A Fair Queen’s Court; In Which A Girl Needs Her Sleep; In Which There Is No Light; The Snap; On the Subject of Twinsies; In Which Hero Snaps; Twice;

Two messengers arrived at around dawn, seeking audience with the Fair Queen Jadis. One of the larger pixies, a girl with the damselfly wings, ran into them an hour away, and subsequently escorted them in.

They were an odd sort, the messengers. A blend of fox, hare, and raccoon, with short, doglike snouts, they possessed a touch of sprite as well, though too little for them to freely change form. One had a russet coat with deer spots, and stood about four feet tall, and the other stood a head taller and the slightest bit wider, and his fur was silver and grey with mottled spots of black. They seemed to be made of animal flesh, mostly, and wore actual, dusty fabric for clothes, with no glamours to speak of.

But the two were upright standing, at least, and so, after being made to wait until evening, they were allowed a quick audience.

The Fair Queen was sat on a silk cushion over the grass and herbs at the center of a ring of mushrooms twenty feet wide.

She had a certain unnatural beauty. Her skin was fair to the point of paleness, almost white except where it was stained dark green or lavender instead, and was wholly without either wrinkle or blemish, and her face held a surreal agelessness.

Wavy flaxen hair flowed down to the small of her back, tied loosely by silver threads. Her gown looked weightless and translucent, woven from morning mist and greenish plant fibers, its long train adorned with various ferns and leaves of yellow, red, green, blue, and silver, made to look as if they’d clung to it off of the forest floor.

“Why are you in my domain?” the Fair Queen demanded, when the two messengers were announced.

The pair kneeled. One spoke.

“Your majesty,” it said, “We have been sent by our patron Lady Surina of the Muncani Wood.” Saying this, the muncan produced a slip of fine spidersilk lace, which it then handed to one of the Fair Queen’s attendants, who in turn, placed it in the Fair Queen’s hand. She turned the silk over once, twice, and set it aside, easily forgotten.

“After twenty years, she remembers I exist,” Queen Jadis said, “Very well, what does my wayward daughter want?”

“The malformed gnolls and goblins in the lands around our Lady’s domain have been growing in number these past few months. Our scouts suspect more are coming in from farther north and east.”

“Yes, yes,” the Fair Queen interrupted, wearily. “What does thy Lady want?”

The messenger who had been silent so far, fidgeted, and as he fidgeted, decided to remain silent. And then he fidgeted a bit more. The other hesitated, but continued.

“Our people fear an impending attack, and our Fair Lady Surina worries that should the goblins and gnolls mount an offensive, they will head here as well, endangering—”

“So she wants I should send aid to this distant domain of hers.”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“Unfortunately,” Queen Jadis drew the word out ponderously, “We have our hands full trying to deal with the shadows of Grimdark. What was it again, Celia? Grues and darklings?”

“And not just, my Queen,” a prickly green cat-otter-plant-girl piped up from beside the Queen. “Grues and darklings and shades, oh my. Oodles and oodles and oodles of them, bajillions even!”

“Hm, I see,” the Queen nodded sagely, “nothing so serious as an Edgelord, though, I hope?”

“Oh, but there are, my Queen, and not just the one! Edgelords and edge-ladies and lasses and edge-princes, too! All of them tall, dark, and wanksome. Each one taller, darker, and more wanksome than the others. Even the girls! One of them stuck a finger in my—”

“As you can see,” the Queen turned to the messengers, “our circumstances are no less dire. Sending away much needed forces to her aid might prove, shall-we-say, difficult.”

“—and that was my favourite one too,” Celia chattered on, “Why, I—”

“Yes, that’s quite enough, my pretty.”

The green girl squeaked and bit her tongue, and, blushing profusely, she shrank back and was quiet. The Queen turned her attention back to her visitors.

“Although . . .” She turned back to Celia, “How fares Oleander?”

“Still in his cruddy dirt mound, my Queen.”

“It should be appropriate to send him, don’t you think? He will want to make up for his embarassment, I’m sure. Go fetch Hodge.”

“I am here, my queen.” Queen Jadis had barely spoken the order, before a squat brown shape materialized from the tree line, and Hodge the gardener kneeled before her.

“How fares your lord, Hodge?”

“He works to pay his debts, my Queen.”

