Unfortunately, I woke to the blinding glare of the sun leaking in through the window. The curtain that I'd usually attempt to keep closed was wide open and my groggy mind was currently trying to figure out who I was going to kill today because of this. Crimes need to be punished after all, yet after a moment of vainly trying to will the sun into nonexistence with my all-powerful silver eyes of divine doom. Eventually, I let out a sigh and rose to my feet.
Mornings were hard sometimes, yet I had a routine to abide by if I wanted to retain any measure of health and social grace throughout the day. Brushed teeth, a horribly lukewarm shower, and finally acne wipes, the habitual routine helped wake me up a little which was rendered mostly moot once I marched over to my bed and pulled the curtains closed.
Blessed sweet darkness enveloped the room and I took the chance to try and grab some extra sleep. As my head hit the pillow, I didn't give myself the hope that it would last for too long, for one thing sleeping for overly long would fuck over my circadian rhythm, and for another nobody in this family would ever let me sleep in for one reason or another.
If it wasn't Ruby who would barge in then it would be Yang trying to make sure I was productive today. I loved my family a lot, but it could be difficult to keep a calm mind when they were all morning people and I was not. Besides, I had a plan to be productive today, it just didn't need such urgency that it had to be done so damn early in the morning.
Just as I theorized, it wasn't but maybe half an hour before Ruby kicked in the door for our shared living space.
She was trying to say something, but she was legitimately going so fast that it all sounded like a weird mash of unintelligible words. I, of course, responded with my eloquently prepared response and desire for Ruby to slow down and use an actual language spoken by modern humans on Remnant.
"Bhwu?"
"I'MGONNALEARNHOWTOSCYTHEGOOD!!!!!!" She finalized before dashing out of the room in a flurry of rose petals. I could only blink slowly at the slowly evaporating rose petals before sighing and escaping from my comfy confines.
I suppose that I wasn't going to get any more sleep today judging by my family's track record.
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The attic of my home was not a place that was visited often, and being up here felt weird in a way only describable as knowingly trespassing on someone's property. I wasn't of course, this was my house just as much as it was my new family's but it didn't stop the feeling that what I was doing was somehow a crime. Even if my Dad never expressly forbade me from being up here, it was almost implicit in nature. Even if, you know, he wasn't exactly talkative for the past couple of years.
Those feelings weren't worth listening to however, what was infinitely more important was finishing going through the box labeled 'Summer's Writings'. Contained within the box were a number of… well I could only call them what they were, fanfictions.
It was a whole box full of a mixture of short writings and half-filled books of stories that were never completed, and perhaps if I was lucky there might be some clues as to where Mom got to when she disappeared. I wasn't holding my breath however, so far my investigation had only revealed moderately decent fanfiction of various books I was only vaguely aware of.
It was hours later that I noticed something interesting within the miscellaneous pile of writings. At first glance, I had thought it was just another piece of my mother's fan work, but a closer look revealed something… interesting. The story itself started simply enough, a basic hero's journey about a young woman, whose hometown is ravaged by a man with pitch black eyes and deathly pale skin.
It was a somewhat typical hero's journey story, but there were several key differences I had noted at a glance that made me come back to it. Instead of the usual wish fulfillment, the whole text carried a religious heat to it that didn't feel like it really fit with how Dad described Mom. According to him, she was never really all that religious but this… this felt like the kind of thing a zealot would write and it was odd. Combined with the whole 'Salem look-alike' thing it intrigued me enough to take a much deeper look at it.
I pulled the story from the box, a measly five pages of work and thoroughly unfinished, nonetheless I began to leaf through it in more detail.
"There once was a young girl who lived deep in a small village located deep within the forests of the first continent. This girl was of the cheerful sort, vibrant and so full of life that some would claim that her eyes would glimmer and twinkle in the light of the shattered moon! She had a lovely, if simple life, parents who dearly loved her and a whole forest to explore to satisfy her natural curiosity.
Yet things would not remain this way forever, for one day a man entered the village and sought council with the village's Elder. The people of the village were scared of the man, for his eyes were like two black pits from which no light seemed to enter, yet when the girl gazed into the man's eyes as they roamed her own over his pale skin, she could not will any ounce of fear into her heart.
After the man spoke with the Elder and began to leave, despite the protests of her friends and parents, she ran to speak with him. The man with Pitch Eyes looked at her with surprise, but smiled genially as the girl asked him all sorts of questions, showcasing a natural curiosity born of youth.
