As I look at her new form, she's so gentle and diligent. I even a bit hesitant of the idea of saying anything harsh to her. As I am looking back at the place I came from, it was a harsh desert. I don't think she would even accept going with me, but I will try my best. Suddenly, she gets so energetic and starts circling around me like I'm the center point, playing with my hair. "Mister, your hair is so beautiful! I wish I had hair like yours. Then I could become taller, stronger, and be like my mother."
She's still playing with my hair, her pure heart unchanged even when she became an adult. Whenever she gets the chance to play with my hair, she will. I chuckle softly, wondering if I can shield her from this trouble. "So, do you like to explore with me in this direction? It looks interesting," I point towards the deserts, the starting point. But she looks disinterested, leaving my hair and sitting in front of me, her eyes squinting. I want to laugh at her face but refrain, not wanting to hurt her feelings as she's still a small child.
I try not to show her anything. I don't know how much I can handle. "Mister, you have to know, the place you're pointing at is dangerous. All my friends around me tell me that going back is dangerous, so I always move forward. It's more fun and beautiful. You can see all the trees. But there, it's just not that beautiful. It's ugly and dusty."
Hearing this, my heart just doesn't accept that she becomes a toy to those small creatures. Yes, they are harmless, but at the same time, they can wipe memories, they can make things go like painless death.
I can make some magical tricks to let her feel more interested, and as I expect, she starts hopping up and down when I make them magical butterflies. She begins to fall with them as she goes around them and suddenly disappears. At this point, I smile and look at her. "Do you know that the butterflies that I make, no one can make them besides me? So, if you want to go with me with these little butterflies, you can follow me. I want to explore this huge place you've explored all."
She nods softly, her cheeks sore from running. I slowly get up from my place and let my hand free. She looks at it slowly and maturely, seeing the hesitation in her eyes. But in the end, she holds my hand, and we begin to walk in the desert, the memories just scattered in the sky.
The sky was gray, not even beautiful. It's just filled with everything unpleasant, not allowing those innocent souls to return. When she was looking at some of the memories and pointing at one of them, the memories were about a meal, not that young but older than this version, having some type of fun day with her mother. I think because the woman with her looks exactly like her mother. "Mister, this person, why do they look so happy? I want to be happy too."
I bite my lips as I hear this negativity from her young self. A child shouldn't have such thoughts. I don't want her to see any more of these memories, but I will explain what she saw anyway. "It's your future self just playing with your mother. You know your mother loves you so much."
She cheers up a little bit, but I can't deny the sadness in her eyes. She is like an open book that everyone can read clearly, but people, like humans, love to ignore. As she begins to get tired from walking, I hold her in my arms and start walking with her. She rests her head on my shoulder as she begins to cry. I know what I should do. I just slowly walk away, making sure that she will return safely from this place. "Mister, why do I remember so many bad things now? It just feels so bad. Why does it feel like this... I don't understand."
I stop for a moment, letting her back, just letting the overwhelming feeling in her memories slow down. I try to cover her eyes, but nothing works as she just wants to see more and more. The more she sees, the more pain she receives, as only things are getting worse. So, because I don't want her to get more overwhelmed, I look at her with as soft a smile as possible. "Little girl, let's explore this place slowly. But you know, if we go too fast, we can trip and hurt ourselves."
Slowly understanding things, I let her down to walk again. As I feel the sand getting heavier, I try my best to let this nightmare fade away. And as the memories begin to get heavier to embrace, she looks at one of them and starts to smile and point. "Mister, this one feels a bit fuzzy, why? And it's happy too, but at the same time, I don't know."
I didn't reply because this one I've already seen. It's with this man that she was, her signature on one of the papers and probably something serious to feel fuzzy and all of that. I don't want to think about it, but as I know, understanding her best is more painful than we can expect. From one second to the other, Mia's age, we came to change like the clock. She gets bigger, more understandable. I didn't get her true age. As we walk even faster, she suddenly, in a playful way, pulls out a pawn similar to me.