“Twenty years are plenty, don’t you think?”

Hodge said nothing, only bowed his head even lower.

“Another twenty won’t restore his dignity,” the Queen said, “but opportunity presents itself for him to make amends. A chance to see Surina as well, as I’m sure will interest him. Go and tell your lord, the Queen sends him to Muncani wood. He may take with him seven of his people. Our guests will accompany him.”

“As you command, my Queen.”

“Yes, that should be enough.” The Fair Queen turned to the two messengers.

“Your Highness, we are forever—”

“Take them them away, please,” Queen Jadis said, and the two were escorted away.

“Well,” Celia said, deflating, “that was tiring as fuck.”

“You did well,” Jadis said, “Now come. Lap. Sit.”

“I’m prickly all over.”

“I think it looks pretty on you.”

“Pretty and prickly and pointy and painful. Probably poisonous too.”

“Exactly. Come sit.”

Hero slept.

She didn’t know for how long she slept, it could’ve been a few hours, or a few days, or a few centuries. Time did not seem to flow evenly, in her slumber. Two or three times, she felt herself drift close to consciousness, only to fall into deeper sleep.

So Hero slept, oblivious to the outside world and the passage of time, until finally she awoke. Kind of.

She awoke to nothing but darkness and silence, and only then realized that she had lost consciousness in the first place. But was she truly awake then? Is one truly aware if all one is aware of is her own unawareness? Whatever, Hero decided. She knew, when she awoke, that she had awoke, thus she is awake. Blind, deaf, and insensate, but awake.

Absent senses aside, Hero could feel a sensation she couldn’t easily define, if indeed it counted as sensation at all. It took a moment before Hero realized that this was the feeling of being in her body. Of being aware of it, even if she felt no actual physical sensation.

It was there, and yet it wasn’t. It didn’t physically exist—she felt no weight, be that weight of mass, or mere weight of being—yet she felt a proprioceptive awareness of that which was hers, was her. Hero knew it was there, so she felt it was there, and so it was there.

The feeling would have gone unnoticed, had Hero not felt its absence prior, back when she first awoke in this world, when that mysterious woman, Charlotte, first spoke to her. And even before that, in her life before rebirth, Hero would sometimes fall asleep and feel her body fall away, though back then that was usually accompanied by delirium and loss of self. Still, she had felt liberated, and found solace in those unencumbered moments.

Now, Hero’s sense of body felt different. She felt normal. This was her body. Not the limp and wilted vegetable that became her prison towards the end, but her body at its best, healthy and whole, from when she was alive, from when she lived.

And then Hero woke up for real, and the nothingness around her senses fell away.

The first stimulus that came to her was sound. A soft dripping echoed incessantly in the darkness, along with a weak, persistent trickle, which irked and relieved her.

Water. Where there is water there must be life, she thought. And the water seemed to be flowing in from outside. She could already imagine the birdsong that must await her.

The first visible hint of light was where it glistened on wet stone. Hero followed that light to a crack of sunlight, an opening in the jagged stone.

There it is again, she noted. That reddish tint on her vision, just like when she’d spoken with Charlotte. Mother.

Back then, Hero’s vision had slowly adjusted to the red tint, but other colors were dulled somewhat, which she definitely didn’t like. It was like looking through a filter. It was exactly that, come to think of it.

Looking closer, or rather, wanting to look closer, Hero strained . . . something. She had no actual eyes to squint with, but she wished to see, and clearly. More importantly, she wanted to be rid of that bothersome red tint, to be able to see past it. A feeling welled up within her, an intent reminiscent of leaning forward without the actual action of leaning forward, or even a body to lean forward with.

Tension built up, but Hero didn’t notice until all of it suddenly released. Her entire being spasmed, came loose and spilt forth. And a flare of light that lit up her surroundings for all of a split second before receding, leaving her in near total darkness once again. As the light receded Hero saw the source now directly behind her—her field of vision covered all angles completely.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

During that brief flash of light, Hero had seen the cave that she was currently in. Not that she needed the light to know that this was a cave. She’d already surmised so just from the way the sound of water bounced off of hard surfaces, and what little light reached the cave was enough to recognize that those hard surfaces were indeed stone.

