“Miss Marianne! Miss Marianne!” Marianne reluctantly rested on the porch outside after the urging of her stubborn daughter. She felt elated when the endearingly shrill voice of children reached her ears. She saw the children excitedly running in her direction with beaming smiles.
“What is it, my dears?” She asks, smiling gently.
“Lily... told us that... you traveled aaaalllllll around the world! Is that true!?” The children looked beyond astonished. They were catching their breath.
“They must have run here the moment Lily told them that.” The thought crossed Marianne’s mind as she held in her laughter.
“Is it true?!” They repeated themselves, their patient growing thin, when Marianne hesitated to answer.
“Yes, I used to travel around the entire globe. I was quite the adventurer, I suppose.” There was a hint of smugness in her voice. Boasting feels pretty good, occasionally. Lily was seemingly eager to spread the word around her peers, and that scenario's image amused Marianne.
“And is it true that you fought monsters? Like dragons and stuff?!” Their eyes practically sparkled to the point that Marianne suddenly wanted to avert her eyes.
“Did Lily tell you this?” She tried and failed to keep a straight face. They nodded their heads with such vigorous strength that Marianne worried they would fall off, which added to her amusement. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore and burst out into laughter.
She wiped her tears and told them.
“Unfortunately, I never fought dragons. Believe it or not, they liked to stay hidden from us.”
While she didn’t want to ruin the children’s fantasies, she also felt bad lying to them, so she settled with a half-truth.
“Oh...” The children looked dejected, but their dampened mood left as soon as it came. “So, they like to play hide and seek instead of catch?! If they’re so scary, they should face us directly in battle!” One of the boys exclaimed with a battle roar, and the other children followed suit.
Marianne decided to play along.
“Yeah, they’re just giant scaredy cats who run away from seasoned warriors like me. They knew they wouldn’t stand a chance! After all, throughout all the lands, I was known as a ferocious beast no one dared to stand against!” She said proudly, and the children gasped aloud.
She couldn’t help being embarrassed for saying that...
She felt like the lamest person in all of humanity.
“And that’s why monsters typically don’t show themselves around us. But I encountered many other exotic animals on my travels, like tigers.”
“Tigers!?” Everyone shouted.
Once again, she burst out laughing.
----------------------------------------
And just like that, Marianne woke up. She smiled upon recalling the sweet memory she had reexperienced in her dream.
Stolen novel; please report.
“To the children, tigers and other animals were practically just as mystical as dragons.” She chuckled to herself.
She turned her head to the young boy, who was still fast asleep. Meeting him in this world would surely lead to her collecting a whole new treasure trove of stories she could share with them.
And just like that, she began to look downwards, recalling that she would never be able to share any of her tales with them again. And just like that, the emptiness returned once more. Being busy with survival in this new world was a good distraction from everything, but it couldn’t suppress the hollow feelings bubbling inside. However, she knows that moping around is a luxury she couldn’t afford. Or rather she would feel incredibly pathetic to do so.
She needed to look toward the future, which is exactly what she would do. Her duty to look over Alpheus has served as the drive she truly needed. And so, she had no time to sulk around.
She stood up.
She stretched.
She had the energy to do so and refused to relinquish that to anything or anyone.
In the distance, a crimson butterfly fluttered around the woods, its shiny glimmer blending with the twilight.
----------------------------------------
“And so, having reached the peak of this mountain, he closed his eyes to let the breeze wash over him. He opened his eyes and saw green flames in the distance enveloping everything beneath its cruel inferno. Bearing witness to this, he couldn’t put the feelings in his chest into words right now, so he could only mutter.”
“I finally escaped you.”
Reading these final lines aloud, Alpheus reached yet another end to one of the books in the treasure trove that was his room. He closes his eyes and lazily falls on his back. He always did so because it felt like he might fall into the stories he read as he would pop into existence. The words contained within every single piece of parchment and bundled together under the casing made of leather never failed to ignite this emotion in him — the feeling of being connected.
It felt like he looked into the eyes of the one who wrote it. Like he was looking at yet another world through the eyes of another. Until this point in his life, Alpheus never understood the concept of fiction or non-fiction as he was unaware of the distinction between the two. He never even considered what reality meant. All of them were separate worlds that he was allowed to glimpse at. All that mattered was that the words existed before his eyes. However, he was never entirely sure whether this room was a world of its own. The idea always made him wonder if anyone was watching over his world, too. These thoughts drove him to speak despite his words never actually reaching anyone.
“I wonder what he did after reaching his goal...”
“He seemed sad, but I hope he reached a happy ending after the book was finished!”
Alpheus expressed this hope out loud while raising his fists enthusiastically. He was happy to have a voice and a means to make his feelings heard, even if there was never anyone they could reach. Luckily for him, his voice did reach something. It was the voice that always laughed.
He heard a loud snicker from someone inside the room. The voice was faint, and the echo always tickled his ears. He never knew where it came from, but he was sure it was inside this room. He always heard it after finishing a book, and it always sounded sinister.
Yet hearing it always made him happy because he felt heard, and these moments filled him with the most happiness.
“I’m glad you enjoyed this story, too! What do you think we should read next?” Alpheus wondered with a wide grin.
And so, he headed for the shelves to continue his journey.
----------------------------------------
And just like that, Alpheus woke up. He recalled the words he had heard before he fell asleep.
“It’s because of her.”
He didn’t understand the meaning behind them, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew that voice somehow. He didn’t dwell on that thought for much longer because he noticed Marianne staring at him intensely.
In just a moment, his fatigue evaporated, and he moved from his resting spot.
“GoodmorningMissMarianne!” He shouted it in a hurry, and just like that, he received the usual flick on the forehead.
He composes himself.
“Good morning, Miss Marianne.”
“There you go! You’re a fast learner!” She said this with a cheeky grin, and for the first time, Alpheus thinks he finally might have understood the meaning of the word ‘sarcasm’.
“Good morning, Alpheus.” Upon hearing this, Alpheus suddenly realized something. He failed to notice it due to his previous restlessness, but...
...He spoke to her with his own words. His voice... reached her.
And she responded to him with her own words... and reached him.
He smiled.