“Oh no. No no no no no.”

Momo was back in Alois.

At least, that’s what she thought at first. But telling from the fact that her Wraith Box hadn’t exploded in her pocket, she couldn’t be. She looked around frantically, taking in the imposing dark tower before her, the decaying, sulfur-smelling farm house, the dead grass, the nondescript animal bones laying around like childrens’ toys. The evidence was all irrefutable. She knew exactly where she was.

This was Morgana’s Dawn. Nether edition.

I guess not all replicant areas are mirrors of Earth, she thought. People from Alois who’ve died must have their own curated hospice illusions too. But this is so specific. Why the Dawn?

“Come on,” Momo said, tugging her stunned clone by the hand. “We can’t just stay out in the open like this.”

Clone Momo nodded and let Momo lead her through the back entrance, up the spiral staircase, and into the main foyer. It was just as Momo remembered it: a central table brimming with bones and tomes, green silks and sinew. A few necromancers were plodding around the place, although none that Momo recognized. Of course, the people here would have to be dead, so it’d be unfortunate if she did recognize anyone.

The Dawn’s phantom necromancers barely acknowledged her as she hurried through the corridors. No jolted, startled glances; no long looks of intrigue. These necromantic specimens had all clearly passed on before Momo had risen to any sort of esteem in Alois. Were these Valerica’s late students? They looked too old to be. Older than her. Maybe they were here before Valerica? Momo had never really learned the history of the Dawn before Valerica arrived. She just imagined Valerica whisked it into existence, snapped her fingers and so it was.

“Is this like a Halloween horror house?” Clone Momo asked quietly as they ascended another set of stairs. She was headed towards her beloved attic nook—the one with the view of the front courtyard. “I don’t really do well with jumpscares.”

Momo thought about disagreeing, but she couldn’t promise there wouldn’t be any jumpscares. In fact, the whole reason she had summoned Other-Momo was as a precaution against them. Sera-scares specifically. “Don’t worry,” she said eventually. “I’ll make sure to give you a heads up beforehand.”

This did not seem to comfort her counterpart.

“Can we have a signal?” Clone-Momo asked, trembling. “Like some kind of hand movement? Like the one Nancy—”

“—used to tell us someone’s water broke in the Maternity Wear section?” Momo interrupted, finishing her sentence.

It was the three finger sign. By Nancy’s logic, it was the amount of time in seconds they had before a pregnant woman was giving birth in the snack aisle.

“Yeah, that one.”

“Sure,” she laughed. “We can use that one.”

Climbing up a shaky ladder, they arrived at their final destination. Momo cleared the muggy attic window with her sleeve, breathed out a heavy sigh, and leaned against the boxes of molding fish that were clogging up the attic. She was so used to the smell that she hadn’t even noticed it, but younger Momo looked like she was ready to hurl.

“It’s fine. You’ll stop noticing it after a few minutes,” Momo said of the smell. Clone Momo looked unconvinced. With another exasperated breath, Momo tossed the boxes out of the attic, watching for several seconds as they fell, then promptly cracked and spilled onto the bottom floor of the tower.

“There, better?”

Clone Momo nodded gratefully. Momo gave her a small smile.

They just sat there for a moment, silent, unsure what to say to each other. It was a weird thing, having an awkward silence with yourself. It shouldn’t be awkward on principle, but then again, if anyone was going to accomplish such a feat, it would be Momo. She was surprised she wasn’t getting any humiliating courier notifications.

Promptly remembering why she was, in fact, here, she dug into her pocket for the Wraith Box. It was thrumming with power and energy at a faster pace than before. Not a good sign. But still, she trusted that she had time. There was no reason for Sera to check here specifically. There were hundreds of Nether bubbles to choose from.

“Wait, are you… me?”

Momo looked up from the box to find her counterpart looking at her with slaw-jacked shock.

“Did that just dawn on you?” Momo said, both surprised and exasperated. “How was that not obvious?”

Clone Momo looked hurt by her tone, frowning. Momo immediately backpedaled.

“Sorry, that was rude. I don’t know why I feel so comfortable being rude to myself. I have to unpack that,” she trailed off. “Anyway, yes, I’m you. You from the future, I guess.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Wow. Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s so weird.”

“It is definitely weird.”

“So like,” Mallmart Momo chewed on her bottom lip. “I can just ask you questions about how things turn out for me, and you’ll just know? Because you’ve already lived them?”

“I guess so. Although that’s not really why I brought you here—”

“I have my first question,” Clone Momo interjected before Momo could explain. “Why are you dressed like that?”

Momo frowned. “Like what?”

Clone Momo gestured towards the top of her head, then at her shoulders.

Ah yes. The horns and the wings. She certainly hadn’t had those at Mallmart.

Momo contemplated actually explaining it, but that seemed both stupid and futile. She wasn’t merely talking to herself pre-self confidence, but also pre… intelligence, to put it politely. There were only so many brain cells she was working with.

Not to mention the—she looked down at the pulsating death box in her sweaty palms—extenuating circumstances.

“It’s like a costume,” she answered finally. “But a more permanent, expensive one. And I didn’t buy it with money. I kind of made it myself.”

“Like cosplay?”

Momo laughed, remembering how she had made that same exact conclusion back when she first got to Morgana’s Dawn. Honestly, knowing what she did now about Azrael and his body-snatching tendencies, she had kind of been onto something.

