This…

I do not know how to feel. My fingers used to dance with the desperation to make this eulogy to the Forgotten. I wrote and wrote and wrote while disgusted by who I was…

… So that maybe reality would call me for my lies and deceits. That way, the one that was forgotten would be remembered.

Yes, I did withdraw some information so that I would look better. I hated who I was, and it was starting to get worse and worse while remembering my past.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I haven’t changed at all since back then. I thought I was a better person, yet I kept refusing my past mistakes while the whole point of ever taking the pen was to not allow you, mother, to have your way and be forgotten.

I, Tsuki, need to take responsibility for my weakness and pathetic self. I wrote a thousand times how great I was and fed the cat’s new kid: again, I simply hid the truth! I’ve tried and tried again to write something that wasn’t about me, but I always come back like a revolving door to my vain self.

If I wish to make this long eulogy work, I need to be honest. Honest enough so that mother will be proud of me. It was she who gave me this idea after all. Just like how the cat came to be, I’ll do the same for her.

This story isn’t about me, but I can only tell what I know. My mother, who I only learned who she was close to the end of my journey, has vanished from existence with her name erased from history. Only I seem to remember her for I am made of her flesh. My Forgotten Sky, your love for others was so great that you removed yourself from eternity.

I’ll write and write and write and write and write until my fingers bleed so that you have no choice but to be reborn again! _________, I promise you, that I will bring you back like how you helped me find my Alice. Even now, your name fades away from my pages and forces me to give you another that wasn’t yours.

But those parts where I acted wrongly… It wasn’t just what was to follow. I avoided saying how Alice and I escaped the tower at midnight, I said nothing of how much I cursed Shamala the giant wolf, I tried to hide the part where I desecrated Yassil’s house… there is too much. My intent to steal back at Scylla’s enclave managed to slip, the way I acted all cute for Yuzuha disgusted me so much. Alphonse, that poor boy with a heart of gold, I cursed him so much for no real reason.

Then I was forced to meet Carlson… you know when I lost consciousness, just recently even as I wrote this part, I was enraged at Yuzuha who really did nothing wrong. Carlson had good intentions, although it was because he saw me as someone else's replacement and didn’t deserve any hate from me.

When night came, I was only thinking of stealing and I was caught by Cain. A liar and a thief… They even offered me some food… In the end, we fought and I left. They simply didn’t think it was right for someone like me to be alone and offered a warm bed. I honestly don’t know why I took it in a bad way. Maybe it was because I was exhausted.

The next thing that disgusted me was with Paundraka. That poor animal was afflicted by something controlling his mind. When both halves came back into one, it begged and begged and begged and begged that we let it go. All it wanted was to see its master again. I was jealous of it. If it could meet its master again, why couldn’t I meet Alice? I killed it just because of that. It wasn’t to feed the other survivor but because of my bad temper.

So, when I saw what a bunch of people did to his corpse in the guise of carving it, that beast which I saw myself in, I lost my temper again… I tried to lie for this part again, the scripts are now all crumbled into balls around me.

For this once, hopefully the last time, I want to tell what happened by myself. I don’t want to hide behind a curtain of words, I need to take responsibility for my actions. No matter how I wish to describe that I wasn’t fully myself at that time, even if it was the case, it was still a part of me. My actions, I was the sole proprietor of them.

Mother hated liars… what kind of daughter is the opposite of their mother.

48 : Me, a Vile Poison

As I explained previously, Vergeltung’s new child was hungry. Funnily enough, the cat managed to carry the baby in his paws. Her skin was scalding hot because of the giant’s blood still covering it which caused Vergeltung’s instinct to make him lick her clean.

When I think back on it, this might have been a mistake. This was the blood of a higher god and traces of divinity were still present inside of it. While the cat wasn’t fully made of flesh but was partly just a story manifested, just words and images brought real, it didn’t really do him any wrong at the moment. But traces of divinity were now moving inside his body which would require him to act in certain ways.

On that, this concept of divinity was something I never really understood. Someone explained to me that you could become a god by just walking a lot… It doesn’t make you any stronger, but reality starts using you as a reference for certain contexts. For those that are mentally weak, they lose reason and only become what reality thinks of them: someone that walks a lot.

So, for Vergeltung who now had such divinity inside of him, you can imagine how it affected him. Luckily, this cat had a head on his shoulder which wasn’t the case for some.

In the end, Vergeltung came to me while carrying a baby crying out of hunger and pain from being licked by a cat's rough tongue.

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The thing was that I, while in a trance of some sort, did give him some meat. It is a truth, one that I wish would be as simple… The meat didn’t come from Paundraka. Need I say more?

Imagine what might have happened once everyone woke up… Haaa… Here I am still trying to not say exactly what happened.

I killed. I killed those who were trying to butcher the giant buffalo. As I said, I saw myself in this beast, and seeing his desecrated corpse scared me. At that time, I’m sure I was telling myself that it could have been me. I had only survived that long by pure luck.

From the big baby in the sky to… oh… Forget that. From the Great Devourer in the sky to Scylla ravaging the enclave and finally, to the attack of whoever was behind this hell, I survived with simple luck and the help of others. So yeah, it is not difficult to imagine me in the place of Paundraka.

I’ve cut them to pieces because of a simple tantrum. Their blood and flesh mixed with the animal as if they were one. Yet their carcasses remained and hiding my crime was impossible – not that I even tried.

Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, lovers, friends, and whatever they might have been to others, I simply cut those bounds as if it meant nothing and here, I am writing till flesh leave my finger all for my mother who I barely got to know. Although I have grown as a person, it doesn’t excuse the fact that I did something which I could repeat. I don’t like to think about this, but I experienced too many things to say for certain how the future will go…

When people woke up, they discovered the corpses. In a way, I was lucky. I wasn’t the only one who had killed people, so the blame didn’t all fall on me. It’s strange to think about that monster – a beast of dreams that had been following us for a while. As silly as it was, there was a strange bear with rainbow fur who ate a handful of people while they slept. And that bear, of all beasts that could have been a threat during our journey, was the worst of them. The more you noticed it, the less you recognized its presence – thus its strange fur came into play.

But because of that big guy, not everyone linked me as the murderer of a few… even if it was obvious at a glance. I didn’t sleep and kept working on carving Paundraka until everyone woke up. The bodies were all there close to me with cuts made by a sharp knife.

So back to the point. Vergeltung came to me for a few slabs of meat. When he saw me, he said, “Are you alright, girl?” The poor cat was worried for me. Still, I believe anyone would be worried when seeing someone you know wearing a bloody blindfold and standing awake in a garden of otherwise sleeping people.

I didn’t even respond to him. I wasn’t myself at all at that moment and I had no recollection of the events that took place after the fact – I guess it was all because of mother that I got to know more than what I was supposed to know.

What brought me back to my senses were the cries of Mafdet. The child’s lament somehow resonated with me as if they were my own. Honestly, I think I am jealous of that baby. She had such a good father while I didn’t even have one…

But here I was, surrounded by meat of all kinds which I had apparently cut by myself. My grumbling from my stomach as well as the demand from the cat pushed me to take a break and eat something… Maybe it’s already obvious…

I simply took a chunk of meat with as little fat as possible. Me who had never eaten any kind of bovine for they did not exist back then. Its color was light as opposed to the darkish red Paundraka’s flesh ought to have – with age, the flesh becomes darker, and fat turns more yellow… (Note at the end about this fact)

Disgusting. I remember saying, “That was good,” after eating such meat which I cooked for myself and the two other ‘cats’.

It’s something that I hate to think about… Some people I met, later on, died on a battlefield and when we came to clean things up, we were welcomed by all kinds of beasts feasting on mountains of corpses. It’s natural, yes, but still something I have difficulty accepting… Was that really the kind of world mother loved so much that she sacrificed herself for it? Maybe this is the reason I haven’t been able to eat anything for a few weeks.

What is happening to me right now doesn’t matter. Right, Vergeltung took good care of the new baby and even went as far as making simple cloth for her from the leopard skin covering her. It’s curious thinking of how weak that child was back then… something I kind of miss, I guess.

Personally, I have no clue what is good to eat for little Mafdet. I did state she was basically the heart of a giant golden god. Also, I have no experience with normal babies. I did see a few of them back when I was taking care of Alice in the dark tower. Kanga would sometimes ask me to clean some kind of laboratory where scientists were trying to create artificial life. None of them were as annoying or loud as Mafdet… well, most of them didn’t even breathe in the first place. Something about making a new species that can survive in a toxic atmosphere.

I tried to give some grass and vegetables to her, and she simply kept crying. That brat only wanted to eat meat.

It took about five hours for everyone to wake up again. It was about when Hoomaikai came back. She apparently questioned the strange elf about his faith. It was something I didn’t quite understand back then, but elves are just a bunch of weird cultists…

Hoomaikai had to keep explaining this fact to me but basically, elves along with other races, came from the planet of dust which Vergeltung came close to. It was before all life on it became impossible. They lived around a big tree that was infected by a parasite which in turn controlled them by infecting the food they consumed. It only came to light when the world was crumbling, and their tree was burned down by someone.

That someone was undoubtedly evil, but their actions almost saved the planet itself and this led to those weird elves trying to follow in their steps. Sher-Dor, the elf we met, was a believer of the Cleansing Fire. Apparently, it’s a good thing… I still don’t understand them. Hoomaikai once told me to kill any elf praying to the tree of life and I honestly don’t know why. Apparently, they are bad people or something.

…

…

…

And here I’m just noticing myself still trying to avoid parts that paint me in a bad way. Kriemhilde, who discovered I killed a few people, confronted me after waking up. We did fight. I respect her as she acts virtuous while I’m dirty and weak-minded. But that wasn’t my opinion at the time which was something that that woman didn’t deserve.

So yeah, I clashed with her with my glaive, and I was completely beaten. She was about to cut my head off, but the young Fionn stopped her from doing so.

I despised this woman and I tried to find fault in what she did whenever possible. It pains me a lot to think about how I faulted her for caring too much for Fionn not too long ago. I even wrote that it was one of her weaknesses. It’s just plainly despicable for me to do. I wish the current me would be better. I recognize this woman as someone good, yet I cannot completely erase my irrational hate for her.

If I ever get swallowed by the darkness in my mind and write her as a horrible person, know that I am wrong and misplaced. She is a hero deserving praise… and I am just a villain who deserves to be insulted. This is the truth of who I am.

*

In the end, only half of Paundraka’s body was butchered. Everyone was scared to be put to sleep again and die from it. As such, we started moving while the sun started rising on the horizon…