Then when he was finished answering and satisfying the young girl's inquiries, he smiled at her, revealing a set of bleach white teeth. He then turned and he slaughtered her village, burning all the homes and wonderful trees that surrounded it. He left her parents broken and bloodied in front of her, and as she stared at them in shock and horror, he spoke words that imprinted themselves onto her heart and sent her into a terrible rage.
'This is the price of curiosity young child, be careful what you wish to know for some things are worse than Death.'
With those last parting words the man with Pitch Eyes left the girl to grieve over her loved ones, and the last burning embers of her peaceful life. Yet this was not the end of the story for the girl, for she ventured out into the woods with great sorrow in her heart and a desire to rejoin her loved ones in any way possible.
Yet just as she was on the cusp of committing to the act the most beautiful buck stepped on from behind a tree. The animal was gorgeous, resplendent and majestic all at once in a way that made the girl's grip on the knife in her hand slip and fall without even an ounce of her notice. Seconds passed as she gazed at the majestic creature, until a voice rang out in the forest clearing.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
'Oh young child of the forest, why do you weep?'
'Oh majestic forest spirit, it is oh so horrible, my home, my family, my friends, all that I once knew and loved is gone by the will of that terrible man. I wish to rejoin my family, to see them once again in the distant lands alongside our ancestors…'
The majestic forest spirit sat by the girl's side and allowed her to shed her tears over its body. It's warmth gave the girl a strange comfort that she could not place-"
I paused there, thinking over exactly what I had just read. The pale skinned man with eyes of Pitch was definitely some kind of reference to Salem… though I couldn't quite remember whether or not team STRQ ever actually knew what she looked like. Still, the coincidence of it was far too great to just ignore, and the whole majestic forest spirit stood out quite a lot to me in a way I couldn't put my tongue on yet.
I moved over to the other side of the attic and after a quick glance at the still-open door to the rest of the house grabbed hold of an old rotten tarp and yanked it off. Underneath the tarp was one of those standing cork boards with wheels attached to the bottom, pinned in great multitudes were different handwritten notes or pieces of fanfiction that I thought might have relevant information.
It had been a pain in the ass to bring this thing up into the attic. The entire time I was struggling to push it up the attic's step ladder I had felt like Yang was moments away from springing up behind me to ask what I was doing. I hadn't been an idiot about it of course, everyone should be busy today for a variety of different reasons, so I theoretically have the house to myself for the most part.
I briefly mourn the time when I had both privacy and free time, it was a simpler time that simply couldn't exist anymore. Regardless, I shook those thoughts from my mind as I refocused back on my task. My eyes searched across the board before I found the perfect spot to place the new piece of information, I had found odd mentions of religious dogma before but only in sparse amounts. All of it typically referenced some kind of divine heritage, which obviously sparked my interest…
"Huh, interesting hobby kid…" A familiar voice said from directly behind me making me jump in fear and drop the piece of the story I was holding. Adrenaline and panic flooded my veins as without an ounce of thought I reached for the tarp and poorly threw it over the corkboard. It did not land well, only half covering the board and it took a second to ensure it covered everything.
By the time I was done, I came to a sort of realization about how stupid I probably just looked. Qrow stood in front of me as I turned around to see him, an eyebrow arched at me as if asking if I was serious.
"Uh, I'm just… looking at Mom's stuff, Uncle," I said tentatively.
Qrow seemed to pause as he stepped closer to the corkboard, leaning in to take a closer look at my startled attempt at secrecy. A small frown crossed his face the longer he looked at my board and I was getting a distinct sinking feeling in my gut.
He lets out a weary sigh, reaching down with his good hand to unscrew his flask before giving it a quick swig. While he did that, I bent down and picked up the page I was handling before, holding it tightly to my chest in case he decided that I wouldn't be allowed to investigate anymore.
"You don't have to skulk around up here like you're doing something wrong, Russ." Qrow said, his normally gruff voice carrying a note of unexpected gentleness. "Summer was your mom. It's not a crime to want to know more about her."
He walks over and picks up a few of the pages I accidentally knocked over in my panic, glancing at them before handing them back to me. I take them hesitantly, unsure of what to say. My Uncle lets out a heavy sigh, shaking his head.
"Look, kid… I get it. Your dad, he hasn't exactly been the most forthcoming about your mom since she.. Well, you know. But that doesn't mean you don't have a right to know about her, to want to feel close to her."
