Four days more she worked at the Boneless Dancer, and four days more she met with the strange young woman, Morra. She would come down every morning just a minute or two before opening time, then leave, come back for lunch, then leave, and finally return for dinner, read well into the night from her mysterious tome, then go to sleep.
At least, that’s what she had done up until Isse had arrived.
Now she had become a part of the simple routine.
Every morning she came down a few minutes earlier to stay with her, and every lunch she took just a little longer to eat her food during Isse’s lunch break, and every evening she read a little less to attempt to actively talk with the girl who, to her, seemed so much like her, and yet better. Because she could still smile, because she wanted to spend time with people, because she seemed to have a purpose, everything that she didn’t have. And yet, whenever this strange girl talked to her, she didn’t weigh it down on her. If she didn’t want to talk about something, she’d change the subject and not look at her as if she was boring; if she wasn’t feeling talkative, she would just sit nearby and do her things, not looking bored and not staring at her as if she was wasting her time; and most important of all, she didn’t seem scared off by her appearance, from her mask to her clothes.
If anything, she seemed curious.
“Morra, what do you do all day when you’re not here?” asked Isse on her fourth day working at the Boneless Dancer.
It was night now, like it usually was when they really talked. Maybe because Morra was tired, her defenses against the world around her lowered. Or maybe because she just felt more comfortable during the night. She’d always felt more at peace in the dark.
“I work,” she answered.
There, see it? Conversation! She was doing it! She was talking to someone that wasn’t Creanza or her [Teamaker] friend Grazia. She wasn’t so bad at it, see? She could do it.
“What kind of work do you do?” she asked back, looking curious. A spark of happiness lit up deep into Morra’s chest when she heard it, because she’d kept the conversation going and looked genuinely interested, unlike all the others, who’d just looked sort of scared and shut up or just looked positively uninterested.
“I… I listen to people.”
Yes, that more or less summarized it. She did other things, but she didn’t want to talk about those, because whenever she had in the past people had looked at her with disgust.
“Oh, so, like a psychologist?”
Morra cocked her head to the side: “Psychologist? What’s that?”
Isse looked befuddled for a moment, and she feared for a second that she’d made a big gaffe, that she should’ve known what this psychologist was and now Isse would think she was stupid.
Instead the girl apologized: “Sorry, sorry, I don’t think they exist here, but basically they’re people who help someone who’s been through a trauma and just… listen to them, let them talk it out, and help them find a solution.”
She sighed internally upon hearing that.
“Oh, like Creanza does on the nights of the Empty Hearted’s Rest.”
Isse shook her head: “No. Well, yes, but also no. Usually a psychologist requires less manipulation of one’s memories.”
“Oh,” she didn’t understand, but she didn’t want to ask more questions for fear of looking stupid.
Luckily, Creanza, who’d been passing by and had overheard the conversation, came to her help right then: “Oh, you mean a [Thought Healer], right?”
“[Thought Healer]? That’s an actual Class? Don’t you find the name strange?”
“Why would it be strange? I mean, they help you when you’re having ‘bad’,” she wiggled her fingers in an all-encompassing manner, “thoughts, and make sure they disappear. They heal your thoughts, so [Thought Healer].”
Isse frowned: “Wouldn’t they then become some sort of [Mind Healer]. I mean, the problem isn’t always in your thoughts, right?”
Creanza wiggled no with her index finger: “Na ah, you’re saying it with the wrong inflection: it’s [Mind Healer]. Those are an Uncommon Class, and I never understood what they did different from [Thought Healers] to warrant the change. The questions are the same, the advice too, the only thing that changes are the Skills they use on you and the potions they suggest you take.”
She looked sideways for a moment at Morra and saw the girl glaring slightly at her through the eye holes of her mask. Yes, she could see that: she had good eyes.
Meanwhile, Morra was no longer as grateful for Creanza’s arrival, because now she was manipulating the conversation.
