Issekina was lost!
Oh, how funny. Hilarious, even. Except for the spiderling in question. The arachne that had helped the little girl, Ama, find her way outside the forest safely, was now completely, utterly, lost.
Well, at least she wasn’t hunted by Mimehounds!
Don’t jinx it!
Shouted Siidi in her mind.
To which she could say nothing, because she had already learned just how rotten her luck normally was.
She scuttled around the forest she called home and tried to find her way to her sisters. Which, truth be told, was quite difficult, since her clan was where it was because it didn’t want to be found.
So she wandered aimlessly hoping for a miracle, like some sort of smoke signal, or a light in the ever-increasing darkness. Anything, really. But there was nothing. Only the wind traveling through the branches, the occasional bird chirping, and the other sounds of wildlife. Soon even those would disappear, leaving her in complete silence. Then she would call herself fucked.
Slowly, the light disappeared behind the horizon, darkness walking hand in hand with its counterpart and putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
She felt alone.
Again.
Well, you have me.
You don’t count.
You’re breaking my heart. Oh, wait, I don’t have one.
Isse sighed, but she had to admit that this short exchange had lifted her morale. She smiled, and with renewed vigor began walking again, looking for her sisters. She knew she’d most probably end up sleeping on a tree somewhere to pass the night. The forest, she’d understood, wasn’t safe during the day. It was probable it would be even less so during the night.
She walked. And saw light over her head. She looked up in hopes of seeing some kind of sign that she was getting closer to her home, but all she saw was the moon.
It was beautiful: white as a pearl, smooth as a river stone, and so luminous it nearly rivaled the sun. Also, it was melting.
She stared, transfixed. And tripped on a protruding root. How that was possible, since she had eight legs and only one had been tripped, she didn’t know. It was, most probably, an unfortunate sequence of events where one leg’s loss of equilibrium had caused a domino effect with three others on one side, causing the girl to fall on that side. It certainly wasn’t because an Author wanted to punish her idiocy for not taking some precautions when she decided to up and run in a giant forest!
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was that the [Carer] with [Hunter] Skills, who had been looking for Isse the whole afternoon, and was going to look for her the whole night if it was necessary, found her.
You could say she managed this quite difficult task with her Skills and skills alone, but that would be a half truth. Rather, her job was made quite easier by Isse’s screech of anger caused by her sudden fall.
The [Carer], whose name was Erniuros, one of the strangest names Grandmother had ever given, sighed in relief and nearly began crying, but she pulled herself together as fast as possible: she couldn’t let the spiderling see her as weak. Not now, when she probably needed someone strong! Also, she was in big trouble. Why in the names of the Olds would she run away?
She scuttled close to the girl and helped her up. It seemed she’d just given up and decided to stay on the ground for a while, dirt in her hair be damned!
"Come on, spiderling, get up. We’re going home," she whispered in her ear.
The girl immediately jumped up in the air. Like, literally, she was one or two centimeters over the ground from how high she jumped.
Erniuros, who was usually just called Ernia by her friends because she always lamented having back aches, chuckled slightly.
"I don’t know why you came so far away from home, little one, but you better come back. The colors all look the same during the night. Same goes for those damned wolves."
She was relieved: she knew she should be angry at the little arachne, but she just couldn’t bring herself to. After all, she’d been a child too. She knew just how strangely their minds worked. If they didn’t do anything stupid, ever, then they were probably not living their best lives. Or learning how to live said lives.
She looked back, making sure Isse was still following her. She was, naturally. She was also craning her neck to look up at the canopy. When they passed under a hole that showed the beautiful, starry, sky, she made a small sound and pointed up. Ernia followed the finger, and immediately her eyes latched on the moon.
"What is it little one? What’s that? That’s the moon," she smiled. Sometimes she forgot that the ‘roofs’ of their home were covered in spidersilk that seldom let the young ones see the sky. It was probably the first time she’d ever seen the moon and the stars.
Still, the spiderling didn’t seem satisfied with the answer as she pointed up at the moon again, making a keener sound.
