“Little Dana Jafer

Her Daddy couldn’t save her.

Scatter, scatter

She’ll take away the pain.”

It didn’t take me too long to learn what a mommy was. I asked around to the aunties and uncles and all the little boys and girls. Some of them just looked at me funny, which was kind of mean, but some were really nice and explained it for me. Mommies are just female daddies, they said! Everyone’s got one!

But, why don’t I? Did I lose my mommy somewhere? I’m sure I can find her again if that’s the case, I just have to look really hard!

Daddy asked me to start writing in a diary about all my dreams in the black space. He said it was important. Silly Daddy, he doesn’t know that I already figured out that it’s not a dream.

One day, when Daddy was out shopping, I thought I felt that smoke thing again. When I tried to call it, my dolly just popped right into my hand! I was scared at first, sure, but I’m not some little kid anymore! I turned twenty-eight last week!

Ever since Daddy made me better, he started to get really sick. He tried to hide it with his potions, but I could see the bar above his head getting smaller and smaller every day. He said that he was just too old, but he’s not that old!

I wanted to help, so I started to secretly read through some of the books that he had in his lab. They were full of really hard words, though… but I managed to learn some things! I even found his journal, hidden waaay up at the top shelf. I had to send my dolly up to get it for me.

Oh, that’s right! After playing with my dolly for a while, it started to move! Now it can run around and play with me whenever I want!

I was sitting at the table, with the clay doll in my lap while I read through a book. Daddy didn’t know that this was smoke friend, and thought it was just my old dolly. “Daddy, why can’t I go to school with the rest of the kids?” I asked him as I looked up from the book. Today he had me learning basic magic. It was kind of hard to memorize all the different patterns, but I could do it if I tried!

He let out a long, sad sigh. “Dana… you’re not like most girls. You’re very special.”

“Is it because I don’t have a mommy?” Everyone else had one, after all!

“Well… partially.” He said with a nod of his head, wincing as if something hurt. “But… you know how all the little girls and boys take tests, and the teachers use those crystals to see how much they’ve learned.” I nodded my head quickly at that. I had seen those used quite a lot, especially when people came into town!

“Well, those just don’t work on you. Because of how I had to… cure you before, you can’t be measured like that.”

“So… because I’m an aeon?” I asked curiously, and his eyes briefly widened. “When you made me better, there was this not-voice that told me I was an aeon now… what does that mean?” Aeon was one of those really weird words in Daddy’s books, and I had been trying to figure out what it meant for weeks.

“I… well…” It seemed like he didn’t know how to answer, until finally he let out another long sigh. “Yes. An aeon is someone that was created from a spirit.” His eyes became wet, and I could see tears starting to fall down his cheeks. “Dana, you… you died. I wasn’t able to cure you… but I wasn’t able to let you go.”

“So Daddy brought me back to life?” I asked with wide eyes, and he choked out a small sob while nodding his head. “Daddy’s the best ever! You can even do things like that?!”

His eyes opened when I said that, confused. “You don’t… blame me?”

“Of course not! I love you!” I jumped over, the chair kicked away under me as I wrapped my arms around his waist. “You’re the best ever!”

There was a quiet, restrained chuckle from him as he placed his arms around me. “And I love you too, Dana. My little angel.”

After that, I didn’t ask to go to public schools with the rest of the kids anymore. I may not have some of the things that they had, but I had something nobody else did! I had a Daddy that could bring people back to life!

But… there were other problems. I didn’t eat anymore. I couldn’t have any of his cooking. I tried once, and it just tasted terrible, not how I remembered at all! I thought he might have burned it, but it didn’t smell that way…

The problem came a few months after he made me better. I started to feel really hungry at times. But, this was a strange hunger. It didn’t come from my stomach, but up in my chest. I thought that I might be getting sick again, so I ran off to tell Daddy. If anyone could make me better, he could!

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When I told him I was hungry, he tried to make me normal food… but I just couldn’t eat it. He thought about it for a little while, and then took me down to his lab. I thought he was going to make me a potion to get all better, but instead, he did something really cool!

He made this really weird looking shape appear in the air, and it opened up to a tiny little circle. Inside the circle was a black space, like the one I go to when I close my eyes. And there were lots of smoke friends in there, too! I could feel them!

But… these didn’t feel like smoke friend. There was something else… The not-voice wanted me to… eat them? Why would I want to eat smoke friend?!

Even Daddy told me that I should try eating a bit of the smoke. Wouldn’t that taste weird? Still… this was Daddy, so he’d never tell me to do something bad.

I walked up to the little hole in the air, and placed my hand under it. “Come on out.” I whispered, and a little trail of smoke emerged from the hole to rest in my hand. “I’m sorry, but I have to eat you now, okay?”

There was no response from the smoke, so I slowly pushed it into my mouth. It didn’t taste as bad as actual food, but… it kind of tasted like water? Meaning… it really didn’t have a taste. But after I ate the smoke, I noticed that I wasn’t as hungry anymore! So I ate more, and more, until I was all full. I even wiped my mouth and washed my hands, to be good.