“Anyways, I’ve got to go back to Premié. We’re playing cards and if I don’t hurry he’ll start without me,” she pouted, walking back to the kitchen.
That was another thing: nearly every evening Creanza, Premié, Lavia and Acria played a ‘friendly’ game of cards. Well, if you can call whispering insults at each other whenever someone won, yelling in anger, the occasional overthrown table and enough rivalries to make a king’s court look like child’s play, friendly.
All in good humor, naturally. Isse wondered if she should introduce them to Mahjong. They would love that game. Sadly she couldn’t remember all the rules for point counting. And all the combinations.
I’ll start looking for them. Surely they’re somewhere around here, said Siidi. In the last few days she’d been really silent, and every time she spoke her voice seemed tired.
And Creanza left.
“No, I do not do that,” said Morra.
“Do what? Oh, be a [Thought Healer], right. Yeah, you don’t look much like one, I believe. But then, what do you listen to?”
How should she answer that without appearing creepy? That was a hard question, with a hard answer. She’d noticed many times that people reacted badly to how she explained her job, and then tended to tell people the wrong things, making it harder for her to do her job well. But Isse didn’t look like someone who would act like that. But she’d also met people who seemed like Isse on the surface and then hadn’t. Ugh, this was too difficult.
Still, she couldn’t just not answer her. That was rude. And nobody liked talking to rude people. So… time for a leap of faith.
“I… I listen to people’s conversations and try to see what is wrong with their lives, what can be made better, and then try to make it better.”
Isse batted her eyes for a few moments, cocking her head to the side, confusion clearly visible on her face: “Let me get this straight: you listen in on people’s complaints and then you try to make things better for them?”
She nodded, a small smile appearing under her mask. She understood! And she didn’t look disgusted!
“But… how? You can’t solve every person’s problems, right?”
Morra shook her head. Ok, she didn’t understand everything.
“I do not solve everybody’s problems. I solve the problems of the communities. The sewer smells? Check that there are no clogs anywhere. A restaurant needs specific food? I help find it. Stuff like that.”
“And you do it alone?” her eyes were big now and she was looking at her with… admiration? Yes, that was admiration! Nobody had ever looked at her like that. Nobody except for Creanza, when she’d taken her in.
Still, she wasn’t alone on her job. She had… assistants.
“I’m not alone, no.”
“Then who do you work with?”
“...People who no longer have a job because of reasons outside of their control.”
It wasn’t yet time to tell her the whole truth. Maybe it would never be.
Isse looked confused, but then she shrugged: “Alright. I’m just glad you’re not overworking yourself.”
She cared for her.
She was the best!
“Thank you,” said Morra.
“For what?”
For existing, she wanted to say, but that would’ve been too much. Maybe something tamer?
“For being this kind to me.”
Isse didn’t say anything. She just smiled.
And the world was better for it.
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The next day, when Morra came back for dinner, she was not alone.
A surprise to say the least, one that made Isse stop right in her tracks and bump into a table, nearly losing the two plates she was carrying onto a client. She was saved only by a little trick she’d developed on her third day working here: she’d started putting some sticky spidersilk on the tips of her fingers, making it easier for her to grasp plates from underneath and making it basically impossible to lose her grip on them. It wasn’t spill proof, but it sure as hell was fall proof.
“Sorry,” she said to the client who had seen his life pass before his eyes at the sight of boiling hot soup nearly falling on him.
The man said it was nothing while he took out a hankie and dabbed at his pale forehead and cheeks.
Meanwhile Morra and the mysterious guest moved towards an unoccupied table and sat down, the boy talking animatedly with her while she sat silently and looked around. When she finally saw Isse she raised a hand and waved hello in greeting.
The boy furrowed her brow, looked the way she was looking, noticed Isse smiling and waving herself, smiled mischievously and turned back to Morra, beginning to whisper something Isse could only vaguely hear in the noise of the crowd. Arachnes’ enhanced senses were hell if you lived in a city, but luckily she was still used from her human life back on Earth to isolate everything she didn’t need into background white noise.
