, had been rambunctious little things, chirruping and running around like puppies; their antics never failed to make me smile. That very same behavior became something else entirely when the 'puppies' were three times the height of a person and significantly more massive.

Husband and Wife danced around each other, jumping up and down, chanting their new names of "Father" and "Mother" as they hopped and spun around with all the coordination of toddlers, their basso voices actually fitting their larger forms. The ground shivered with their antics as Nia and I backed away from the celebration.

"Mother!" one boomed. "Father!" the other echoed. I assumed they were saying their own names, but in their jubilance, I'd lost track of which had eaten Slender Hopper.

"Umm, you don't think I should tell them that's not how it works, do you?" Nia asked, glancing my way uncertainly.

I managed a shrug. I definitely wasn't drawing diagrams to explain it to them. Then again, these creatures weren't exactly local. Who knew how things worked where they came from. Their enormous, temporary growth was already one impossible absurdity. What was one more? Besides, mosquitoes use blood for their eggs; maybe the Gremlins needed Slender Hopper for similar reasons.

The pair of giants came crashing to the ground in front of their hut, rolling around and wrestling in the dirt. For a second, I was terrified they were about to 'do what bunnies do.' Instead, they reverted to their smaller forms and came skipping over to Nia and me. They grabbed our hands and jumped up and down, chittering unintelligibly at high speeds and higher registers.

It had become possible to actually tell the Gremlins apart in their smaller sizes. Mother, having eaten Slender Hopper whole, had a distended stomach, and it did make her look pregnant. Father hugged me and then ran over to hug Nia. At the same time, Mother hugged Nia and scampered over to hug me.

I patted each awkwardly on the head.

Releasing us, they hugged each other before running back to hug Nia and me again. It became a game. They scampered back and forth between us, competing to see how fast they could run back and forth, hugging us. All the while, they laughed freely.

I felt something inside me unclench. Their joy, their antics, they were so uninhibited. I wasn't even jealous—Well, okay, I was jealous. I'd always wanted to be carefree. I never had been, even before the apocalypse. But I wasn't envious. I didn't want to take their joy for myself. I wished I felt that uninhibitedly giddy, but I also just appreciated that such joy was so readily embraced by the adorable creatures.

They barely came up to my waist when hugging me, and I was glad I was wearing pants. I was surprised to see that they didn't come up much higher on Nia. She had to be approaching Six feet tall. I hadn't noticed that the first time I'd seen this form, but I had been panicked, dying, and lying down at the time. Apparently, the transformation also made her taller.

Out of breath, Mother abandoned the game and clung to me, happily panting. "Oberon, thank for Baby Hopper!" she boomed, gripping me tightly. I hoped they knew what they were talking about. I'd feel terrible if the day looped and their hearts broke when Slender Hopper disappeared.

Father released Nia and walked over to take Mother's hand in his own, and together, they waddled back to where they were when I showed up. They sat down and looked expectantly between Nia and me.

"Titania and Oberon come sit talk?" Father asked. He was also breathing heavier, if less raggedly than Mother.

I looked over at Nia to see her reaction to all this. Her bat-like wings twitched, and she walked forward, sitting down. I followed her over and sat a couple feet to her right, but just like the first time I'd seen her in this form, she didn't seem nervous about me.

I'd been worried when Nia had disappeared. I'd done what I could to discourage her from facing Tickles, but I was drugged into delirium and had no way to actually speak. I also remembered her reaction to Tickles's memory crystal. She'd panicked and hadn't been able to make herself even touch it. Facing the terror it invoked must have been harrowing, but that torment wasn't the only reason I'd tried warning Nia off.

According to Sori, after a certain point in the merger of person and trauma, the union would become guaranteed, but not the final result. If the trauma wasn't overcome, it would become the core of the new identity and twist her into a malicious entity. If it had gone wrong, her personality could match her devilish appearance. I'd keep an eye on her, but she seemed sane enough—or as sane as anyone could be when playing with alien curiosities like the Gremlins.

I didn't know what Husband and Wi- what Father and Mother wanted, but I could make a guess. I'd left my bat back in the bathroom, though, along with most of the contents of my bag, so I didn't have anything to draw with.

The Gremlins just looked expectantly between Nia and me. Then Mother smacked herself in the head and chittered at Father, who got up and hurry-waddled behind their hut, which was actually coming together.

It still had the tarp covering it, but the hut also had a frame on top that was being covered in long bundled grass as thatch. I couldn't imagine the Gremlins had gotten so much accomplished in the short time since the day restarted.

Somehow, they were keeping their little structure from being reset. Maybe it was related to their polished crystals?

"It didn't work, you know," Nia said softly to my left. "My memories didn't come back like you said. I don't remember you saving me. I just remember yesterday and… some other stuff." She sniffed. "Dad saved me." she croaked, choking back tears. "I don't regret it, even though you tried to stop me. He deserves to be remembered, even the end."