The source of the light appeared to be a sphere of red crystal the size of a human fist. It also seemed to be where Hero had emerged from just a few seconds ago. Even now, she felt an invisible, metaphysical tether connecting her to the crystal sphere.

Mother Charlotte had said something about loci being tied to their domains. This might have something to do with that. She’d also mentioned something about being able to shape and create within the domain . . .

No, no way, that is not a dungeon core, not a dungeon core, not a dungeon core. Say it three times, and it comes true. Just a crystal, just a crystal, just a crystal . . .

The cave had gone completely dark now. Having seen how the crystal sphere had lit it up, Hero wondered if she could replicate it. Here goes nothing.

“Let there be light!” she called out while wishing really, really hard.

Light, light, her voice echoed across the cave walls.

And then there wasn’t light. There was only Hero’s voice, which in itself was strange since she wasn’t supposed to have a mouth, or vocal chords.

“Lumos!” Hero’s voice sounded again. Lumos! Lumos! Lumos! Again, nothing happened.

This time Hero tried to visualize a single point of light, glowing brighter and expanding.

“Lumos Maxima!” she called out again, to no effect. “Ah, maybe not then.”

She didn’t need light to see, anyway. It was the strangest thing, to be able to see perfectly without light. Hero had expected something like looking through night vision goggles, magnified contrast in low light. It was nothing like that at all. Instead it was comparable to looking at a black shape against a black background without a visible outline. It was visually indistinguishable, yet Hero could distinguish perfectly which was which.

That is to say, Hero couldn’t see shit. Her vision was a uniform pitch black, and yet she could discern which black belonged to the stone of the cave floor, which black belonged to the walls, and which black belonged to a loose rock nearby. She could ‘see’ the shape of the rock, and looking closer, the most minute dents and scratches on its surface, clearer than if she looked at it in proper lighting with a magnifying glass.

It was as if her sight did not rely on the image formed by light bouncing off an object. Rather, she seemed to be directly perceiving the object itself.

Well, Monsieur Magritte, Hero mused, it seems c’est vraiment une pipe after all. Not just a shadow of a statue of a pipe.

This was the true essence of seeing in its most direct, without intermediate. Plato would be fucking ecstatic. Hero had left the cave and ventured forth into the ideal world, and found Sight in its purest, truest form. Speaking of leaving caves . . .

With her light-based sight, Hero found the cave entrance a few dozen yards away and above, at the end of a corridor. The water seemed to be coming in from that direction as well, forming a stream that dwindled as it progressed further down.

She could hardly recall the last time she had been outdoors, Hero realized.

Right. Time to face the birdsong.

Hero would’ve made towards the light, but then in a blink of her mind’s eye—she didn’t actually have eyes to blink with, but her vision winked out nonetheless—she found herself standing above a small, rocky stream just outside the cavern’s mouth, having manifested a physical body of flesh and blood. It was healthy, just as she had felt it a while ago.

“Oh hello,” she said, looking down. “Yeah, that’s me.” She looked up again, to see her surroundings. And she was deeply disappointed.

There was no birdsong. No sound of trees swaying in the breeze. Not even crickets. Indeed, there seemed to be no life of any form nearby.

The cavern’s mouth was located at the base of large but low mound of soil and rock, where it completely blocked off and swallowed the water flowing in from upslope. On either side of the stream and the mound, the ground rose gently, forming a wide valley, also rocky.

Beyond the high ground on either side, Hero could see tall and steep mountains in the distance, and on the other side of the mound were mountains as well, only not quite as tall. They seemed to be lower than where Hero was standing.

The place was absolutely, positively lifeless, more than it had any right to be.

There was no sound, no movement by any insect or animal. There wasn’t even the smallest spot of green anywhere, bar the distant mountains; there was no grass, no moss, no yeast or mold, despite the relative abundance of water. The ground was rocky, yes, but there was plenty of soil as well, and even the most barren soils would have at least some hardy weeds. The very air itself felt stagnant and sterile.

Hero was reminded of the days when she was ill. She’d lived months on end in a sort of dissociative, haze, a dull and fuzzy numbness, and the world around her didn’t feel at all real.

Here, there was a similar numbness coming off of the air and the ground around her. It had caught her off guard, assaulted her from nearly every direction, such that Hero almost cowered.