Ernia looked up, not understanding. And then noticing the fact that the moon was melting. Thick globs of white substance were slowly detaching themselves from the surface of the satellite, seemingly falling off, only to stop ‘mid air’ to begin floating upwards, fusing themselves again to the upper side. The moon also had a distinctly fluid look to it, as if a child had thrown a giant rock on the surface of a lake, causing ripples to spread everywhere. This was the same, but there were a lot of rocks, and the lake was the motherfucking moon.
"Oh, yeah, you probably never saw it. The moon is waxing. It likes to change every once in a while. It’ll start waning in a few days," she motioned for the girl to start walking again, "Now don’t stop, we’re close by."
That night, after being checked over by no less than three [Carers], among who was, naturally, Makira, she was sent to bed. Without dinner. She didn’t really care about that: Ama had food in a small pouch at her side. Actually, the pouch contained a lot more food than it should’ve been able to considering its dimensions, but the girl had quickly explained to her it was a Bag of Holding. A small rift to another dimension, the Void, where a part of that endless space had been carved and trapped in this reality, anchored to the stitching. It was a dangerous and slightly unstable process, and if for some reason the stitching didn’t hold, the bag and all of its contents would collapse back into the Void. Possibly taking with them a chunk of the user.
She went to sleep, and slept a dreamless dream.
----------------------------------------
That night, Erniuros went to sleep with a smile on her face and satisfaction filling her heart. Her sisters had congratulated her for managing to find the lost spiderling and, most important of all, Iadara had shared with her one of her best bottles of wine! Or, at least, that’s what she said. Ernia was pretty sure that alcoholist would never just give away one of her best bottles.
Still, it was a good night!
And it became even better when she fell asleep.
[Conditions Met - Carer -> Guardian]
[Class Consolidation: Hunter]
[Guardian Level 15!]
[Skill - Locate Ward Obtained!]
[Skill - Enhance Sense: Sight Obtained!]
[Skill - Lesser Night Vision Obtained!]
----------------------------------------
Alice had a somewhat similar revelation with the moon not long after she’d appeared in this new world. She’d just received permission to live in that abandoned house by the inhabitants of the city of Gunsee. That night, she had decided to go for a little stroll around her new property. Bad idea, sure, but she didn’t yet know about the possible dangers of going around at night without any sort of weapon.
Well, truth be told, the only thing she’d probably find around here was an angry Night Pecker, a small, black, woodpecker with a passion for doing what all woodpeckers do… at night. Near any kind of light. Which meant there were villages around the continent of Eva that offered bounties for the little beasts just so that they could sleep!
Anyways, she was walking around, her mind muddled by two days of being unable to sleep. She was grumpy, and anything that decided to approach her better have a goddamn good reason or it would receive a kick and be told to ‘go fuck itself in some corner of hell, possibly with lots of flames’.
She was good at creating colorful insults, like all italians were. Hell, they had an entire section of their swear dictionary dedicated to insulting God and all its saints and his son and his son’s mother.
On that front, she was greatly disappointed in the english language. They didn’t have lots of swears.
Anyways, she looked up, saw the moon, noticed it was melting, then kept walking, chalking it up to her eyes seeing things from her lack of sleep. It was only two weeks later, when the moon began waxing again and she’d just managed to get a night of sleep (four hours!), that she realized it was all very real and began to panic.
She ran to Herman’s house, woke him, his dog and cat, and a few of his neighbors, up with her knocking and screaming about the moon melting, and was told to go home and get over her hangover, because the moon always did that.
In retrospect, she thought, she shouldn’t have been this surprised. She was in a fantasy world, of course the moon would be strange. She just hadn’t thought it would be this strange.
----------------------------------------
Liam and [Knight Commander] Amarie, with their small retinue of [Knights] and [Soldiers], were camping… somewhere, on their way towards the capital city of Pemos.
They had just finished placing the tents, when Liam looked up and saw the moon melting.
He remained transfixed for a moment.
"A-A-Am-Amar-Amarie!" he managed to blabber out after a few tries as he pointed up.