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After she brought the plate she’d been carrying to the right client she skittered towards her friend’s table (gosh, she’d made a friend! She hadn’t expected that!).
“Hi Morra,” she said with a smile, “Who’s your mystery friend here?” she asked, politely bowing her head in hello to the stranger.
The boy was probably around her age, possibly younger. His face was clean shaven and sharp, a complete contrast with his purple (purple? Yep, purple, she wasn’t seeing things) eyes that seemed to be smiling on their own. His lips were thin and pale pink, twisted up in a mischievous smile that made him look like a pixie or a fae. Idea that was further reinforced by the pixie cut of his hair and his pointy ears.
Wait, pointy ears?
“Are you an elf?” she blurted out, unable to control herself.
The boy laughed while Morra shook her head, before she answered, speaking just a little louder to be heard over the din of conversation of the bar and the boy’s laughter: “This is Tobias Eclisse. He is a half elf. He is eighteen. His eyes are purple because he was born during an eclipse and that apparently means something in elven culture. He is not my boyfriend, just a colleague. He is a dumbass and an [Information Gatherer].”
If ever there was a way to reduce a person’s entire existence to nothing Morra had just found it in her description of Tobias. He turned to glare at her, then looked back at Isse and smiled brightly: “What she said, but let me phrase it in a way that doesn’t make me look like a golem.
“Hello, I’m Tobias Eclisse, pleasure to meet you, miss…?”
She smiled slightly: “Call me Isse.”
“Miss Isse! Wonderful name, truly.”
He had never heard a name like hers and he knew not of its meaning, but she was cute and he would never give up a chance to flirt a bit.
“Sure, sure,” she said with a sly smile that made it apparent she’d already heard it all. Which she had… in her life on earth.
“Anyways, as this charming, masked lady said, I’m a half elf, which means I got all the good stuff elves get minus the snobbishness.”
“I thought that elves being snobbish was a stereotype.”
Tobias shook his head: “Oh, trust me, it is not. Don’t get me wrong, elves can be fun if you meet them at a party: they party harder than dwarves who just created a new type of alcohol, but any other situation? They tend to think they’re better than you because they’re probably older. Worst thing is, in my opinion, they’re usually right. Only people who really get along with them are the dwarves.
“As for my eyes, yes, they’re purple, because I was born during an eclipse, and since us elves tend to get an affinity with some type of natural element when we’re born depending on the place we’re born, I got an affinity with Shadow Magic. Granted, it’s usually very… randomical. I was born on a ship, so I could very well have gotten an affinity for water or wood magic.”
“Wait, wait, take a step back. Wood Magic? Is it actually a thing?”
“I don’t know, it just sounded funny, but you get the gist of it.
“Finally, I’m an [Information Gatherer] and work with dear Morra here to help her out in her day-to-day job and, up until now, I think I was her only friend.”
“Colleague,” Morra corrected him, her expressionless mask somehow managing to communicate to Isse the depth of the exhaustion this interaction with the young man was giving her.
“Which, again, is the closest thing to a friend you ever had. Creanza doesn’t count, she’s friends with everyone.”
“Not everyone. She hates Jarion.”
Isse had never heard of this Jarion and seeing the tone Morra had used to describe the man she guessed asking about him would lead to some funny shenanigans and interactions with Creanza. She couldn’t wait for the lunch rush to end.
“Jarion is the exception that confirms the rule. Anyways, while I’m extremely glad to meet you, Miss Isse, and I’m sure we’ll see plenty of each other soon, I’ve come here to get paid,” he looked back at Morra, who in turn put a hand in an internal pocket of her cloak and took out a small gingling pouch.
“Three gold coins in silver, as per agreement.”
Tobias took the bag, looked inside, nodded and hid it away.