But Hero fought the feeling. Rejected it. Back in her ill girl days, she had come to know and hate that feeling so much that when she found a rare moment of clarity, she’d made it so she wouldn’t have to bear that numbness again. She refused to be weighed down by it in this life as well.

There was a dull snap in the air, followed by an outward unravelling of something invisible, and the bad feeling vanished. Hero sagged.

H-how . . . Hero . . . what.

Hero looked up and saw no one, but felt a presence. It felt oddly familiar, warm, inviting, and . . . fragrant? Whatever it was, it swirled in the air, only the air was quite still, so it had nothing to do with the air, and instead seemed to completely ignore the air, moving through it unaffected. Essence like a mist of lavender, blue, and pink, thicker yet so much more fluid than air. . . it began to draw together, and condensing into the figure of a girl.

The girl looked almost exactly like Hero, only completely different in every way.

For starters, she had fair, creamy skin, with freckles, where Hero’s skin was brown. Her hair was a touch wavy, dark brown and reached her waist compared to Hero’s straight black hair, which was cut in a pseudo-short Lulu bob comme Amélie Poulain.

The girl’s figure was similar to Hero’s, if maybe slightly less developed by like, a month or two; the girl stood maybe an inch or two shorter, maybe an inch thinner, chest and shoulders thinner broader than her hips more than Hero’s were to hers, and so on ad nauseam.

As for her face, that is, the eyes, brows, mouth, nose, cheeks—every single feature was fundamentally unlike its counterpart on Hero’s face, and yet when put together, had this uncanny resemblance. At a glance, as a whole, it was like Hero was looking in a mirror. Or another her, in another body, with a mind of her own.

“Echo?” Hero said, “You’re Echo, right? Mother mentioned I had a twin.”

The girl gave a small nod.

Glomp. Hero found herself wrapped in her twin’s embrace. From the contact, Hero realized she’ll have to figure out how to make clothes.

“Um, Echo?”

“I watched you sleep.”

Hero faltered. “Sorry?”

“I mean, when you were dormant. I was aware, and paid attention. In my head. Sometimes.”

“. . . Okay.”

“You were asleep for so long. Mother said to take care of you.”

“She said the same to me. Where are they, by the way?”

“They are no longer in this world,” Echo said matter-of-factly.

A drop fell on Hero’s chest just as a cold wind began to blow.

“What?”

“They left. After Mama Charlotte placed us here, ‘to make amends’ she said. We were the last, after the others. And then she and Mama Ilina walked through a seam into the In-Between. They’ve probably hopped a few worlds by now.”

“I see . . .” Hero said. “She must have felt guilty over those dungeon things. At least they can be happy now, I guess.”

The rain began to fall more heavily, and the wind began to howl.

“Let’s go inside,” said Echo.

“Alright.” And then they were gone.

The two had a lot to talk about. Echo was especially talkative, excited to finally have someone to talk to. She also seemed to have a good idea of where she came from, when Hero, half-dazed, asked why they looked so much alike.

“Oh, I know this one,” she said, “Mama Charlotte told me how she made us. She had a mix of essence from her, Mama Ilina, and Mama Emma, that was supposed to form us. But since your soul was also providing its own essence, there was so much ousia that some of it split off.”

At that point they had both reentered the crystal ball, into some sort of pocket plane of pure formless essence. Hero felt like she was constantly falling. Their physical bodies had unraveled outside, and did not reconstitute when their minds transferred. Here, all of space was a single, dimensionless point yet was also infinite, and everything was the same nebulous, gaseous stuff, mixing, intermingling, and swirling around dizzyingly in turbulent vortices.

 As such, Hero found it odd that they were talking orally, with actual spoken words and everything.

“Well, yeah,” she said, “that’s how twins work, even for humans. Kinda. Not really, but yeah.”

“Yeah, anyway, the essence that didn’t split off turned into your essence too. And the parts that made me had been molded by your being, Mama Charlotte said. So I’m just like you, only different, and made purely of her and our other mothers’ essence.”

“I see.” Hero said, and was quiet.

Echo exuded a happy, satisfied glow. That is, everything and everywhere glowed, and sighed, except for Hero, who was also everywhere and everything did not glow. Big difference.

“Cigarette?” Hero offered.

“What?”