“Yeah, sure.”

Clone Momo seemed horrified. “So you wear those things in front of… other people?”

“Yep. They don’t exactly… come off.”

“And you’re not embarrassed?”

Momo scrunched her nose.

“Now you’re the one being rude,” she said.

Clone Momo yelped, blushing. “Sorry.”

“See—that was an appropriate time to say sorry. Not the other one hundred times you did it on our way here.”

“Sorry.”

“See, again, one sorry was enough.”

“Sorry?”

“Oh my god.”

“Sorry,” she said again instinctively, then flushed, realizing it had slipped her lips again. “Are you mad at me?”

Clone Momo had her knees pulled up to her chest now. She looked positively tiny, like a bug rolled up in a defensive position. Momo’s heart dropped.

“No, Momo,” she said, heaving out a long breath. “I’m not mad at you.”

“You seem mad. Your forehead is all wrinkled and your eyebrows are doing that thing our eyebrows do.”

Momo did not enjoy this sensation of self-awareness.

“Okay, I’m a little mad, but not at you,” she admitted. “I’m mad at… me?”

“So you are mad at me.”

“You are willfully misconstruing what I’m saying right now and you know it.”

Clone Momo bit her lip, caught red-handed.

“It’s just… I spent so much time living like you do. So afraid,” Momo said. “I never realized how tiring it is to listen to. To be around. Like, aren’t you tired?”

“Of course I’m tired,” Other-Momo mumbled. “I haven’t slept in thirty six hours.”

“What—first of all, that’s not what I meant—but why?”

“I stayed up all night watching Death Note. Then I couldn’t sleep the next night because I was so scared about having nightmares about Death Note.”

Momo put her face in her hands. Yeah, that tracked.

“Okay. Let’s put Death Note aside. I mean—aren’t you tired of being such a pushover? I just wished I had realized earlier how exhausting it is. I feel like I could have done so much differently.” She pushed her knuckle to her temple and sighed. “Like sometimes it feels like the universe had to put me here to teach me a lesson, and if only I had just learned that lesson earlier, without needing a whole necromancer cataclysmic apocalypse situation to drill it into my skull…”

She looked out the window. Everything seemed so still. There was hardly a cloud in the sky, and no motion in the trees. It was unnaturally quiet for Alois.

“Why don’t you tell me it now, then?” her clone said quietly as Momo trailed off. “The lesson. Then maybe this whole—necropantser catpocalypse or whatever you said—we can just skip over it. Like hitting escape on a really long cutscene.”

Momo snorted.

“Let me get this straight,” she said, turning to face her twin. “You think if I tell you life’s big great secret now, it’ll unlock your true potential, none of this will ever happen, and I’ll cease to exist?”

Clone Momo shrugged.

“Something like that. Sometimes Nancy in the womenswear department tells me the world is ending, and then I find out we’ve just run out of extra smalls. So, yeah. Sometimes an apocalypse is actually just a very solvable inventory problem.”

Momo shook her head. She felt suddenly guilty for underestimating her younger self.

“I thought I was supposed to be the wise one in this equation.”

“Well, sorry to tell you, but you actually don’t seem very wise,” Other-Momo mumbled. “You haven’t even let me in on the big secret yet.”

Momo crossed her arms and pouted. “Well, get ready then.”

Despite both of them knowing this was a ruse, a sort of tension fell over the pair. A held, bated breath. Because… what if? Momo had learned by then that nothing was impossible. Only the naive thought otherwise.

“You have to stop…” Momo paused. “Being so afraid. Being afraid that people won’t like you, or they’ll be mad at you, or they’ll leave you if you say something wrong.”

She looked into her hands. That sounded more insightful in my head. The box was singing faintly now. She could hear the voices growing louder and louder. Beckoning her towards them. Singing so sweetly.

“Is that all? Thanks, doc. I’ll try not worrying,” her counterpart scoffed.

Momo laughed lowly. “I know.”

A beat passed. Nothing happened. No one ceased to exist.

“I guess I’m beyond help,” Clone Momo said, shaking her head. “I guess I just have to wait and get here,” she gestured to the molding attic with a laugh. “And then I’ll finally have the courage to face Mom and Dad.”

Momo blinked, feeling suddenly like she’d been punched in the gut.

“What?” she mumbled, paling.

“Don’t look at me like that. You must remember what it felt like once.” She looked down at the floor, drawing her finger across the floorboards. “I’ve been looking at college applications. Dad wants me to stay local, but I just can’t… I can’t face the way Mom looks at me every time she opens the bedroom door. Like I’m some kind of wild… swamp animal. Like a weird deformed platypus. ” She swallowed. “I’m thinking of going to some state school in Upstate New York. In Albany. Feels like the kind of place you move to if you're planning on dying in the wilderness, but I figure that’ll be hard to do if I don’t leave my room. So.”

Other-Momo finally looked back up at her. She had a small, weak smile on her face.

“I figure I’ll escape for a few years, get my art degree, and by then, I’ll finally be someone they can be proud of, or something. Either way, I’ll see them again eventually. So no harm, no foul.”

Momo’s stomach turned.

“Right,” she laughed nervously. “Actually, about that—”

The Wraith Box’s singing turned suddenly to screams.