Later on when I read through Daddy’s books, I learned that what I ate was spirit stuff. He wrote in his journal that I need to eat it regularly or else I’m going to die again. That made me really sad, I didn’t want to die again! I’ll be good and eat the smoke, Daddy! I’ll eat a little bit every day!

To prove that I could be a good girl, I started studying his books more and more. The symbol that he had used to open the hole in the air was in one of his books, so I started to memorize it. It took a long time before I was able to use it myself, and it made me really sleepy when I did, but I could do it!

Over time, I started to feel… stronger? Was I stronger? Whenever I ate the smoke, my body felt lighter. Eventually, I could open the hole in the air without getting tired. And that was when I showed Daddy!

But he didn’t seem happy… he told me that I wasn’t allowed to open the hole when he wasn’t there. He said there was something dangerous on the other side. But that’s silly, the only thing on the other side is smoke friend! Still, it was a rule…

Speaking of smoke friend, I tried to take a little nibble of my smoke friend, but he tasted really bad. Like, even worse than normal food bad. Like I thought, smoke friend was for playing, not eating!

Daddy started acting really weird. Every now and then, he’d forget random things. He’d forget where he left his keys, or what day it is… one time, he even called me Lora. I’m not a Lora, I’m a Dana! This seemed to happen more and more the lower his life bar went, so I was really scared that I would lose him soon…

“It’s okay, Daddy.” I whispered to myself as I snuck into his lab after he had gone to sleep. It was really easy to get smoke friend to open it up from the inside. “This time, I’ll be the one to make you all better.”

There were a lot of books in the lab, and I had looked at most of them by now. Even if there were bits that I didn’t understand here and there, I knew I could do it if I tried. Some of the books were on alchemy, his old job. But those potions weren’t helping him. If Daddy couldn’t make a potion to make him better, how could I?

So I focused on the other books. The spirit stuff books. Those had to hold the answer! It’s how he made me all better, right?

While I spent the sleepless nights studying, I saw him get worse and worse every day. Soon, he began to look at me as if he didn’t even know who I was. I cried every time I saw that look in his eyes, and decided that I couldn’t let him die. I couldn’t let him leave me.

One night, before he went to bed, I put a bit of a sleeping potion in his tea. If it were the old Daddy, he’d have tasted it right away, but now he didn’t see anything different. He drank it all up and went to bed, and I helped him lay down. “Okay, Daddy… time to make you all better.”

There were a lot of things that I had learned from the books. It took me a few years to really figure out what it meant, but I’m smart! I’m fifty-three now! Though… I still look the same as when I was twenty-seven.

That’s not important! I’m just growing slow, okay? Daddy’s books taught me how to make aeons of my own. I made more dolls like that just to practice, wanting to make sure that I got it just right.

“Please let this work…” Daddy was going to be so proud of me when he woke up and was all better.

First, I pointed to a spot in the air above his head. I’d need more spirit stuff to make Daddy an aeon. “Come on out, little guys. It’s time to get to work.”

As the smoke came out through the hole that formed in the air and settled over Daddy’s body, I placed my hands on his chest. “Feel it, Dana… feel it… there it is!”

It took some focus, but I managed to find Daddy’s spirit hiding in his body. Gentle, gentle now… I don’t wanna hurt him. I slowly pulled his spirit out of his body, giving tiny little tugs on any of the parts the were trying to stay latched on. Daddy’s not sick, it’s just his body. So I’ll give him a new body!

I pushed my mana out through my hands, following the patterns that had been described in the books. The spirit stuff I had pulled through the hole began to wrap around his own spirit, and I made it look like Daddy. Then I put his spirit back in that body, just like it was in his old body. After that, the not-voice came into my head again, trying to distract me. It always did this whenever I made an aeon.

Please name your aeon.

Silly not-voice, this is Daddy! I scolded it, waiting with hopeful eyes as he slowly seemed to wake up. Like with me, his eyes seemed a little cloudier than they used to be. “Did I do good, Daddy?” I asked happily, bouncing on my feet. “Are you proud?”

He didn’t say anything, simply smiling and bringing a hand down to stroke my hair. I closed my eyes happily as I felt that, before noticing something. His hand just kept stroking the same spot in the same way again and again. When I thought about that, he pulled the hand away and I looked up to him. “Daddy…?” I couldn’t see any emotions in his eyes. He didn’t speak… was he mad at me?

“I’m sorry, Daddy!” I cried, reaching forward and wrapping my arms around him. I felt his hands wrapping around my back as well, but they felt stiff. Did I mess up? Did I not make him better?

No, no… it worked… I’m just not good enough yet. I need to get better. Then I can fix Daddy. Then we can be together again. As I cried, I hugged his waist and buried my head into him. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’ll make it better! Please don’t be mad.”