The [Knight Commander] looked up and followed where his finger was pointing. She saw the moon, and shrugged.
"Yes? That’s the moon. It’s waxing. Now, please, help me prepare the fire. I don’t want to eat cold rations again."
She glared towards one of her [Knights], who sheepishly hid behind a tent with the excuse of checking the poles.
Liam managed, through sheer force of will, to turn away and start working on the fire with Amarie. He also managed not to ask the obvious question of ‘Is this actually normal here?’ Because he remembered that he was apparently a [Mage Crafter], there was magic in this world, a [Necromancer] had rebuilt his chest from ground zero and after all that, the fact that the moon was melting in the sky over his head really shouldn’t surprise him.
He didn’t say anything about that for the whole evening.
----------------------------------------
One week after this episode, Isse was standing in front of Grandmother again.
The Elder was staring at her. Or rather, Looking. Her head was inclined at a forty five degrees angle, and she kept bending it ever so slightly more as time passed. Isse and Siidi didn’t know if they wished for that neck to snap clean off or if they’d rather see the old arachne right herself and keep living.
It wasn’t even that one of them wanted the woman to live and the other to die. No, it was more like fifty percent of both… for both of them.
"Hmm… something has changed. Good."
She suddenly said with a hint of satisfaction in her tone. She righted herself, her neck doing a ‘crick’ sound as she did.
"Now, let us begin. Maybe, this time, things will be different. [Trials of the Mind]."
She extended a hand and touched Isse’s forehead. The world went black. Then white.
Then she was in her Mind Castle.
In a hallway.
She recognized the place. Yet she’d never seen it.
The corridor was white marble, with great columns in corinthian style supporting the ceiling. Plants were placed at regular intervals, their names unknown to her, but they looked good and that was all the reasons her mind needed to put them here. And, apparently, decorate some of them with Christmas decorations. Red and blue and gold and green balls and hollies and ribbons in the forms of hearts and stars and pentagrams because why not? and even a gear there. It was so eclectic. It didn’t make any sense.
On the walls, almost invisible and so simple compared to the decorations around her, were dozens of paintings featuring Isse as protagonist.
She walked towards one and looked.
It showed her as a little girl, probably six years old, during her birthday. She was running away from another kid as they played tag. She didn’t remember the boy’s name, only his face, and even that had become a bit fuzzy with the years, as was shown by his features being a bit blurry in the painting.
This hall was a gallery. A galley of her memories.
And Siidi was skittering around, looking at them.
"You know, this place isn’t so bad. Probably one of the funniest halls. You really shouldn’t walk down the one about the hospital though. Those are way too vivid even for me."
She shivered, the fur on her spider half standing on end.
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"Well, not everyone gets to go out with a bang."
"It was actually a slash. She was a good warrior, and a lucky one. A second later, and I would’ve killed her. Guess that’s what happens when you hold off an army alone. At least I got to stay with my sisters for a while longer after we died."
Isse looked at Siidi with a raised eyebrow.
"What, you didn’t go to the same place in the afterlife?"
Siidi chuckled mirthlessly.
"Arachne don’t get an afterlife. Death just comes and puts us to sleep in his cloak, until one day we get a chance to come back. If we ever walked in the afterlife, we’d be chucked into Nothing without having the time to say 'Hello'."
"What do you mean…"
"With Nothing? Exactly what I said. When you die you either end up in the Garden or the Furnace. The former is the place for the good people, where they get to rest, grow stronger, and then reincarnate when they please. The latter is for us sinners. The flames and torture of that place are supposed to burn and tear away all of our sins, until the damned are ready to go back in the world as blank slates. And then there’s Nothing. The worst of the worst are put there to disappear and become, well, Nothing."
Isse shivered. And she’d been forced in the body of a creature that was already doomed to that destiny.
Then she remembered the first part about how Death didn’t allow that, and sighed in relief. Well, there was some justice in the world at least.
"Us arachne were really dealt the worst hand of them all," said Isse.
Siidi chuckled again, this time a bit of humor entering her tone.