“You fancy a smoke?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nothing,” said Hero. “It’s a joke,” she added lamely. Then she muttered, “Charlotte could’ve told me everything herself.”

“You were kinda unconscious, though. You know, with the sleeping, and everything.”

“Well, she made me sleep! And she could have been here when I woke up, at least.”

“You slept for a pretty long time.”

“She could’ve woken me up. You could’ve woken me up.”

“I was shy.” The maelstrom looked sheepish.

How it managed that, Hero had given up on even thinking about. She’d given up trying to think, period.

“Well this is great. ‘We’ll be your parents’, she says, and then they take off to a different reality. ‘Oh, by the way, you have to fix my mistakes for me.’ I mean, that’s better than my parents from my past life, but that’s a pretty low bar.”

“They’ll be back.”

“When.” Hero had meant to ask honestly, but instead her frustration came out. “Um. Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”

“They’ll be back,” Echo spoke again, “Someday, Mama Ilina would be a sprite too by then, when they find Mama Emma. That’s why they left, to go look for her. When they have found her, they’ll come by and visit.”

“But, she’s dead?”

“Is she?”

“Yeah, she is.”

Echo shrugged. (Don’t say it.)

“Anyway,” she said, “Mama Charlotte did leave us something.”

An image formed in the center of all unformed things. Hero couldn’t quite make it out. Her mind had grown accustomed to the formlessness, and needed time to readjust. Her stomach turned.

“Well?” Echo said, “Come on.”

The ousia began to drain out into the aperture. Hero followed.

And promptly toppled onto the floor, her body having stumbled out as though it had always been there. She tried to stand, and failed, still somewhat unable to comprehend three dimensional geometry.

“Uhh, fuuck. Echo! You’ve got to stop doing that!”

“Doing what?” Echo asked innocently, tilting her head in confusion.

Hero raised a single unsteady, wavering finger unwaveringly, towards where Echo had materialized a body as well. She stood more gracefully than Hero, by virtue of being vertical.

Hero looked up, finally having regained her senses.

They were standing right next to a dome of pitch blackness. Looking through it, Hero could see, through the same lightless sight as earlier, the cave she first woke up in, where Charlotte had planted her and Echo.

Around them were hundreds of crystal orbs of different colours and sizes levitating in a ring formation. The smallest were the size of a marble, some of the bigger ones were thrice that, but none were quite as large her own (Echo’s as well) red crystal.

Beyond that ring of crystal orbs were countless others, forming domes upon domes of regular, counter-revolving rings. The ground seemed stretch out unto infinity in all directions, there being no discrete horizon line, instead fading into distant mists, and solid ground and boundless sky (expanse?) blended together somewhere.

“Where are we now?” Hero said.

Echo tilted her head again. “We didn’t go anywhere though?”

“You’re doing it again,” Hero groaned.

“Doing what?”

“Just tell me where we are, okay?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Echo, please.”

“Please what, I don’t under—”

“You’re gaslighting me! You keep doing that! I’m confused, and dizzy and disoriented and please stop!”

“Hero, please calm down, you’re scaring me.”

“DON’T FUCKING TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!” Hero broke down. She curled up on the ground, and held her head in her hands. “Too much . . .” she cried, “It’s too much, too, too much . . .”

Echo kneeled next to her, hesitantly, placed a hand on her shoulder, and when Hero didn’t recoil, Echo lay down next to her, and hugged her.

“I’m sorry,” Echo said, “I got carried away. I forgot that all this can be a lot to take in. It was hard for me to deal with it, too.”

“What the hell do you know,” Hero whimpered.

“Trust me, I know. And I’m sorry I forgot.”

“Fuck your sorry. I died today,” Hero said, “I killed myself. I pretended to be calm about the whole thing even though I’ve broken a long time before that, and now I’m never going to see March or Karen, ever again.

“And they’re probably crying too, because of me. I hurt them a lot, and we still pretended to be happy like the fucked up people that we are . . . and they had to watch me die! And now this . . . and everything with Charlotte and—it’s too much, right now, all of it, it’s too much. I only just started to feel again this morning.”

“It’s alright, Hero, you’re doing fine. You’re going to be okay.”

“Yeah right.”

Echo froze. “Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?” Hero sniffed.

“It’s . . . a spark. It’s hard to explain. For now . . . you can stay here.”

And then she was gone.