That was how the days passed.
Eliax followed thin leads, explored anywhere that caught her fancy and read up on everything the hero had done with her life. Occasionally Hivren caught her at the library and convinced her to go to Nightwind with him, but most of her time was engrossed in her studies or practicing her dimensionalism. Before she knew it, she’d been in Reiaran for two weeks.
It felt like a small eternity as she pulled memory after memory out of the resonance. A memory of drawing, a memory of teasing some younger girls, a memory of loneliness.
The more memories she saw, the more she felt herself longing to be that person. She still saw them as separate people, but that gap was getting steadily smaller with every passing day.
Eliax felt like this was probably a decent, healthy thing, in fact she found herself feeling almost good. She hummed and doodled in the margins of her notebook, there was no problem with that, right? No problem at all with taking a moment to relax.
Hivren peered over her shoulder, “Whatcha doing?”
Eliax jumped and glanced at him, slightly panicked as if she felt like she shouldn’t be doodling in the margins instead of taking notes on that latest memory she’d looked over. “I’m just ah…working on my thing, ya know?”
“Ah, the mysterious personal project you’ve been going on about forever. How long do you think it’s going to take?”
Eliax shrugged and closed the notebook before he could absorb the numerous question marks and confusing rambles it contained. She felt like with each page these things were degrading.“Hopefully not more than a month. Time is flying and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface…”
“Well, you finally read everything on the Hero, do you need help finding anything else?”
Eliax cringed, remembering the hours wasted on all that dragon crap propaganda. She’d checked though, she could safely say she wasn’t missing anything clouded by her hatred of the Hero. “I’ll have to look into some other stuff, but I think I’m done with the Hero forever.”
Ha. Ahah. Ahahahah. Don’t mind me, I’m just laughing at her. “Oh, do you want to see the Ayfel?”
Eliax paused. “The…Ayfel…” The resonance stirred at the word. It hadn’t done anything the numerous times she’d read the word in the propaganda. Which only really told her that the stupid thing had decided that until now, she wasn’t ready or something. “Isn’t that where the Hero grew up? You mentioned it before, there’s a shrine isn’t there?”
Hivren nodded, “I visit all the time, the lady in charge of the building is pretty nice, Aymiae, if you’ve heard of her.”
Eliax blinked at the name, feeling a memory perk up. She shoved it down before it could distract her.“Huh, I guess I’ll check it out later, I need to finish something first.”
Hivren shrugged, “Just tell her you know me and she’ll probably give you a tour free of charge.”
“Ah…thanks?”
Hivren nudged her with an elbow, “What’re friends for! Even if the friend is insane or something.”
Apparently humans had hard elbows, but not much else. “Ugh, you do remember that…” She’d been trying to figure out if he’d dismissed that as a joke for a while now. She still wasn’t sure if he actually believed it.
Hivren grinned, “Of course! It’s all anyone knows about your mysterious project.”
Sparks, maybe she should leave some more ‘normal’ bits of her research out for him to find and see if he made a more reasonable assumption out of them.
--
Eliax sat down an hour later, her hands once more crafting her experimental expanded space. It was slowly improving every time she did it, but if she made it too large it didn’t even last ten seconds. She’d figured out that if she put as little power into it as possible, it wouldn’t even explode when it inevitably destabilized and pushed everything out!
She pulled at the space, binding the little bits of it together in a way that wouldn’t directly force the bits that didn’t like each other to touch. Sparks, she had to draw this out. Eliax collapsed the frame and a moment later found herself trying to represent a four dimensional object on a two dimensional one.
Herm… She pulled out a book on mathematics and started calculating something…something…something else?
I stopped paying attention by this part, but I promise you, it was very thorough.
After a while she leaned back in the chair, examining the shape in her notebook, and then realized she should just…not be using those pieces of the puzzle since they served no purpose. The entire thing was pointless, and she was tempted to tear out the page and start ripping it up to make herself feel better, but she left it there. It still looked nice after all. She doubted she could look at the page again without feeling annoyed, but whatever.
