"On the first day, she… left a jungle." Into another, slightly different jungle. "And she searched for life, and found nothing but…"
That didn't work. It had been a jungle, not a desert. Jungle the first day, jungle the second day, jungle the third through seventeenth days of her journey to nowhere in particular. Jungle sometimes on top of mountains, even, life everywhere she looked. Almost everywhere. She'd found a desert eventually, but it had taken a while.
"—On the twenty-second day! She left the mountains, finding only a desert. And she searched for life, but found nothing but rocks. And she despaired, for there was nothing there to live off."
That line mostly worked, but she hadn't despaired.
"On the twenty-third day, she found a small oasis."
Hana grinned, because she had. As she flew low above her own desert, she kept telling the old story out loud. Not that there was anyone to hear, but it was somehow comforting.
"It held barely a trickle of water. Enough for a family, but not for a tribe. Enough to attract animals, but not for a town to grow crops. Many would have counted their blessings, and most would have stayed, even you. To Rhea, who had been a-abandoned…"
Her stomach burned. Maybe it wasn't comforting at all.
"Rhea hadn't, hadn't—"
That… no. No. She wouldn't have. She couldn't have. If she'd been in Rhea's place… she'd have had to have done the same thing. She wasn't that selfish… she wasn't a bad person. Couldn't be. Wouldn't.
She took a deep, careful breath, pushing those thoughts out of her head and forcefully unclenching her hands. The story went on, but even if it hadn't, she had to. It had only been a month and a half since she left, and homesickness was already starting to get to her. Storytelling had been supposed to take her mind off of that, and off the boring, yellowish-grey landscape below. Which she supposed that it had.
She'd been having more moments like this lately. Not for any particular reason, just… just because she was ten, now, and her age was kicking off new ways of thinking, programs that she hadn't even realised were there until they unpacked and started running. They weren't all working like she thought they should, but she didn't want to interfere.
The story itself belonged to the vague kind of background knowledge that parents told their younger children as bedtime stories, and which she'd never been told by anyone, but it was a common enough tale that she remembered seeing references. Rhea, the sickly girl who'd been abandoned by her tribe because she couldn't keep up, despite her mother's tears, and who'd eventually found an oasis large enough that they could settle down, proving that love was an almost tangible power for good.
Or, just possibly, who'd attracted the pity of one of the Wills. Or who'd never existed at all.
She grimaced, racking her brain for a different story, then tentatively tried again.
"Once upon a time…"
The wind stole her words almost the moment she spoke them, but now that she'd started, that didn't matter. This was a bedtime story her mother had told her every few weeks for her entire life, which she'd fallen asleep to more often than not.
"Once upon a time the deserts grew verdant with life. After many years of suffering the great tree, Implanta, had finally borne fruit. A great trial had been overcome, and its people embraced each other and rejoiced.
"Among the people there were three who didn't smile. One, a maiden, one among the many who had watered the tree…"
Mom's voice had sometimes cracked, when she talked about the maiden. At the time she hadn't given it much thought, but she'd been seven. Tiny and dumb. Thinking about it now, she wondered if there was more to the story than she'd realised.
Not that she wasn't still tiny, but on the scale of possible indignities, not having grown a millimeter over the last two years had to rank pretty low. She just hoped she wouldn't get stuck this way.
"—And who had given of her flesh and blood to see it bloom. She had given her life, and would never see the fruits take root."
This story wasn't nearly as comforting now as it had been when she'd fallen asleep to it.
"She was comforted by two others, a black witch and a knight in shining armor, and though they were lost, uncertain of their purpose now that the tree had grown into a forest, still they had each other. The knight took in the maiden, who had lost her home, and the witch, who had destroyed her own, and for a time they were at peace."
There was a dark suspicion creeping into her heart.
"But there was a scar in their happiness, for they were barren and would not have children. And though the witch thought of the maiden as her own, yet she could never make up for her mistakes."
Damn it, Mom.
"So, finally, they thought back to the tree. And though a cutting from the tree could easily grow into its own, yet they did not wish to hurt it, nor abuse its trust. Then the Maiden thought of her friends, and of the deeds of their past, and they chose to reach once more into the future to bring back a sapling of their own."
Am I a tree?
She let out a sound that was half laugh, half frustrated sob. Of course she wasn't a tree, even Metafalica wasn't a tree, no matter what her body looked like. This was a, what had Dad called it, an analogy. The story was about her birth, and somehow she hadn't figured that out until now.
Mom had called herself a witch. Why? And Cocona was dying?
No, she'd known that already, but, just—it sounded worse than she'd thought it was. She'd never really thought of it as something that… that would actually happen.
She had to get back.
She gave her carriage an extra tug, for emphasis, then floated onwards feeling frustrated and confused.
———————
Water. Lots and lots of water. Yep, it sure was a whole bunch of water. She didn't remember seeing that much water since… didn't she see Turnip at another beach once? It was weird, because sometimes it wasn't Turnip in that memory. That hurt to think about and gave her seizures sometimes, so she tried not to do that.