“Why does this look so illegal?” asked Isse, who was getting some pretty strong spy vibes from this whole ordeal.
Meanwhile Tobias took a stack of neatly folded papers from a pouch in his side. Seeing how the edges were crumpled it clearly wasn’t a bag of holding.
“Because technically it is. But since a lot of things are technically illegal but then end up just being frowned upon I can conduct this kind of business in the open.”
“Don’t listen to him, he’s just trying to appear cool. The most illegal thing about what he does is he doesn’t pay taxes on the money I give him.”
As she said that she snatched the papers from Tobias’ hand before he could retract it in some form of vendetta.
And all the while Isse smiled.
Because her friend did indeed have another friend, however noisy and boisterous and decidedly unfashionable.
“Now, when do you clock off, my fine lady?” he asked.
“Get out of here and go back to work idiot,” was all the answer he got as Morra kicked him in the shins under the table and sent him on his merry, pained, way.
Isse laughed.
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That night, after she’d finished talking with Morra and listened to a visibly angry Creanza explain the woes of ever having anything to do with Jarion, who apparently had once been her supplier and had ended up in her bad graces when he’d attempted to force himself on Acria, saying that since she was the child of a devil she would like it anyways.
That had resulted in the man having his manhood swiftly cut off by Creanza using one of Premié’s knives (which he had not grumbled about, although he did send it to a smith for smelting) and then being nearly kicked to death by Lavia and Acria. The city’s laws were strict on what happened to rapists, but sadly the [Guards] never dug deep enough in the matters for the raper to be justly dealt with. Luckily for the Boneless Dancer Creanza knew a few people who could help cover up the matter, and a call to Albert (and a favor owed) later the man’s life was saved, although forever changed.
Truly, she’d done a favor to womankind.
Anyways, on the night of her fifth (and final) day working in the Boneless Dancer, she laid the human half of her body on the mattress of her bed in the room Creanza had offered her while her spider half sat comfortably on the floor, her legs cradling her thorax gently as she contracted them to massage it, lulling herself to sleep.
Or at least, she tried to.
Because before oblivion could put its gentle hands over her eyes, she heard a voice.
A tired voice she hadn’t heard all day.
Isse.
She batted her eyes open, because Siidi didn’t like talking in the dark, then closed them again as she remembered that the girl could now see without being forced to look through her eyes.
What is it Siidi? I’m tired. Can’t we talk in our Mind Castle.
No, not for this. I… I made you a present. And to truly feel it you’ll have to be awake.
Isse furrowed her brows, knowing full well that Siidi could feel it.
What do you mean?
I mean… look, just… think about Anda. Remember the first time you met her, after hatching.
Isse froze in place, her legs going still around her spider half still mid squeeze, her heart leaping slightly in her throat and beating faster.
Siidi… you know I don’t like doing this. Remembering. Especially now that it just feels empty.
Silence filled her mind again, before her soul half spoke anew: Do you trust me?
That’s bullshit Siidi, you know I trust you!
Then do it. Please.
After a moment of hesitation, she did.
You know, it’s strange, forcing yourself to remember something you’ve been actively suppressing for such a long time. It feels surreal, as if the memory is no longer yours, and yet it’s there still, always, waiting, knowing full well there is no way to make it disappear, smiling smugly because it knew you would come back eventually. At least, that’s how it works for bad memories, memories bound to something sad and traumatic.
But the moment Isse was bringing back, that was a good memory. A warm one that had always filled her with a sense of happiness, joy and, after she and Anda had understood that they were soulmates, love.
But after that night at the Empty Hearted’s Rest it had changed: no longer did the memory bring her joy and, afterwards, sorrow for all she’d lost. There had been nothing there other than a vague feeling of nostalgia.
After she’d found out she had tried to forget, to not think about it, and she’d found it was easy. So, so, so easy.
With her mind’s eye, she looked at the memory of the second and, probably, most important person she’d ever met in this new life of hers, and expected to see the black and white mass of nostalgia she’d seen ever since she’d drunk that tea.