Eliax put down her notebook and decided to do something else before she ended up setting it on fire. She ended up prodding at the more recent memories she’d surfaced, there were a lot more from the teenage years lately, even one with Fari’s eighteenth birthday. It made her feel just a bit more like she was making progress.
Eliax opened up a memory and sat back in preparation.
I remembered the emotions first. Anger, resentment, a pinch of fear. It took me a bit to realize they weren’t mine. They were the emotions coming from someone else as a younger girl screamed at me.
“Fari! You’re always so unbearable! You go outside the city with my brother alllll the time, you never do what you’re supposed to! And the mistress still likes you better! It’s not fair! I’m always doing your job for you, I’m always helping out the mistress!”
I stared at her for a moment, “Aymiae…”
“And then there’s the dragon. You got kicked out of the scribes and then suddenly the only dragon Reiaran has seen in like a million years decides you get to be his personal messenger!”
I cringed, “I’m sorry…”
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She huffed, “Plus all my brother does is hang out with you. Doesn’t he know I still want him around?” She started to sound more and more like the little kid she was. Barely eleven and holding such resentment.
“Did you tell him that? Aneles doesn’t hate you.”
“But he likes you better than me! Everyone likes you better than me!” Aymiae glared her little heart out and stomped from the premise, the door slamming behind her.
I sighed, closing my eyes. I’d known this was coming, she’d given every indication that this was coming. But for some reason I hadn’t known it. I hit my fist lightly against my forehead a couple of times, “Stupid stupid stupid.”
Eliax frowned at the wall, Aymiae. She did remember an Aymiae, didn’t she?
Apparently she had to head to the Ayfel as soon as possible.
Eliax picked up her notebook from the desk and exited the library, already dreading this confrontation. It was important though, arguably the most important thing she could do. To talk to someone who had known her.
Eliax half hoped they were different people, if only because she wasn’t certain if she was ready for physical confirmation that this was real, that there had actually been a person named Fari. And worse, if there had never been one. If she really was just going insane. She…didn’t know if she could handle that option.
--
The ayfel was a tall building. Having six stories and a large appropriately creepy basement, it wholeheartedly embraced the tower-like aesthetic that had been popular when it was built, but such a thing had fallen out of fashion…oh just over sixty years ago. Which resulted in most folks calling it kind of ugly; the badly installed stained glass windows didn’t help much with that.
Stained glass windows that as far as Eliax could tell from the outside, depicted the hero…killing a lot of humans, and that was basically it. What can I say, the people like a good murder spree. Well, I suppose it’s not counted as such when it’s the middle of a war and your side is losing, but really Melor, you all should get some higher standards. A confused goat could have become the hero.
Eliax stepped into the Ayfel, you remember, the building that’s vastly out of style and guarded by an angry old woman who will steal the toes of kids who invade her place. I have no idea what HIvren is going for when he described Aymiae as nice and- what do you mean why am I suddenly being more talkative? Eliax hasn’t left the library in two weeks except for sleeping and meals and most of the time not even that. I’m bored.
The entrance room was both breathtaking and rather anticlimactic. A strange combination that perfectly exemplified the hero it was meant to represent. The stained glass depicted a scene of Foralen, the hero, heroically standing over the corpses of the enemies of the empire.
So Eliax stood inside the ayfel, observing the stained glass windows, the broken floorboards, and the rotting walls. She concluded that something was clearly wrong here. It didn’t feel right to have a pair of stained glass windows, even with their beauty. It didn’t feel right for the splintering wood to be so gently cared for.
It didn’t feel right for the ayfel to be so empty of small voices and hurried messengers. Eliax closed her eyes, imagining what the place had looked like when the hero Foralen had lived there. The resonance -which is me if you haven’t noticed that yet- was all over the place, enraged at the changes and occasionally the slightest bit salty.
This place should have been bustling with little girls wearing matching uniforms and carrying messenger bags. There would be the overseer, the Lady, the Mistress, and the founder of the building. The one who took care of the money and the training, and everything really.
