I used one of the streams hidden behind a rock formation to clean myself up. I washed blood, dust, dirt, and other things off my body. I felt refreshed, and that feeling almost overwhelmed me. My darker thoughts started to parse to the back of my head, and I thought more in the now. I needed to stop focusing on the bad things. There was good in my life, too.

There weren’t just evil people in this tragic world, and, despite everything being against them, people like Lily could grow up into well adjusted individuals.

I took a long drink of the clear water and felt it fill me in more than in just a physical sense. It filled me with conviction and strength. The dark clouds hanging over my eyes scattered like dust under a strong wind.

I made my way back into the carriage. I waited there alone for a while. Lily was outside enjoying the bonfire still. For just a moment, I decided to close my eyes and nod off. Sleep took me in a snap. My body stilled and, for the first time in a long time, I dreamed.

-

“Hey, XXXXX?” he said, his face blurred out by a white static. I couldn’t remember his name.

“Yeah?” I replied.

“What do you think happens when we die?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. I laid back and put my hands behind my head. I stared up the ceiling to my room. “Why do you ask?”

“Because sometimes I wonder if living is… I wonder if being dead is as tough as being alive.”

I sat up and looked to my friend. I put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him into a hug. “Listen, we don’t have any way to know what happens when we die,” I said, my words coming from somewhere I didn’t recognize, “But we do know what happens when we’re alive. The way I see it, we should do our best to enjoy this time we know we get, instead of gambling our fates on an afterlife. Live life to the fullest, and all that shit.”

I paused and looked him in the eyes. He smiled.

“Are you okay, Sal?” I asked.

-

I woke up with a start. The carriage was moving and my mind was fuddled, filled with broken thoughts and memories, altered histories hidden deep in my fractured soul.

Lily was sitting opposite me, looking at me with warm eyes.

“Did you sleep well, Calliope?” She asked.

Did I? I couldn’t answer that question. At that moment I felt like someone hit me with a truck, so the answer was probably ‘No.’

I didn’t want to say that to Lily, though.

“Yeah,” I replied, my voice weaker than normal. “I had a good dream.”

My dream played again and again my head. I couldn’t remember that memory. It didn’t feel right, as if it were being obstructed by some outside power. Why did I dream of it at all, then?

I shook my head. My mind wasn’t right and I needed a break. I needed to do something with my hands. I looked out the window to the carriage and spotted RED riding his horse nearby. For some reason my eyes lingered on him a bit longer than normal. I wasn’t sure why.

“I’ll be out for a bit, Lily,” I said.

“Come back soon. It’s quite lonely when you’re off having adventures and doing daring do,” she replied, her tone cheeky and cute. A smile crept up on me without my knowing.

“Sure thing, boss,” I said before I slipped out the door.

Among the riders in the entourage, no one noticed when the golden-haired man named RED vanished from his horse.

-

“What’s up, Calliope?” RED asked. I looked at him and opened my mouth to talk, but the words wouldn’t come out. What could I say? That I was experiencing dreams of memories I didn’t have?

Yes. That’s exactly what I needed to say.

“RED, when Nox brought me over, he messed with my head. I think he changed some of my memories…” I managed to eke out my thoughts.

“He did. He messed with mine too,” RED immediately replied. Hearing his words made a metaphoric weight leave my shoulders. I know it was a terrible thing to think, but deep in the back of my mind a part of me was screaming in joy because I wasn’t alone.

“Do you… Know anything about what those memories were?” I asked, probing the man that once shared a headspace with me. Of all the people in this world, RED and I were perhaps closer than anyone else alive could ever have been.

“... I have, a few clues,” he said after a long pause. I stopped myself from asking further. The look in his eyes, the pain hidden there, it told me not to probe deeper.

“I… I had a memory of someone. I couldn’t remember his name or face, but he was so familiar to me. I think he was my best friend,” I said, trying my best to tell my story, hoping it would ease RED’s pain a bit.

Perhaps my story was a bit close to his, though, because he looked like I stabbed him in the heart.

“I’m sorry, this kind of thing must be hard to talk about for you,” I said. “After all, you were much worse off in Nox’s hands than I was. At least he gave me a body…” My voice trailed off.

“Calliope,” RED put his hand on my shoulder. The gesture felt familiar… Too familiar. Then RED pulled me into a hug. I didn’t fight him. His arms and body, so much weaker than my own, felt ten times stronger in that moment.

“RED, why does my heart hurt so much?” I didn’t even remember asking the question. It was a dumb question. The answer was obvious and I could answer it myself: ‘Because you’ve suffered a terrible fate. You’ve been kidnapped from your home, transformed into something else entirely, and then had hundreds of souls grafted onto your own. You’ve watched people die and you’ve had to kill others. Now you are even tasked with the insurmountable job of killing Gods...’

Why did I bother to ask it at all?

For what it was worth, RED didn’t reply in any way I expected, instead he said something I didn’t expect at all. His words shattered something in my heart to pieces.

He said, “Because you’ve lost a friend.”

At that moment, thanks to RED's words, I knew exactly what memories I had lost. I had lost an entire person. I couldn’t remember his face or his name, but I knew…

I had lost all my memories of my best friend.