Instead she saw color.
And then she was flooded with those old emotions she thought she’d forgotten.
She felt warm in the chest as she looked into Anda’s big black eyes that seemed to suck the light around them and attract you towards them more than a magnet to iron. She watched as the little Anda followed her around on her still-weak spidery legs and felt her heart swell with pride at just how much better she did it than her. She watched as the spiderling began caressing the fluff on her spider half and felt love swell in her heart, and then she chuckled as she watched herself try to force the girl away, only to then feel guilty for it and allow Anda to go back to cuddling her like an oversized plushie.
She remembered that simple moment, lost herself in it, repeating it, watching Anda smile and feeling her heart swell with love and affection.
Then she felt something strange, something that wasn’t of the memory.
It was wet, and it clung to her face for a few moments.
She raised a hand to her face, touched the wet stuff, and finally realized what it was: tears. She was crying in joy.
Thank you Siidi. Thank you.
She felt her soul half smile and, a moment later, felt the ghost of a hug around her shoulder and spider half.
She fell asleep like that, while looking at the now-restored memory of her soulmate.
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Siidi stumbled away from the painting that represented their first encounter with Anda.
She was smiling: smiling at Isse’s reaction to getting that piece of herself back as it was meant to be; smiling, because she’d done it, she had succeeded; smiling, because she knew for a fact that she was going to Level thanks to this.
Smiling, and stumbling, and trying to keep the grimace away from her face, because she felt tired. More tired than she’d been ever since she’d ended up in this body.
She skittered unsteadily down a corridor, thinking about how bad it was going to be to have to climb the stairs to the top, before she remembered that she could just will herself there because this wasn’t a physical place.
So it was that she appeared in her now favorite place in the whole Mind Castle: the tower where, once upon a time, months ago (although it felt like ages) she and Isse had pressed the button at the end of the Trial that had led to them ‘becoming one’.
The place had changed since then: gone was the naked stone, in its place tons of cushions and comfortable carpets to lie on, all taken from what little she could remember of the comforts from her past. Gone was also the roof, or rather, its stone, in its place now a glass dome that let them see the impossible and strange constellations of Isse’s mind, together with the connections she could see whenever she attempted to use her [Mana Sight].
She fell into a mound of cushions and just sighed. Tonight Isse wouldn’t join her, just resting in an oblivion as she allowed dreams to fill her mind, probably hoping to be allowed a vision of Anda and the time they’d spent together. Maybe it would even help restore the other memories: Stars knew it was exhausting.
She clenched the paint brush she’d found the night after that fateful Trial, the one that had appeared from the shadows, seemingly thrown towards her. She’d used it, these last few days, as she tried to do the most logical thing that came to mind when dealing with ruined paintings: restore them.
Most of their memories had become in black and white, losing depth, becoming just… shells of their old selves. So she’d tried to paint over the monochrome base.
First, she’d used normal paint summoned into existence from her memory, but that had failed. Every time she tried to use it, the paint just sloughed off, as if she was trying to paint over glass while water was running down it.
And then she’d had a realization: she was looking at them wrong. She was seeing those memories as actual paintings rather than just a way for Isse’s mind to show them. If she wanted to paint over them, over a memory, she was going to have to use something like a memory.
Her memories.
That was why she felt so tired now: these past few days she’d spent all her time, for lack of a better word, painting using herself. Her own memories, going gray little by little as she tried to give back to Isse a small amount of what she had lost. Even if it was just the one memory, it was better than what she had, which was… nothing.
She smiled as she slowly fell asleep herself, letting oblivion fill her and make her disappear for a short while.
Before that, though, the voice spoke to her.
[Soul Curator Level 14!]
[Skill - Restore Self Obtained!]
[Skill - A Bucket a Day: Paint Obtained!]
[Skill - Painting Proficiency (Minor) Obtained!]