This was nice, even though she couldn't taste or smell the salty air… if there even was such a thing as salt here. Well, that wasn't nearly enough to ruin her mood. She'd gone without smelling or tasting things for a long time already. It was still a warm, sunny day on a white sandy beach and nothing was going to make her sad about it!
"I'm gonna make a sand castle," Hana declared, as if it was unthinkable to do otherwise. Really, she was on a beach. Certain things just had to be done. She could live without watermelon, though. She liked the flavor, but the fruit was gross.
Pulling off her shoes, she luxuriated in feeling the warm sand between her toes. The day was perfect, really. Not a cloud in the sky, a slight breeze that just barely ruffled her hair, and she had the entire beach just for herself.
Could the sand even stick together here? She'd never tried…
That was fixable. A moment's thought made her shoes melt into the rest of her clothes, then she raced down to the water's edge to try it.
It did, so in the spirit of science and replication, she therefore spent a good half-hour playing with the sand, building increasingly elaborate castles that, admittedly, still looked pretty sketchy. As construction material went, this sand left something to be desired, nor were sea-shells the best possible way to shape it. She was sure she had a small spade in her cart, but that'd be missing the point.
Once she grew bored she waded into the surf, looking for larger shells but finding mostly rocks and fish. Some of the smaller ones fearlessly darted in between her legs, nipping at her toes and making her giggle, so she quickly reached down to grab one—and failed, her arm bending more than expected as it entered the water. Overcorrecting, she found the sand slipping away between her toes. She windmilled, trying to keep her balance, and realising just too late that—there was no-one else here, it'd be safe to push at the gravity well—
At least the water was soft.
A second or two later a spluttering, completely waterlogged Hana broke the surface with a gasp, kicking wildly at the water in a bid to stay afloat until she realised that she didn't really need to breathe. Also, that the water remained shallow enough to stand on the ground if she tried.
Immediately after doing so, however, she let herself fall backwards to float on her back. Why the heck not? She was already drenched, and the water felt comfortable, even more so once she pared her clothes down to something suitable for swimming in. Smiling at the sun, she stretched her limbs out and let herself relax for a while.
Well, going for a swim hadn't been what she'd had in mind, but she'd take it!
Some time later saw her back on the beach, this time with a plan in mind. Her next sand-castle was set closer to the water. Dangerously close, in fact; close enough for some of the waves to reach it. That was deliberate, and she carefully placed sea-shells in front of it to stop them before they could.
The water, naturally, went around. For her second attempt, she built a ridge behind the shells and then a moat behind the ridge, stiffening the ridge with some gravel. That sort of worked, once, but the crucial sea-shells were just sitting in the sand and were quickly knocked down by the second and third waves.
The next one, she rebuilt her castle in the shape of a pentagram, and embedded the shells directly in its walls, then watched in satisfaction as a pretty large wave split around it without damaging it much at all. That lasted all of five minutes, since it was still made of sand, but she thought she was on to something here.
Sand could be used to make something better. She had already done so, several times already.
The next wave crashed on an invisible wall, as did the one after that, because she didn't need the distraction right then. By carefully heating the sand to its melting point, stretching and shaping the taffy-like substance it turned into with her hands, and careful arrangement of a few larger shells, she slowly and methodically started to build a glass sea-fort. This one, she was sure, would stay here a while. She wouldn't come back, but she wanted something here that would say, "Hana was here."
Shortly before she was finished, she heard the buzz of… Wait. What was that?
Stopping in the middle of molding the stairs, Hana slowly looked up from the molten goop in her hands. Wide-eyed, she listened transfixed to the completely unfamiliar sound. Now leaving the cooling glass forgotten, she racked her brains for an idea of what it might be. It wasn't a bug. There was no bug that big and loud, not even the beetles as big as hippos in that jungle she left. What was it then? She could almost imagine… it was...
Somewhere deeper in the more hazardous areas of her mind, something clicked into place.
Hana turned around and looked across the ocean, trying to follow the sound. At first she saw nothing but sea birds, and momentarily worried that maybe there was just a bird making that noise somehow, but she soon picked up a speck way in the distance. It was getting higher and moving really fast. Hana's heart rate quickened, excitement welling up like nothing she'd felt in years, and she tried to focus her eyes as far as they could on that speck. Her vision could zoom in pretty far, but she still struggled to make the object out. Now she was really wishing she'd practiced that more.
'Um, how do I… Maybe like… this? No, that just made it blurry. How about… ah!'
It was… shiny. Sleek. Almost avian in profile, but clearly, definitely, absolutely not an animal. In a matter of seconds, it had gone higher and faster than any animal ever could. It was still going, heading up into the sky and, presumably, beyond.
"P...p-p-p…" she stuttered, her whole body starting to quiver. She felt ready to burst, barely containing an oncoming flood of tears. Then she couldn't hold it in anymore. Hana threw her arms in the air with a brilliant, joyful scream.
"People!"
Then promptly lost her balance because of the heavy blob of now-solid glass encasing her hands.
Of course she would program an entire new set of instincts just so she can have a more accurate disguise.