I was so speechless, wondering why she has or why she chose it from the beginning. "So, little girl, this pawn in your hand, where did you get it?" She looks at me with a full smile, walking with me, reciting me, and I feel like that desert is getting longer and longer. Playing with my head makes my head hurt. "I don't know, I just found it in my pocket. But, to be honest, how much more do we have to walk? Because I don't remember how much we've walked. Weeks, months? I don't know. It feels like an endless place."
As I see the hope fading from her eyes slowly, it's not good. It means if we just stay in this place more, her soul will eventually be banished, absorbed by the artifact that has been working further. Her palms getting wet make me question what I remember about this incident when we fought the monster. She had the same thing when she got nervous, her palms getting wet from nervousness. Is she afraid now? My mind was wondering, but I stopped thinking and wanted to know the reason for these pawns.
"Little girl, can you please give me your pawn? I'm just wondering about it." She slowly puts it in my hand, and I look at it carefully. It has all the color scheme of my real shape, not the fake one. Something makes me more curious. I put it in my pocket as a safety place, and we begin to walk. Just as I think we're finishing this place, suddenly, a big wall separates the beginning from this place. I put my hand on it; it's not anything special, but it is magical. Probably, I can feel it. As I look around this big wall, and it seems like something's missing. But when I glimpse at Mia to see what she's doing, her eyes are horrified, scared of something.
She steps back from this wall, and I look at her, full of questions. Does this mean anything to her? "Please don't go close to this place; it's dangerous. It's not good. Please don't let me go through it. I don't want to go through it again." At first, I didn't understand, but as I observe her unfocused look, she seems in another dream, another place not with me. It's probably some kind of destination where she experienced something dangerous. She rummages, trying to find something from her clothes, but finds nothing. She gets more scared and stumbles, falling down. I approach slowly, placing my hand over her eyes as I whisper softly to reduce the noise, "Mia, what do you see?"
As I feel her shiver and see tears falling down, she struggles to form a single coherent sentence. "I can't trust anyone. Everyone betrayed me. Everyone needs to go away. No one deserves my trust." At this point, my heart sinks as if she experienced a nightmare she doesn't want to return to. I may never understand, and if I did, it would ache so much more to see her wounds.
I'll train her, even if her irresponsible mother doesn't want me to. I don't care; no human deserves this much suffering. So, softly trying to make things calmer, I remind her, "Some people are bad, some people are good. But I have to make your heart stronger; you can't feel like this."
Slowly, she begins to breathe in and out, and all her stressful moments dissipate, shattering on the ground. At this point, I look back and see all those green hills that I saw before, or were they just a memory? All the sand and desert vanish, replaced by an eternal coat of flowers blooming around this place. The sky never turns blue; some scattered memories linger. As I observe them, she finishes and suddenly passes out. I let her head rest on the ground gently.
I place my hand on my head, feeling more pain, not from her, but from this environment. It's painful, uncomfortable, altering time and place in so many ways. This place is torturous. I don't know how she created this place; I just think, and it changes. But for now, she's passing out. I'll take this opportunity to investigate this place. I notice the wall hasn't disappeared, no big surprise there, and it doesn't need a price. But does it have any type of doors or openings?
I grab a rock and make a mark on the wall, walking with my hand on it, searching for a single place, an entrance or exit. It's a long walk, and I'm not sure how long it's taken, but I end up where I marked originally. It means the wall forms a circle around a certain place, probably the entrance and exit. Something interesting catches my eye—the wall goes up, but downward, I spot a tiny door, not even a mouse could enter it.
Frustrated, I hit the wall, trying to analyze the agility and strength needed. I ponder other possibilities, and glancing at my other hand, I see my pawn that looks like Mia. It hurts me, but I need her to wake up; we need the pawns to go through the small door, as if it's a small illusion leading us to the right place. A clever strategy until she wakes up. I begin fixing my hair; I love this place so much with it that I can't ruin it. It's okay; she was just a small girl. I won't punish her.