"You could say that! The world’s against us, the gods too, our only ally is our creator, Death, and our greatest advantages are that we’re great at forbidden magic and are really good at having sex."
They both laughed this time.
And Isse didn’t notice nor feel the fur that was ever so slowly growing on her legs, covered as they were by her clothes.
This continued for a while as they walked down the corridor. As Isse told Siidi about bits and pieces of her past, and they laughed about how much of an unruly child she’d been. Like that time she had decided to climb up a tree and jump down to show her friends that she could do it, and had broken her arm. Or that time she’d started a fight in elementary school because Mara, a girl she disliked, had joked about her hair. Well, that girl had lost a good clamp of hers in the end.
They were starting to wonder if this Trial was about bonding or something like that, when they heard Grandmother’s voice for the first time. And she said the one thing nobody would ever want to hear inside their mind:
Uh oh…
"What’s that?" asked Isse, panic slowly beginning to rise.
Your mind… is rebelling to me. To the Trial. It’s trying to shut down.
"What?" they said in chorus.
I can’t stop it.
"But it’s my mind!" they said, again together. In a way too natural manner.
They heard a strange sound, like ocean waves far away. How had that appeared here?
"Can’t we stop it?"
"Yes. But only manually. On the… Tower of Higher Brain Function?" shuffling of paper could be heard, as if someone was checking a book, or a series of maps.
This was more or less the longest conversation she’d ever had with Grandmother. No, scratch that: this was more or less the longest she’d ever heard the elder speak.
"Where’s that?"
"Down the corridor you’re in. You’ll have to climb the tower."
They ran.
The waves got closer.
Isse turned around, and saw water coming their way, fast, hands reaching out from the surface, grasping at the air. One of them latched onto a painting, and drew it into the growing waves. The paint started to melt away, the colors slowly mixing with the water, changing its color in a grand rainbow.
And then it was gone. A blank canvas.
And she couldn’t remember what was on it.
-Is the water eating my memories?- she shouted upwards.
Grandmother didn’t answer immediately. That’s when Isse felt true fear for the first time. Because, up until now, the Trials had been without any true consequences. Except for the trauma, but apparently her mind was young enough to get over it relatively fast.
This, though. This could hurt her. This could actually change her. Reshape her very being. Delete what she had been, leaving behind absolutely nothing.
She began running… towards the paintings.
-What the hell are you doing?- shouted Siidi.
-Saving my past!-
Grandmother still hadn’t answered her question.
-Don’t be an idiot. This is just a Trial. We finish it, and everything will go back to normal!-
-Are you sure? Grandmother said this was different!-
She kept trying to get more paintings, but her arms were so small, and there were so many of them.
Siidi, meanwhile, hesitated. She’d never seen a Skill like Grandmother’s. She didn’t know what it was capable of. Stars be Damned, she didn’t know how a mind worked! She was a gods damned [Warrior]! They told her who or what to kill and she did that! She’d never been trained for any of this! She wasn’t a [Soul Mage], nor a [Dreamer], or a [Psionic].
That was the only reason why she hadn’t yet decided to run away.
Then:
“It’s rejecting me. Do not let the water touch you!”
And that was the last they heard from Grandmother in that Trial. Or whatever it had become.
----------------------------------------
Siidi looked at the other half of her soul. The one she was supposed to hate with all of herself. The one she wanted to take over.
She saw her desperation.
She saw her fighting a losing battle against whatever was eating away at her mind. She saw her losing her memories, one by one, and she knew, having explored her Mind Castle for a long while now, that this was just a small part of it. That she was losing even more in many other places. More important memories, even.
Yet she kept trying to save these ones. Probably because they were the closest ones, she told herself. But she knew there was a reason why Grandmother had placed them here in the first place. She knew these were, probably, the most important ones to Issekina. They were what had made her who she was, even more than middle school, even more than the little time she’d spent in high school. Even more than that hospital. These memories were who she was.
She could’ve run. Up that tower, towards safety.
But she knew what it was like to lose her memories.
Until the last Trial, she had forgotten she’d even had sisters. True, bloodbound, sisters. Birthed from the same mother, of the same clutch.
