~~Fate

Soft snow paints the landscape in a thin dusting of white, from the branches overhead to the grass underfoot. Even the cool waters that still dribble through the creek, are slowly accumulating frost.

“What did you want to know?” The girl asks, walking by the side of the stream without looking back at me. “To come here in this weather, she must be special to you.”

“Is this a dream?” I ask, trying to understand this place. I’m in a child’s body walking through a snow-dusted forest at the back of a grand castle.

“What is a dream?” she asks. “How can you tell dreams apart from reality?”

“Reality stays with you even if you want to forget, where dreams are ephemeral, they slip away even when you try to keep hold of them,” I say, paraphrasing an author that I can’t quite remember.

“Perhaps, you haven’t yet awoken from the dream that you call reality,” she says, her voice a clear whisper that echoes through the icy cold of the forest. “And if you do wake from that dream, would you think it without meaning? Even if this is but a dream, an ordinary dream, isn’t there still meaning to it?”

“Not if I forget it before tomorrow comes,” I answer, each word inspiring cold white puffs in the cold air.

The water here is so congested with ice that it’s nearly come to a halt entirely, and the further upstream we travel the more obstructed the stream becomes.

“Is yesterday meaningless if you’ve forgotten the details of it?” She asks. “Even if you forget, you still smiled for a day, you still fell in love for a day, that isn’t lost just because you can’t remember it.”

She talks so strangely, too refined for the youthful image that she wears as a façade. The way she talks circles around these ideas…

“Are you a goddess?” I ask. This was a trial of the two moons, so… “Sanguine?”

The girl titters a refined laugh, or I think it’s a laugh, nobody makes a sound like that in real life. But the strangely high-pitched and refined tittering is still filled with a deep humour that proves that she’s being genuine.

“You can call me that if you wish,” she says. “You came here to ask me about a girl?”

“I… I did,” I say. “I want to know more about her. I was keeping my distance and waiting for her to be ready to talk about herself… but…”

“There’s not enough time?” Sanguine asks, smiling warmly. “Or perhaps you’re simply impatient?”

“I just…”

“Don’t want to be alone,” her smile turns cold as she stares into the distance. “I can sympathise.”

“So, what should I do?” I ask. “Lucette said something that makes some sense to me. Real couples fight, they push each other sometimes and get upset.

“Am I keeping too much distance from her, because I’m afraid of what will happen if I scare her away?” I ask.

“It sounds to me that you’re not here for advice, but to have your own thoughts mirrored.” She says, leading me up through a thickly forested area.

There’s a lake here, locked in place by ice and snow, frozen solid. There’s a natural beauty here, but it’s cold and frightening.

“I want to know Hope better,” I say. “She’s told me bits and pieces of her past, and…”

“It’s scary, isn’t it?” The little goddess says. “It frightens you to think of what horrors made her. Do you still want to know?”

“I want to know.”

“Then, I’ll tell you the story and maybe it will speed things along,” she says, staring into the distance. “Do you know where we are?”

“Somewhere cold.”

“A castle, the place where Hope was born and raised; until it wasn’t.” Behind us, the forest is warm with red lights I can’t see where it’s all coming from.

“The Kingdom hated its King, and the King’s family, too. They hated Hope. With torches and fire, they came for her, and it was the cold storms that saved her from the warmth of people.”

A cold wind carries thick snow, hiding the warm lights behind us and covering us in a dark more pure than a moonless night. Distant shouts and cries of anger and rage are quieted by nature’s own roar, a shield through which nothing can be heard or seen.

“It was in the cold and the night that she was safe,” Sanguine says. “She travelled through the quiet forests where the hunters and the wolves parley, finding warmth in villages that have no name, but even there she could find no safety.”

The darkness lightens to warm the day, and I see a small village. The townspeople barely even walk through the town, the snow is too thick for people to leave their homes without good reason.

Everyone who sees us looks at us with dark suspicion. They close themselves off and walk right past, at least most of them do. Some point fingers and whisper.

“Do they know?” Sanguine asks. “Do they know who we really are? Or are they just pointing us out as strangers? Do we need to run again? Will they burn us?”

The girl whispers worried thoughts and I can feel them seeping into my mind. A dark paranoia; but is it?