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My heart ached for her, but, at the same time, it seemed too noble a sentiment to be the ravings of a monster who'd try to recreate her trauma using other people, so I was also relieved.

As the worry left me, a memory bubbled up. 'Please, save my sister.'

The words echoed in my head. Nia had said them to me twice. Once when Crowseph had attacked and Alice had been left behind with Jessica. She'd died. The first time, however, Nia had looked just like this: wings, horns, and all. She'd asked me to save Alice.

What else had she said? I'd been scared and confused and suffering. I'd died shortly after, and it was one of my first deaths, so I'd been distracted.

My instinct was telling me this was important. I remembered it was odd how she'd phrased it. She'd known time would loop.

The loop hadn't been going on long, but she'd spoken like Alice was already dead, and she'd asked me to save her 'next time.' Something had happened to Alice early on in the day then. But Alice was fine for most of the loops we'd interacted.

Nia hadn't wanted to face the day alone. And then her memory was wiped. The following loop, she started in the car with me, plain vanilla human and terrified. What danger had Alice been in, and why did Nia's memory wipe change the fact?

For the trillionth time, I cursed my inability to speak.

It was at that point that Father returned with a stick about the length of my arm and handed it to me. The branch was stripped of bark and looked like it might have been sanded. It was straight and smooth, and the tip was charred as though used to stir a fire pit.

Father sat next to Mother, taking her hand and looking at me with expectation. I looked around for a fire pit but didn't see one. Father went out scavenging, so I supposed it could have come from anywhere.

Nia leaned over toward me, not taking her eyes off the Gremlins. "What do they want?" she whispered.

They wanted a drawing, which was fine because I had questions for Nia, and now I had something to draw with. It wasn't a voice, but I'd find a way to get the question across.

My confidence was maybe misplaced. Nia wasn't getting it, and I could hardly blame her. First, I drew four stick figures. I drew a bow on the heads of three of them and a tie around the neck of the fourth. I wasn't a fan of gender norms. Still, there were times when they made things easier, even if those times were mostly outliers, like when trying to draw a child's specific family of four in the dirt.

I didn't even know if her dad wore ties or if her mother valued her appearance, but I didn't really know much about either, so I drew them taller and holding hands.

The other two stick figures with bows were supposed to represent Alice and Nia. Alice had seemed slightly offended when I'd given her stick figure a fro, which was fair, so I left it off this one. I made her stick figure taller than Nia's, which I drew with horns as well as a bow.

She raised a hand and sheepishly touched the curved black spikes sticking out of her skull like devil horns. Or, well, like bull horns, I supposed, if shorter.

That part went smoothly. It was trying to get her to understand my question about Alice that was going nowhere.

The Gremlins loved everything about it. They stood up and danced and spun in excitement, only pausing to crouch down when I started drawing something new. At which point, they'd celebrate again.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand," Nia said.

I'd redrawn variations of the original picture, trying to represent Alice in unknown danger, but that hadn't worked. I'd even drawn a stick figure of myself with and without a shadow to see if she knew anything about that, but she seemed just as confused.

Maybe I was grasping at straws, but I was sure there was something in our first meeting that I was missing or lacked the context to understand. Try though I did, I couldn't get her to understand. My frustration was growing despite the antics of the Gremlins being both entertaining and soothing.

I liked it here and was glad I'd come. It had done my flagging spirit good. But it wasn't a solution. It wasn't an answer to the danger Jon, and Jessica, and Nia's sister, and the rest were in. Things were broken, and I didn't think they'd be able to save themselves without my help, and I didn't know how to help.

Mother finally plopped dizzy and exhausted onto her butt before spreading out her arms and half-laying, half-collapsing on her back in the dust, seeming wholly satisfied. She chirruped something to a spinning Father before closing her eyes and beginning to snore in a way that perfectly matched her rumbling speaking voice.

In response, Father jumped in the air, clicked his heels together, and scurried into their hut. I was surprised when his head dipped below the level of the ground. Craning my neck, I realized they'd dug down into the ground as well, and using a pallet as a floor, they'd created a basement—or, at least, a subfloor.

Distracted from my efforts to communicate with Nia, we watched the door of the hut. Father came back out a moment later, holding three rounded and polished memory crystals. He handed them to me and then pulled back when I extended a hand, looking expectantly down at the dirt.

Smiling a doggy grin, I drew a star in the dirt and then circled it, all without lifting the stick. That kind of thing seemed to excite the Gremlins the most.

The polished stones fell to the dirt as Father's eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell backward, a contented grin on his goofy face.

I gathered up the crystals, an idea forming in my head. I should have asked for these from the start. After talking with Hands, I had a much better idea of how to create useful visualizations.

--=-

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