And she knew, now, that she’d forgotten even more.
Was this what she’d been doing to Isse? Was this what would’ve happened in the end: just her, slowly eating away at the girl’s subconscious, at her mind, replacing what she was with bits and pieces of herself, until there was nothing left behind but her?
Was this what she had become? Just a wave of watery hands slowly devouring Isse’s mind?
A monster without the ability to feel emotions?
----------------------------------------
Isse reached out for another painting.
A hand of water reached for it too. And another reached out for her.
She tightened her grip around the frame and pulled it towards her. But the hand was faster. Stronger.
And the other one had gripped her ankle. It was strong. And it burned like fire.
She screamed as she let go of the painting and scrambled away, but the grip was stronger, and the pain numbed her mind, her reflexes. She looked down, and saw that the skin of her foot was slowly disappearing, eaten away bit by bit, exposing the sinew and bone underneath. It was mesmerizing.
Then the pain exploded again through her mind, waking her up from her trance. She screamed, threw the paintings in her hands away from the water in a desperate attempt to save them for a bit longer, to keep her memories, but it wouldn’t matter for much longer, because the waves were approaching and she would soon be submerged.
She didn’t close her eyes. She wasn’t going to surrender. If she was going to disappear, she might as well do it while showing some courage. She suppressed the screams that kept rising out of her throat, and stared right ahead at the approaching water.
And then the hand around her ankle went slack and disappeared.
Isse looked down, confused.
She saw a thread on the ground.
A simple thread of spidersilk. It wasn’t as fine as the one used by the [Stringmistress] who had made her beautiful dress, nor did it look as elastic and malleable as the ones used by Makira. But it did look solid. And sharp.
-Get up, you dumbass. We have a tower to climb!-
She turned around as she lifted herself from the marble floor.
And there was Siidi. In one hand she held the other end of the thread that had, apparently, freed her, while in the other she was holding a big sack filled with square things.
-Move it! Let’s hope the water’s left enough of your foot, ‘cause I’m not gonna carry you.-
They ran.
----------------------------------------
Santa Siidi carries a white sack filled with paintings stolen from her mind gallery and ran towards the end of the corridor like Lupin, and she was her friend Jigen following her and knowing that firing her gun was useless against the oncoming enemy.
Yes, that’s what her mind was thinking about right now.
Yes, it was extremely stupid.
Yes, it helped her run through the pain in her foot.
She was keeping up, somehow, and at the same time she was regretting the fact that the body she used in her mind was human. An arachne could’ve run away from that wave way faster, and even if she lost a foot to them, she would still have seven. Not for the first time in her life, she realized just how much humans had lost to the genetic lottery.
-Faster! We’re nearly there!- shouted Siidi without looking back.
So they ran. An advantage to being inside her own mind was that her body couldn’t get tired. The disadvantage was that every sensation felt more real and vivid. She’d expected it to be the other way ‘round, but apparently it wasn’t.
As they ran, Siidi kept getting as many paintings as she could. Some she didn’t reach in time: those were swiftly eaten by the now psychedelic waves. There was no doubt at this point about the destiny that awaited her if she fell in them.
The sack on her back kept growing and growing, yet she carried it as if it weighed nothing.
-How are you doing that?- asked Isse.
-It’s all in your mind, dummy. Everything can be anything you want. To a degree.-
All in her mind. All in her mind. That’s right.
She turned around and concentrated, imagining the columns of the gallery falling in the way of the approaching wave, creating a barrier that could stop them.
After a moment, cracks appeared at the bases of the beautiful columns. They expanded, fast, and after a few seconds a sound like gravel falling down a mountain resounded behind them as the columns and part of the ceilings they supported fell to the floor in just the right way to create a small barricade between them and the waves.
Siidi looked back, her eyebrows raising ever so slightly.
-That was good. I never managed that much damage.-
Isse beamed. Then listened better to the statement.
-Waaaait a minute, did you try that in the past?-
-A few times. Failed spectacularly though. But I got a Level out of it once.- she chuckled.