His red eyes hold a distant look for a moment before focusing back on me with an intensity that makes me want to squirm. "You shouldn't have to be scavenging for scraps in the attic like some kind of starving dog. If you want to know more about Summer, just ask. I'll tell you what I can."
My Uncle's words hung heavy in the musty air of the attic. Part of me wanted to press him further, to demand the answers I've been looking for so long. I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could get a word out, a sudden shout of pure, unbridled joy rang out from outside, shattering the heaviness between us.
My head snapped towards the window, curiosity piqued. Qrow's eyebrow raised and he moved closer to look out. I followed, peering down to see Ruby in the backyard, proudly swinging a scythe around, her excitedly bumbled words from this morning finally registering in my mind.
"Your sister's got some real talent that was hiding away there huh?" Qrow asks, his voice sounding a lot more… quiet and withdrawn than I am used to hearing from him. I can't help but agree with his words though, while logistically I always knew Ruby was going to be a prodigy with a scythe, it still gave me a measure of awe after I spent years with her probably being the worst student in Signal.
She was… really not good at any of the standard weapons taught at Signal, and the school didn't really go out of its way to find something more exotic that she might be better at. Really it was only with the help of the whole family that we were able to get Ruby up to something barely passable by Signal standards with a sword.
Looking down at her now from the attic window, however, left me more than impressed. She was in the backyard, a multitude of old dummies we typically used for lighter training set up all around the place. Ruby was dancing through the dummies with an old wooden-looking scythe, her footwork leagues more immaculate than what it had been before and the way she twirled the scythe to carve off imaginary limbs was leagues better than how she handled herself using any other weapon to date.
"She's…" I said, trailing off into a small quiet before Qrow spoke up to break it.
"She's a natural, not even half a day of practice and she's swinging that thing around like she's been practicing for years." His words were laced with pride, I could feel it brimming every word despite his attempt to make it sound casual.
"Right." He said, clearing his throat for a second. "Ask away kid, I can't promise I know everything but you don't need to root around in a dusty attic if you want to know more about your Mom."
For a moment I was silent, a nervous energy bubbled in my gut as I considered what I could ask without setting off red flags. Yet the more I thought the more I realized that anything of serious note Uncle Qrow was likely to just deflect…
"I kinda can't remember her very well, Uncle Qrow. I've gotten a better idea of her from reading her stories, but what was she like?" I asked instead after a long moment of quiet. There were many questions I could probably have asked that would lead me closer to finding out what happened to Mom, but at the moment this was something that had been tingling in the back of my mind.
I never was really able to get a good read on Mom through her writings, just vague assumptions.
Uncle Qrow hummed in thought as he took another shot from his flask, "Summer was… complicated. Brilliant, brave, compassionate to a fault. But she had her dreams too. We all did, in Team STRQ. Came with the territory, I guess."
His voice trailed off with a tinge of bitterness at the end, and judging by what I remember about the ultimate fate of Team STRQ, I don't blame him.
He shook his head as he absently ran his good hand through his spiky hair, "But at her core, she was the kindest woman I think I ever knew, for better or worse. While everyone else in our line of work seemed to grow more and more numb with the kinds of things you'd see, she seemed to just grow more determined and empathetic."
The older man chuckled while his gaze lingered on Ruby in the backyard, "You probably don't really get what I mean do you? It's not really something I can describe with just some fancy words, it's something you have to experience. Something I'm sure you will experience too if you choose to be a Huntsman…"
Actually, I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what he was talking about. I tried imagining it too, someone who took in the horrors of what essentially was a war and didn't grow numb to it. Someone who decided it was all the more reason to throw herself back in to help more, conceptually I could see it but realistically I knew that I probably wasn't truly comprehending something like that.
That level of selflessness… The world at large was probably lesser without her.
"Hey, kid?" Uncle Qrow said suddenly, making me look up at him as he grinned mischievously at me.
"Want to hear about the time your mom and dad managed to almost destroy an entire wing of Beacon?" The outrageous man said, forcing me to blink in astonishment.
My head cocked to the side at his words, curiosity burning, "What? How?"
"Heh, well you see it started almost too simply, we were having a small little food fight in the cafeteria…"
For the next hour and a half, I listened to Uncle Qrow regale me with several stories about the mom I never got to meet. It was… nice to get to hear more about her a little from someone who actually knew her, Dad never really spoke of her in any significant way. Always just small somber mentions of her, never actually saying anything of substance and always avoiding the subject when directly asked.
I put that out of my mind though, simply listening to the stories of my mom through the point of view of my Uncle.