Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 1

She had been sketching circles absentmindedly in her journal, but her hand stilled when she heard it,
a choked breath.
A muffled sob.

It came from the next room.

Her father’s.

Betty didn’t move, not at first. She just sat there, frozen in the quiet, ears straining. Another sob.
Then silence.
Then another.
Ragged. Sharp. Like something tearing.

It was like hearing the earth itself crack.

She slipped from her bed as gently as she could and padded across the floor, careful not to make a sound. She rested her hand against the cold wall separating their rooms, her fingers splayed as though she could reach through it, as though she could hold him. But she didn't knock. She couldn’t.

Instead, she went back to her desk and opened the wooden picture frame that had remained face down all day.

There she was.

Her mother.

Laughing, head tilted back, her arms around Betty and Mikhail like a promise.

Betty traced the edge of the photograph. Dust clung to the frame, glittering faintly in the lamplight like soft stars. Her thumb paused over her mother’s face, trembling. It was like the universe had gotten it wrong, plucked her mother out too soon and stitched silence where her voice used to be.

And then the memory returned, quiet at first, like the echo of a dream she wasn’t ready to wake up from.

---Flashback---

“Betty,” her mother had whispered one night, weeks before the end, her voice dry and cracked like parchment, but her eyes were still impossibly bright. “Promise me something.”

Betty had nodded through the tears that blurred her mother’s face. “Anything.”

“Always look for the light in people. Even when the world tells you they’re nothing but darkness. Especially then.”

“But what if, what if they hurt me?” she’d asked.

Her mother had smiled, weak but whole. “Then you’ll know you tried. That you loved the way only someone brave can love. That’s the kind of person the world needs more of. That’s the kind of girl you are.”

---End---

A tear slid down Betty’s cheek now as she clutched the photograph to her chest.
She wanted to crawl into that moment, wrap it around herself like a second skin, and never let go.

The sobs from the other room faded into a long, aching silence.

She whispered, barely above breath, “I miss you, Mom.”

Then, slowly, she stood and opened the window beside her bed. The breeze slipped in like a lullaby, cool against her damp cheeks. She looked out over the town’s soft streetlights, the rustling trees, the dark roofs that made the town feel like a dollhouse.
Tiny. Quiet. Fragile.

Maybe this was what her mother meant.
To start again, not by forgetting, but by remembering in a different way.

And maybe, just maybe, believing in people wasn’t weakness.
Maybe it was the purest kind of strength.

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

Betty leaned against the windowsill, the warm wooden frame pressing softly against her elbows. Outside, the wind curled through the sleepy town. She could see a faint fog beginning to gather under the lamplight, brushing the quiet streets like breath over glass.

Her fingers still held the photograph of her mother, but her grip had loosened. The ache in her chest had quieted, not gone, never gone, but lulled into a soft throb, like a wound wrapped in gauze.

She climbed into bed. The mattress groaned gently beneath her weight, and the cotton sheets smelled faintly of mothballs and lavender, the way old linens do when they’ve been folded away too long. She turned off the lamp. Darkness draped itself over her room like a familiar stranger.

And then...

Just as her mind began to slip toward the edges of sleep, toes dipping into the weightless pool of dreaming,

She heard it.

A voice.

A boy’s voice. Soft. Frayed at the edges. And it said only one word:

“Betty.”

She stirred slightly, her heart skipping once, just once, like a stone across still water. Her eyes fluttered half open, but the room remained as it was. Empty. Silent. Her breathing quickened.

“...Who are you?” she whispered into the dark, voice caught somewhere between waking and dreaming.

But there was no reply.

Only the sound of the wind, and the far-off bark of a dog. The walls didn’t answer. The night didn’t break.

A moment later, her eyes closed again, heavy with sleep.

And just before she drifted off entirely, a flicker of a thought brushed her mind, unspoken but certain.

She knew that voice.
Or rather, her soul did.

"Him" she muttered.