Unsurprisingly, Isse didn’t.
They finally reached the tower.
Looking up, they tried to see the roof, but all they saw were twisting stairs that kept going up up and away seemingly into a white nothing, their crisscrossing pattern slightly reminiscent of a spiderweb. At the very center, a large column rose up into that white, somehow managing to support all those bridges.
Siidi said something that was probably a cuss under her breath and looked Isse’s way, who nodded. She nodded back. Then they began climbing, running as fast as they could.
The steps were even and white as pearl. No, actually, there was a good chance this was actual pearl. For a moment Isse wondered just how many of those beautiful spheres would need to be used to craft such a thing. Then she remembered it was all in her head, and dismissed the thought. There was no use in expending precious brain power into thinking about such things.
She looked down, dozens of meters below her, and saw the wave reach the base of the tower. Very slowly, it began filling the room. A minute and two hundred and fifteen steps later, it had filled the bottom completely and began rising.
-At that speed, it’s going to take an eternity reaching us.-
She nodded towards the girl and… wait… what was that girl’s name? Who was she? And why was she half spider?! She stopped dead in her tracks and screamed, pointing towards the horrible monster in front of her. A monster who turned to look at her, confusions clearly visible on her face. She looked around, as if she didn’t see herself, as if looking for another monster, as if she didn’t know she was the monster.
She kept screaming. She wanted her parents! Where were her parents? She wanted her mum and dad!
Then she stopped.
What were her mum and dad called?
She fell to the floor.
What were they called. They were her parents. She remembered their faces. She knew them. She was sure she knew their names.
She knew…
What was her name?
----------------------------------------
Siidi looked around in confusion as Issekina fell to the ground and started screaming. She looked around, half expecting to see some kind of traumatic memory or monster or even some sort of mind guardian. But there was nothing other than the marble walls, the pearly stairs and the rising water.
She looked back down. Isse had stopped screaming, but now she was curled up on the floor, tears flowing out of her eyes.
And she was different. Smaller. If she didn’t know better…
Oh Stars, please no! She opened up her bundle and took out a random painting. She compared Isse to the child on it. They looked the same. Isse had gone back to being a child. The water, the waves, they had eaten everything else. Only these paintings remained. And she was living upon the memories they stored. Her mind thought she was just a ten year old child.
“Well, fuck.”
She looked at the slowly rising water, then put the painting away and reached her hand towards Isse.
-Don’t worry. I’m a friend. I want to help.-
Of all the things she had said from the moment she was born anew in this world, these words felt like they were the best she’d said. They were right. True.
The child looked up. She saw the kindness and the sadness and desperation in the spidery monster’s eyes. And felt like she understood.
-I don’t remember their names.-
-Don’t worry, we’ll find them together. But not now. We have to go up there. Come with me.-
The little girl nodded and took the hand she was being offered.
Immediately, the spider woman lifted her from the ground and put her on her fuzzy back.
-Hold on tight. If you fall in the water it’s ‘game over’.- she said, doing the inverted commas with her fingers.
-I don’t like games.-
Siidi chuckled as she began her ascent again.
-From what you told me, me neither.-
-I told you? I-I don’t remember.-
-Don’t worry. We’ll fix that soon. Just make sure not to fall and everything will be alright in a few minutes.-
She looked up. She still couldn’t see the end of the stairway. She hoped it would take a few minutes, at least.
Then the tower trembled, the stairs rumbling ominously.
She looked down.
And saw something she dearly hoped was a hallucination: the water had formed hands again and wrapped them around the central column. It was shaking the thing with an impressive strength.
Siidi began running faster. Something was telling her that column wouldn’t stay standing a lot longer.
She ran, and it was more the time she spent looking up than looking where she was going. More than once she went close to falling off the stairs and down into the waiting, hungry, waters. She was lucky that Siidi had noticed and told her where to go all those times.
The little girl had really good reflexes.
A few minutes later, though, her fears were confirmed: a loud rumbling filled the tower, and as she looked to her right she saw the great central column tremble.
And fall.
