Chapter 5: Retrospection

Selene POV:

The dim light in my room was making it hard to see what I was doing. I had been forbidden to go out of my room after mom learned about my daily escapades during the night till morning. Apparently, someone saw me more than once flying to the outer side of the city.

Mom heard about it and came to ask about it. After hours of ear-pulling and shouting, I had not betrayed my only friend. The other kid found me weird, they all obeyed their parents like gods, but there was an exception, another one like me. One passionate by everything around them, greedy to learn and know more, to run and fly, Alice.

Fortunately, she was born just after me and was my neighbor! Her presence in my life was like an everlasting sunshine, thanks to her I could have fun every day, learn new things, and most of all, smile genuinely.

Alice is extremely talented in magic, as far as I know. She was far ahead of me; I couldn’t even produce a ball and move it, meanwhile she was already progressing beyond this.

I couldn’t fall behind her too far. I needed to close the gap, so even now, even while locked in my room I was still training. I had a hard time maintaining the ball’s shape. It felt like something was off; mana wasn’t binding itself to its place; something was lacking. When adults used mana it strangely phased into place, locked.

There was something going on there that Alice and I missed, but I didn’t know what and needed to stop overthinking it. I have to grow; I don’t want to be left behind.

I focused, every ounce of mana I could concentrate in flowed to my hands, and then out of them to form a ball of water, an ordinary round ball. Power was, of course, not the sole needed thing, I felt mana going out of shape at some parts and focused on them only to switch to other places where mana was now going out of shape.

The numbers of instabilities only grow with time; everytime I deal with one. Two of them appear… It's getting frustrating, why can’t I do something like that, Alice performs that so easily yet… yet…

During the small amount of time my mind wandered to another thought, it happened.

All the mana I had accumulated escaped my grasp, and beyond even that, my own mana, constituting my body, started to flow differently. A part of my body started to become water, the same water that created the now gone ball of water I had tried so hard to shape.

I asserted no control over it, no control over anything I got up and shouted out of fright, how could I not when my very own body was deforming itself. I stopped any magic manipulation I was carrying out, too panicked to think of anything and just cried while my body was melting to water.

The door swung open, revealing mom, wide-eyed. When her gaze fell on me, she froze for a second. After that my mind was wandering elsewhere. Before I knew it, I had been in the arms of my tearful mom, lying on the floor.

Another blank happened, and I found myself surrounded by white, it felt like I was floating in water. It felt like I had neglected something, I was just in my room training my mana control, and then… and then… ah yes. It had happened, my body liquefying, slowly morphing to become water; I was in a critical situation, one that could end my life.

I tried to swim, where? I don’t know, but I needed to do something or I was going to die. Quickly I found out I couldn’t, even if this space felt like floating in water, I in fact wasn’t. Trying everything my mind could think of, shouting, pinching myself to wake me up… calling my mom…

After a while, I gave up. I was stuck. It was the end. Why, why was my life ending so soon? Why couldn’t I achieve anything I could be satisfied with, before dying? I started lamenting my fate for what felt like an eternity, and everything went blank once again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It hurt, my whole body hurt, like it was burning, even if my whole body hurt, my right arm and the right side of my chest particularly. I tried to open my eyes, but I did not have the strength to, nor move a single finger.

A gentle voice, full of sorrow and pain came to my ear, the sound dulled as if I was in another room, but I still recognized the voice as my mother's voice.

“I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry, please, wake up…”. I wanted to yell and tell her that I was awake, but even without moving my body was torturing me. Her sobs made me wish I could hug and comfort her.

“If only this cursed child, Alice, hadn’t …. you into discovering magic…”. For the first time since “woke up” my thought froze. Alice is forcing me into learning magic? No, that is not what happened! Why do you loathe her because of my own stupidity?!

I tried to shout my thoughts at her, tried to defend my dear friend, but only a small yelp escaped my lungs. Making my mother react in record time.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“DEAR ARE YOU AWAKE ?!”. She practically begged while holding tight my left hand.

“I DIDN’T DREAM DID I, I JUST HEARD YOUR SWEET VOICE, RIGHT?”. I tried to produce a sound again but it was in vain, it had taken all I had to spit out this small squeak.

She slowly caressed the back of my hand and began to speak of small things I had done not long after I had been born, some months ago.

Not long after she began, my mind had already gone blank again, and I fell into a deep and painful slumber.

