The Understudy of an Alchemist

47. An Omen From A Four Year Old

The first thing I realise is that I'm stepping in sand. My brain actually takes several minutes to process and recognise it; and once it does, my first thought is that this is probably where Ivy's sister died. I wasn't on a regular beach, I was on a beach side cliff, which makes my skin crawl.

I don't know why it was Rose that I had immediately thought of, yet it was creepy nonetheless. Crossing my arms tightly across my chest, I take several minutes to collect myself, trying to erase the familiar pain from my chest.

As I try to desperately clear my mind of Rose, another realisation hits me. This place.....it's identical to the beach that I had dreamt of half a year ago; yet the idea of seeing Evil Me makes me feel even more anxious. My thoughts are really not helping matters.

Yet suddenly, a sound echoes across the dunes, prompting me to freeze, swivel my head in the direction that the laughter had come from, it taking me several minutes to realise what it is that I am hearing. It's giggling. A little girl's giggle.

The confusion of how I am suddenly moving almost hits me like a tidal wave. I didn't want to move, fearful of what I would find, yet somehow against my own control, I felt myself walking around to the other side of the sand dune, just like the other dream, to where that little girl's giggling is coming from; as if she were my puppet master and I were a marionette.

Regaining control over my body once more, I force myself to duck behind the sand dune at the top of the cliff, trying to pull myself together. The little girl on the other side of the dune continues to laugh, clearly finding something on the other side hilarious. Slowly, I begin to inhale and exhale the hazy, dreamlike air around me in an attempt to console myself, as I clench fistfuls of the cool grainy sand in my palms. I can do this. I can do this. I reassure myself, shoulders trembling slightly in anticipation. Reluctantly, I rise upwards and onto to my feet, and begin to emerge from the side of the sand dune, heart pounding inside of my throat..........

I nearly have a head-attack the sheer moment that I see her. It's me. But not the darkened version that I had seen last time I was here, but rather a much younger variant of myself. Four year old Violet, however, seems to not be able to see me like the evil version of mr could, instead she continued to stare of in my direction, seemingly in the midst of hysterics, shaking her massive pigtails as she laughs, the cyan streak woven through the right pigtail even more vivid than I remembered.

It's a beautiful, picturesque scene, but as I stare at her more intently, I begin to realise that there is a problem. She appears to be laughing at, or more likely with someone, yet besides myself, she is the only person that was on the secluded beach. We're standing upon the flat top of the sand covered cliff, and excluding the massive dune that I'd hidden behind earlier, none of the dunes were big enough to be obscuring someone from my view.

Yet whoever she was laughing with seemed to not be making a guest appearance in my dream, so instead I diverted my attention back over towards her. I was surprised by how adorable my younger self was, how content, how happy she looked. She wasn't burdened with controlling black rocks, or friends who took MoonDrops and kidnapped queens, or scars that permanently marked her neck. And so instead, for what feels like forever, I simply watch her tossing her huge black pigtails while giggling her head off.
My brain is still whirling however, trying to figure out whether I'd been adopted yet by this point, yet I don't even remember this occasion no matter how hard I scoured my brain. Did this even actually happen??

It feels like I've been watching her for hours, while in reality, it's probably been several seconds. Yet as my eyes begin tire, and I begin to tear my gaze away from the young girl, I finally notice something in the corner of my eye that chills me to the core.