“Sometimes people would help, knowing what our violet eyes mean,” she says. “Never for long. The town would always offer us the warmth of the fire.”

Flickering flames crawl up the body of a woman, screaming in pain while spitting curses at the townspeople who stand around to watch. She looks over at Sanguine and I, her eyes imploring us to run for our lives while she suffers terrible pains. A foul smell spreads through the town, and the screaming echoes through the night.

“Every kindness that was offered to her, came with the promise that it would only end in more fire.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“So, she left. The few faithful servants that still cared helped her to cross the desert.” Sanguine says. “An impossible journey, but she made it.

“She made it,” Sanguine wears a bittersweet smile on her lips as she stares down at the white sands that have appeared at our feet, as if in mourning.

The silence hangs between us for a few moments as we stare into the endless rolling white dunes.

“There’s something I don’t get,” I say. “She had a sister with her, didn’t she?”

“She did,” the girl says, smiling warmly but not turning away from the desert sand. “Don’t be afraid to confront her.”

“Who are you?”

“Hope is a stubborn sort, but she deserves to have her own life. What little of it is left.”

~~Hope

The streets are chaos, true and complete chaos fuelled by drugs and alcohol and the depths of human despair. The kids dragging me through the rancid thoroughfare don’t see it, but the atmosphere still weighs on them, there’s no way that it can’t.

“Where should we go?” One of the kids, a young boy with buckteeth, asks the rest. Bucky leads us through the mess but seems clueless in his own direction. “Everywhere is so busy.”

“It’s always busy,” the girl says, I’ll call her ‘Locks’ for her hairstyle. “It’s the end of the world.”

“What’s happening?” I ask, “Where are you taking me?”

This is what Fate saw and lived through, or that’s what I’m guessing. How come it doesn’t feel so happy and cheerful? How am I meant to learn anything about her from this memory, if it’s just an anxious day avoiding people at a festival?

“We’re having fun,” the boy says. “Don’t you know what fun is?”

“No,” I squeak out as they pull me out and into a small broken-down building. Age has taken it over many years, and it’s barely been patched back together again with each drip that makes it through the ceiling.

What’s left can barely provide shelter from the rain, and I wouldn’t dare call it a home.

Still, there are others here seeking a distance from the crowd. A pair of paramours are taking their affections a little too far, and others are here drinking and smoking away from the jostling melee outside.

“So, do we hit up the games?” Bucky says. “Jimmy said that they set up a big stand on the fifth walk.”

“Jimmy’s a kid, you want to play games with a bunch of kids, then go ahead, but I ain’t going,” Locks says, pouting at the boy.

“What else do you do at a festival?” Bucky asks.

“Eat things,” Another boy, ‘Shifty’ says.

“Ah, we can walk around and stuff. Maybe there’s dancing?” Locks is hesitant in giving her answer, looking around the place and glancing a little too frequently at the promiscuous couple.

I don’t feel comfortable here, and I don’t know where they’re going to take me, but I know that I’m not going to like it.

What would Fate do in this situation?

She enjoys things like this; she dances, and drinks, and recklessly dives into conversation with complete strangers. She’d probably lead these kids out towards the safer parts of the city where they can dance and enjoy sweets and things like that.

“Maybe…” I try to speak up, but Shifty speaks over me.

“We should go dancing, I heard Pansy talking about going to the big stage. There’s music and stuff there.”

“Pansy? You want to go dancing with a girl?” Bucky asks.

“What’s wrong with that?” Locks hisses, stepping up at him.

“It’s yuck, I mean what, would you want to dance with me or something? That’s gross.”

“No, because you stink!” She shouts, her face blushing red. “Who would dance with you?”

Why am I here?

Why are any of us here?

Are kids actually like this, or is this some corruption of Fate’s memories?

I wish she were here with me, I’m sure she’d deal with all this stupid, childish nonsense so that I don’t have to. I was hoping to see the world from her perspective, instead, I have to watch kids argue.

“Well, your mom sleeps with half the town,” the girl points at Bucky, still blushing but more in anger this time.

I think I missed some of their argument, it’s escalated some…

“Yeah, she does,” he shrugs. “So what? It doesn’t mean anything.”

“What? But like… it’s love and stuff.”

“Nuh-uh,” Bucky shakes his head. “I don’t really get what’s fun about it, but it’s like a game. She doesn’t love ‘em or nothin’, not like she loves me.”