Dreams of me and Alice flying all over the city invaded my nights, only for them to turn into nightmares of me slowly becoming water while Alice only flew ahead, far ahead, so far ahead…

My eyes shot open at once, only to reveal the tied roots of my room’s roof while I was lying in my bed, the sensation of my body fading and escaping my grasp still present.

I took a few deep breaths to relax myself. I had heard that other beings in this world normally need to breathe but Fae was purely made of magic and didn’t need to. But the action still helped my mind ease.

I slowly tried to feel for my body, my left hand responding to my will as normal, my right hand… didn’t respond? It felt like I had one, or the memory of having one, but couldn’t move it.

I took a peek at my right side, and what I saw horrified me.

“Uh?”

wa-wait… what… no, that’s not possible… That, not possible, that's definitely not possible, even if we’re hurt we can regenerate as long as we have mana or something like that right!

So why, why was my right arm gone, and a part of my stomach in a weird semi liquid shape ?!

It’s at this moment that my mom opened the door to my room, dark circles bag under her wet eyes, her always straight hair in shambles.

She dropped the plate she was holding as her eyes laid on me.

“SWEATY YOU’RE AWAKE!” in the blink of an eye she was standing in front of me holding my remaining hand.

She started a rant accompanied with sobs and excuses, so much and so fast that it was hard to understand anything.

Between a sob and half a curse to Alice, I asked, “wh… what happened to… to my arm…”.

She opened her mouth only to shut it tightly a second later, looking at me like a poor little injured animal.

“Mom, please, I want to… I need to know. Her gaze left my eyes as I saw tears flowing rivers down her cheeks.

“The healer he… he informed me that due a miss-use of mana, your body morphed to what it is actually, part of it couldn't hold it and… were destroyed, like your arm,

other places were changed into semi-liquid… because the nature of the damage is your own body arming itself, he cannot heal it…”

Oh… So that was it, my arm was gone… forever…

It felt strangely not as catastrophic as it was, because it did not feel real, it could not be real right? It’s not possible that just because I wanted to stay closer to Alice I trained, hard, really hard, and by rushing it, it made it impossible for me to even live normally ever again.

“... Alice will be so far ahead now…”, my thoughts slipped out of my mouth, in a small whisper, that, if not for the almost total silence in the room, would not be heard.

But my mom still heard them, and, “ALICE?! You shouldn't be thinking of her anymore! She’s the very person that caused you to be like that!”, red in furry, my mother bellowed.

As I was about to defend my friend, a pain attacked the side of my stomach, a pain so bad that I cowered onto myself holding my stomach as if to prevent it from slipping away.

I could hear the deafened sound of my mother’s words of worry, but the pain was too huge for me to focus on anything else and once again, I fell asleep.

Once again I woke up in the blank space, and just like last time, I could not move no matter how hard I tried.

A weird feeling assaulted the peace of this place. Like a ripple through this world, a far away echo, the echo of a sound. Focusing on my senses, I tried to localize it and see where the sound was emitted.

After a while I understood that it wasn’t something that was emitted “here”, but it reached here from another place, focussing on it, slowly, I could hear a few words.

“NO —- FAULT —- RIGHTS —- WISHED”, it was my mother’s voice, I could clearly distinguish it from others after all the time I’ve been together with her.

“please —- need —- care”, this voice was full of sorrow, but not from my mother. It was the voice of someone young. I didn’t recognize who it was.

Then it clicked, I typically heard this voice full of enjoyment, even when she was getting preached at by her mother. It was Alice’s voice.

“Know — my fault —- mean to”, once again it was my dear friend’s voice, pronouncing words of guilt. Guilt? Why was she feeling guilty? Does she think it’s her fault that I got hurt?

Once again I tried moving, to shout and tell her that it was my fault for being uncareful and rushing it, but nothing worked.

My friend is going to hate herself so much because she thinks it’s her fault, and I can’t go and comfort her. I wanted to cry, my life was falling apart because of a single small stupid mistake, just because I am an idiot.

“How dare —- that —-- hypocrite” mother’s voice ringed with hatred, it was the first time I heard her ever insulting someone, she was usually so calm and kind toward everywhere at any time.

They were all affected by the situation I was in, but I felt kind of happy about it in a way; they all deeply cared about me.

Isolated by the other Fae or more like, not close to the other Fae. I had a part of me worrying that I would never be close to people, or not close enough for me to share a bond this tight.

After a while Alice left and I could merely hear a last excuse before she was gone. I was grieved that my mom had prevented her from coming closer, somehow it felt like I could’ve gained the strength to wake up if she were closer to me, if she held my hand.