Her office would have been over-
“What are you doing here?” a sharp voice snapped at her.
Eliax looked up to see a woman who was entirely too old for her familiar face. She was a Tuvei, her two thin antennae bobbing above her head in a very cross way. Her arms were also crossed, and even her eyes, though that last one may have been a medical condition since they stayed that way perpetually.
Aymiae has always been a very cross person, she was cross as a child, and forty-odd years of being cross didn’t lighten the crossness much. In fact, I’m pretty sure that this particular woman was the crossest person in the entire world.
Now that I’ve successfully made the word cross lose meaning, Eliax finally remembered that Aymiae was expecting an answer from her. What was the question again? Oh right, what was she doing here?
“I um…I was just looking around?” Eliax! What are you doing! Lean on the unknown authority of the human that you tolerate!!
Aymiae made a noise that would remind most folks of an annoyed mother, but since Eliax didn’t grow up with a mother and generally hadn’t had much mothering done to her in her life, she would describe the noise as more of a tired sigh. Therefore, Aymiae’s brilliant mechanism for reminding any invading children of their mother completely went over Eliax’s head, lightly brushing her antennae and falling into the abyss of social interactions that Eliax didn’t understand.
There was a moment of silence.
“My uh…my friend Hivren said you do tours?” Yes! Gooood…. Now…don’t act like me because Aymiae hates me. Eliax rubbed her forehead and smiled tiredly, “I could come back another time if you want.”
Aymiae sighed again, this time the noise wasn’t full of motherly connotations. “Kids come in here all the time trying to sneak a glimpse of anything Foralen touched once.” She threw her hands in the air, “But you know Hivren so it’s fine!” She grinned, which I found disconcerting. Eliax ignored me as she was prone to do, slightly confused as to why the resonance was more vibrant than usual. Screw you! This chapter is from MY perspective! MUAH HAHAH!
Eliax smiled hesitantly back, feeling worry bubble up inside her at the…disturbances in her brain. Regardless, She followed Aymiae as she happily led her out of the main room, “But isn’t that kind of stupid? People aren’t any more heroic just because they come in here.”
Ohhhh yes. Do that! Aymiae would like that! Wait… okay shutting up now.
Aymiae gave Eliax a surprised look, “They look up to her. I see it differently, we grew up together, she and I. Foralen will always be that kid to me, not so much a hero.”
Eliax tilted her head, a sudden terrible thought rising up that she didn’t like. “What was that like? Growing up here I mean?”
Aymiae smiled and gestured to the kitchen area, where pristine dishes were laid out. “It was like it is now, but different. Once the Queen won the succession war, she funded a remodeling, but I couldn’t bear to change too much and by that point I was the only one left for the Ayfel to go to. Some of the others are still around, here and there, but I was the only one who came back to Reiaran.”
Aymiae shook her head, “Anyways, we were all orphans here, our parents died in the great plagues or from bandits. There were all kinds of stories. The Ayfel was where the girls were sent and the guard was where the boys were sent. I didn’t see my brother that much, but I was too excited to learn from Lady Raia to care about that until later.”
Eliax opened her mouth to ask, she needed to know if Fari had been one of those girls. But she…couldn’t quite make the words come out.
Aymiae paused and looked her over, “You remind me of her actually.”
JUMP OUT THE WINDOW.
Eliax stared at Aymiae, feeling a bit out of sorts, “Who? Lady Raia?”
“No, Foralen. You’re a lot calmer than her, quieter, but you feel similar to how I remember her. You even have the same facial markings.”
Eliax swallowed the bile that was rising in her throat. “Did she…have a nickname? You don’t seem to flow right whenever you say her name.”
Aymiae blinked, “Oh, certainly, I don’t think anyone but Lady Raia actually called her Foralen. It was always Fari for the rest of us. The one time I called her Foralen she pushed me out of a tree.”
Hah, yeah…I did do that. Eliax meantime, was closing her eyes, as if trying to block out the truth that she’d gone looking for.
Just stop trying to break this balance, please.