A moment later, the stairs began to tremble as well.
Bits and pieces fell and were eaten up greedily by the water, grasping hands waiting to catch it all. To catch them.
Siidi looked at the spectacle in horror, and knew they were fucked.
Then she looked at the girl who was now trembling as she held on tight to her spider half’s fur. And knew what to do.
-Isse, I need your help.-
The girl looked up at her, tears beginning to form in her eyes.
-Isse? Who is Isse?-
-That’s your name, little one. And I need you to help. Can you be strong and help little old Siidi?-
The girl looked dumbfounded, but she rapidly shook her head, wiped away her tears, and nodded.
-Okay.-
-Good. Thank you, Isse. Now, this place, this palace, this castle, it’s all yours. You made it with your own hands. You can command it. You’re… you’re a queen. Or a princess, if you prefer. And you can tell this place to do what you want it to do.-
-But… but I don’t remember doing any of that. I… I don’t…-
-I know Isse, but trust me. You made this place.-
Mini-Isse nodded, curiosity and a hint of determination in her eyes.
-How do I command it?-
-Just… I don’t know, erm, just think really hard about what you want it to do. Like,- she pointed at the wall in front of them, where the stairs were beginning to crumble -Like think about a platform, big and rectangular. Right there, in front of us. Can you do it?-
Isse nodded. She scrunched up her forehead, looking mightily cute. If she hadn’t seen all those memories from when she was a child showing just how much of a pest she’d been, she would’ve thought the little girl was such a likeable child.
Not that she wasn’t. No, she was at her best behavior when other children and parents came to visit. But when she was alone she seemed to lack a sense of self-preservation. Just like that girl from last week, Ama. No wonder they had become friends so fast.
A few moments later, a platform extended from the wall.
Immediately, Siidi jumped on it, and took a deep breath as she felt how solid it was under her feet.
-This is perfect. Thank you, Isse. You were very good.-
The platform began rising.
And Isse shouted a very unladylike expletive that would’ve probably made a sailor nod in approval and a mother try to slap her. The girl on her back just giggled:
-You said a bad word!-
-Yes, I have. Remember to tell it to all the people you can.-
She smiled. Well, now that the platform was rising, they were out of danger and she wouldn’t have to worry about climbing on the collapsing stairs.
Somewhere very far away, in the Land of Dreams, Soma, the God of Impossibilities who had created the Dream, felt the sudden impulse to smack himself in the forehead.
Because, right about when Siidi thought that, a piece of falling stair as big as her fell right on top of the platform, breaking a piece off.
And making her fall.
She shouted as she threw Isse on what remained of the rising platform, one hand gripping the border, the other holding the sack of memories and trying not to let it fall.
She was dangling over her death and Isse’s probably brain death. Who, by the way, screamed her name and held on the arm that was keeping her from falling, trying to lift her.
-Okay! Okay! Don’t worry, just make another platform under me and lift me up, all right?-
Isse nodded. Another platform appeared under Siidi, and she sighed inwardly as she felt her feet touch it.
Only for another rock to fall on it to break it apart again.
“Are you fucking shitting me?”
Isse tried again and again. And every time an incredibly well-placed piece of stairway fell on the platform and destroyed it. Until they began collapsing all on their own as Isse’s mind was gripped by panic and she lost the ability to keep it all together.
-I can’t, Siidi, I’m sorry.-
She shook her head, then lifted the sack of paintings.
-It’s ok, don’t worry. Just keep these safe, I’ll hand around here. We can still do this.-
She put the sack on the platform and managed to put part of her body on what little space was left. Apparently, Isse was safe from falling debris. How lucky! Well, it was her mind after all. Her brain wouldn’t hurt itself, right?
Well, unluckily for Siidi, she was extremely wrong. Because she had forgotten about a thing called ‘intrusive thoughts’. Intrusive thoughts like “What would happen if a rock fell right here?”
And to that, Isse’s mind answered “Your wish is my order” before it sent a huge piece of stairs falling right on that last, safe, platform.
Destroying it.
And making them fall towards their doom.