“But…” The girl looks lost as she tries to unravel what the boy said.

“Yeah, my dad goes to the big house with the pretty girls and red lanterns, all the time. It’s just like when he goes out drinking,” Shifty says. “It doesn’t really mean nothing, and my mom doesn’t really care about it either.”

“Then, what about falling in love and stuff?” The girl asks.

“I don’t think that’s real,” Shifty says. “I mean our parents love us, I mean sometimes they don’t, but like loving someone else is just a thing people made up for some reason.”

“But you’re only meant to sleep with people that you really love.” Locks says.

“That’s just something the adults say,” Bucky says. “They don’t mean it. Like how they say we shouldn’t drink or smoke.”

“It’s like the rules of a game,” Shifty says. “You’re only meant to have sex with someone you marry, but when no one cares about the rules anymore, the rules don’t really exist, do they?”

“That’s so stupid,” the girl spits, but now there’s a hesitation to her words.

“Who cares?” Shifty asks. “I don’t care about love and stuff. Let’s go out, I want to try dancing with Pansy. She’s pretty.”

“That’s stupid,” Bucky says.

“You’re stupid.”

I let them drift off into the crowd, forgetting that I even exist. Is this what kids are like, or are these brats just really weird?

This is the sort of place that Fate grew up?

Why would she want to save this place? I honestly don’t see a reason why this place should exist for another day let alone for a year.

Everywhere I look I can see the shadows. Everyone is greedily taking for themselves, except a few people who are giving themselves away but even they’re just doing it to distract from the coming end.

When I look past the louder people, I can see the quiet ones. The people crying on the side of the road, the people putting a drink to their lips to hide their frowns, and the people singing at the top of their lungs just to keep from screaming.

The crowd is so thick that I can’t take a step without taking an elbow to the side, but they are all so alone.

I hate to peer at such things, but when I do glance their way, even the couples who are peeling off seem only interested in the distraction. There’s no affection, no exchange of passions. They’re just going through the motions to keep from feeling anything.

“What do you think?” A masked boy asks me, appearing from nowhere and blocking my path. He’s not like the others here. Almost like he’s from a different world from them.

He’s a bit taller than me and wears trousers and a strange white mask. His voice seems much too deep like he’s trying to make himself seem older than he is. Apparently, some boys do that, or that’s what Fate told me once. It was in one of the stories she told me while we were on the road.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“Would you believe me if I told you that I’m the god, Cerulean?” He asks, putting his hands on his hips and lifting his head high. There’s something familiar about him but I can’t quite place it.

“Sure, why not,” I say. “I don’t see how it’s any stranger than everything else that’s happened.”

“Huh,” the boy deflates at my lax reply. “You have come here to have a wish granted, have you not?”

“No,” I admit. “I want to know what it is that makes Fate smile. I wanted to see the world she sees, but I don’t think I can.”

“Why is that?”

I keep silent, and the sounds of the crowd wash through between us. It’s loud and uncomfortable, and I hate it here.

“You wanted to get to know her?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I have less than a year left before the world is over. I guess I just wanted to see what it’s like for someone who wants to fight that end.

“I wanted to know why she’s trying so hard to keep on living,” I say. “Instead, I get to see what we must look like from the outside.”

“Huh?” the boy seems genuinely confused.

“Look at it,” I say, pointing out a couple who are getting handsy at the side of the road. “Do you think they care about each other? Do you think that’s love? They’re just messing around until the world ends, there’s no affection here, no love.

“It’s all just pointless.”

“Wait, wait, wait, that’s not what you’re supposed to take away from this!” The boy rushes to me, waving his hands around. “You’re supposed to see that your relationship is different and-”

“Is it?” I ask, standing up to him. “Isn’t that what everyone says? ‘our love is different, more real than the others’? It’s all pretend. It’s the games we play to keep the loneliness away.

“It’s a lie.”

The boy doesn’t know what to say, quietly adjusting his mask and shuffling around.

“If you truly are Cerulean, then I wish you the best with your own divine game of ‘romance’ with Sanguine,” I say. “I’m done lying.”

I walk out of the illusion, facing Fate who is waking from her own dream.

It’s time to cast aside the lies and delusions.