~ [Priestess Dandy and -] ~

“— It’s all one thing. It’s all one thing. It’s all one thing —” mutters the girl to herself, rocking back and forth on her bed inside the monastery. The attending royal priestess, who had just fed the sick girl and wiped her body clean, carries away her things to move on to the next patient.

She’s been here for a month now, her mind having broken during the end of days. Poor child. It was just too much for her to handle.

The queen herself paid for her to be taken in by the monastery here, in the hopes that her disconnected spirit might be reconnected to her body, that her mind might mend from the fracturing it had undergone. Who knows what she went through that made her snap like this, but it must have been severe.

But all that the girl does after her scream-filled sleeping — brought on only by herbal potions and deep medicine — is to rock back and forth, while staring into the empty corner of whatever room she’s in as her chapped, dry, and chewed-on lips keep muttering the same thing over and over and over again every day for as long as she’s been here.

She seems like a hopeless cause. But she’ll be well taken care of by the holy-church nonetheless, as it is their duty to tend to the ill and lost of the world.

— Especially if the queen herself pays for it.

The young priestess rocks in the groove on her bed, holding her legs as she stares into the corner like she does every day.

“Psst.”

She stops, listening. That sound…

Something beats powerfully in her heart, loosening a bolt that had been tightened too firmly in her spirit.

“Psst…” hisses the voice a second time. She looks around herself at the empty room, the hairs on her neck standing on end, as if he were breathing onto her, holding her. “Dandy,” whispers the man she recognizes. “Dandy!” it calls again. She jolts together and then crawls around, looking around the room like a surprised animal in its burrow. “Down here, Dandelion,” says the voice and she looks as through the window drifts a flower of the same name as herself, the fluffy white landing on the stone floor and rolling in the breeze down below her.

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Dandy crawls off of the bed, her palms hitting the floor as she presses her stomach to the ground and turns around, looking under the bed. “Hero?” She asks. "Hero, is that you?” asks the priestess, her eyes shaking and her heart fluttering.

“It’s me, Dandy,” replies the voice from the black, empty shadow below where the bed meets the wall. “I’m sorry. They did something to me,” it says — he says. “You know I’d never hurt my friend.”

“I know!” she answers desperately, crawling down below further and getting stuck as the gap between the bolted-down bed frame and the stone floor is too small for her body. “I know you’d never hurt me, Hero!” she says, her eyes wide and bulging. “Where are you?” asks Dandy, panting for air as she looks around the empty space. “Come back to me,” pleads the desperate priestess. “I need you. I need…” she stops, feeling a breath on the side of her face.

“I need you to do something for me, Dandy,” says the voice. “Our mission isn’t over,” it explains.

“Come back to me, Hero!” pleads Dandy, crying. “I can’t do it alone. I can’t. I’m too scared without you!” she explains, her terror evidenced by the fresh puddle growing on the floor behind her.

“Shh~” says the voice from the darkness. “I know Dandy. I know you are…” it whispers into her ear. “That’s you’re my best friend. So listen to me, okay?”

“Anything,” says Dandy. “For you.”

“We run forward together, remember?” it asks. She nods. “Good. You’re a good friend, Dandy — a good girl. Now listen to me,” it hisses into her ear again, the hairs on her neck standing on end as if electrified, her heart racing in her chest. “I need a body, Dandy. A new body.”

“Mine!” answers Dandy readily without a second thought. “Take me, Hero!”

“No… no, no…” dismisses the voice. “I would never want to hurt you, Dandy,” it whispers. “— You know that,” it reassures her again a second time, as if to erase any doubts after the first. “We’re friends.”

There’s a scratching as something hard and sharp slides over the stones out of the darkness. “Someone will be back here in an hour to check on you, Dandy. They’re all guards. Everyone around you here. They’re all servants of the evil queen, sent here to torment you forever — for the rest of your life.” Dandy reaches out, grabbing the shard of broken glass that looks like its from a palace window. She holds it in both of her hands, looking at the jagged, broken, sharp thing. “I want you to make an empty space inside of one of them for me.” Something touches her face — a hand gently stroking her cheek. “Will you do that for me, Dandy? For us?”

Dandy smiles, resting her face against the presence as she clutches the broken shard against herself. “Yes, Hero. I knew that this was all wrong. I knew you’d never leave me,” she says.

“Where else would I go?” asks the voice from the emptiness. “There’s zero places I’d rather be…” it says, as Dandy crawls back out from beneath the bed and tucks the shard in between her folded legs and arms and starts rocking back and forth again, sparing only a glance at her reflection in the broken glass she’s hiding in her robes.

But for some reason, she can’t see her eyes.

It’s like they’re empty.

A quiet laughter fills the room, coming as if from nowhere at all.