I knocked politely at Feather's door and waited until she called me in. I had not been to anyone else's room but Cloud's and my own, and since I had found them to be exactly the same, I was not surprised that Feather's was identically furnished as well. But what I certainly hadn't expected in this place was the splendid display of color before my eyes.
From the far left corner, lush green vines sprouted forth and grew along one of the walls, covering them in a veritable curtain adorned with myriads of tiny blue and purple flowers. Through gaps between the green I spotted a wonderous landscape. It was a vast meadow basked in the glow of a warm summer sun, scattered with crumbled white walls and columns of ancient ruins, overgrown by moss and ivy. It looked like the kind of place where nymphs and fairies might live, and the scenery only seemed to wait for a brave explorer to step through and discover the mysteries that lay behind.
It took me a few seconds of completely awestruck staring to realize that it was a painting. The level of realism was, for lack of a beetter word, almost unreal. Uncanny. It looked so three dimensional that within the context of the bland, white room, the entire wall seemed to turn into a portal into another world. The style and atmosphere of the artwork reminded me of John William Waterhouse, only missing a beautiful female figure casually draped on a patch of grass at the viewer's feet.
The only female figure in the room, however, was the supposed artist herself. Feather was sitting upright in her bed, her blonde curls ruffled as if she had just gotten up from sleeping. Edge was there with her, raising the eyebrow over his blue eye in surprise as I entered.
"Oh wow! Is this exhibition for free or do I have to pay an entrance fee?" I greeted her with a friendly smile on my lips.
Feather giggled. "What kind of payment do you have in mind?"
"I brought some food," I said and held up the plate in my hands. "But it's not very good I think. I might have to find proper payment later."
I put the plate down on her nightstand, next to some leftovers of an earlier, barely touched meal. Then I took a few steps towards the painting to get a closer look.
"This is incredible. Did you paint this?" I asked the girl, and she nodded.
It must have taken a long time - and it reminded me of what Bridge had told me. Feather might have seemed like a child, but supposedly she was much older than she looked and had been here longer than anybody else. The level of detail to her work was certainly remarkable, and I could not even guess how long it must have taken to paint this.
As I walked along the wall, it seemed to me as if the leaves and blossoms along the vines and the painted grass at my feet moved under the soft caress of an intangible breeze. Small cracks ran across the columns of the ruins, giving them a weathered look. Yet upon closer inspection I realized they were actually a result of the paint cracking and flaking, probably from age.
And on second glance I also saw the parts of the painting that she was probably still working on, where layers of color, shadow or light were still missing. Those parts of the painting seemed still and unmoved, as if the magical breeze didn't quite reach them.
I pried my eyes away from this window into another world, as I remembered why I had come to her room in the first place.
"Sorry," I said, looking back and forth between Edge and Feather. "I didn't want to disturb you two. I'll leave-"
"No, wait!" the girl quickly interjected, with an unexpected strength in her otherwise soft voice. "Why... why don't you stay here, for a while? Please?"
"Sure, I don't see why not. If you don't mind?" I asked, and turned to Edge who did not seem to have an opinion and just shrugged slightly
I couldn't remember having heard a single word coming from him, and now I wondered if he ever spoke at all. There was something slightly unsettling about his silence, probably because his heterochromatic gaze of one blue and one brown eye reminded me of General Shield of the Talos force. At least in his case, I didn't really have to wonder what image in the real world might have inspired my mind to come up with someone like him. But somehow, I didn't get quite the same creepy vibe off Edge that Shield's blue glowing eye always gave me. It was just his silence and his deadpanned expression that made me wary of him. It was impossible to guess what he was feeling or thinking about.
"So... what are you two up to?" I asked.
I sat down on the other side of her bed across from Edge, and spotted several quadratic pieces of paper scattered on the blanket between them. I had always felt a strange fascination for the material, perhaps because it was such a rare thing in this digital day and age. And I wondered where they had gotten it from. The only paper I had seen in Tartaros so far were the densely printed pages of the books in the library, but these sheets were perfectly blank and white, and immaculate except for some bearing traces of repeated folding and unfolding. And amidst the sheets, there were various paper-made shapes and even little figurines.
"Edge is teaching me origami," Feather explained, beaming with excitement.
"Origami? What's that?"
"It's when you fold paper to make different shapes and things."
She picked up one of the paper figurines and put it in my hand. It looked like a butterfly.
"You made this?" I asked Edge, "It's beautiful."
He looked back at me with his mismatched eyes and nodded in silence. There was a hint of a smile on his lips, hidden somewhere among his dark beard, as he took another piece of paper and began to meticulously fold it in an intricate sequence of steps. The result was a little bird. He held it at the bottom and pulled at the tail, causing it to flap its wings, and Feather to laugh in delight.
"Can you show me how to do it, too?" I asked Edge, and he nodded again.
Together, the three of us created some more birds, butterflies, frogs, flowers and other shapes, first until we ran out of paper, and then until we had unfolded and refolded the sheets so many times that they had become frayed and crumpled.
"What a pity," Feather sighed with disappointment, after we had decided to leave the last set of figurines as they were, out of fear of tearing the paper if we took them apart once more.
"Where did you get that paper anyway?" I asked.
"A favor. I brought it with me from a trial," Edge replied.
I hadn't really expected him to answer at all, so the sudden sound of his deep voice startled me.
So he is able to speak, after all.
"Oh. I see."
Though I didn't really understand, I felt like it was not my place to inquire any further. There was not a hint of hostility in his voice or demeanor, yet there was still something vaguely intimidating about this silent man.
"I will try to bring more the next time," he said and got up. "Promise."
He looked at Feather with a warm smile, and the intimidating vibe vanished instantly. He ruffled her hair, and got up to leave, taking the neglected dishes from the previous meal with him.
"You will stay with her?" he asked me, now wearing his deadpan, serious look again. It sounded less like a question, and more like a rather urgent request.
"Sure."
After all, it wasn't like I had any specific plans, other than learning more about this place. This seemed as good a point to start my quest as any.
When I turned back after Edge had left, I found Feather eyeing me up and down with great curiosity.
"Do I have something on my face?" I asked.
"Ohh, no! Sorry for staring," she said and laughed nervously. "It's just... good to see a new face!"
"Thanks... I guess."
Silence descended between us, and my gaze fell on the bedside table, where the pink jelly cubes sat still untouched.
"Hey, why don't you eat a little bit?" I suggested "Before it... well, never mind, it's definitely cold by now, and I actually don't even know if it's supposed to be eaten warm or cold, whatever the hell this is."
"Uhm.... I don't really feel hungry," she mumbled.
I furrowed my brow and took a closer look at her. I was not exactly the most empathic person, but something about her demeanor alerted me. She had always looked pale when I had seen her before, but now there were dark purple shadows under her eyes, which had a glassy sheen to them. I softly touched the back of my hand against her forehead, but instead of the heat of the fever that I had expected, her skin seemed rather too cold. I took her hand in mine, and it was positively icy.
"Are you not feeling well?" I asked, "Can I get you anything?"
She shook her head, causing the blonde curls that framed her face to bounce around.
"There is nothing here that could help me..."
There was something about the way she had phrased her response - not that there was nothing I could do to help, but that there was nothing here to help her - that filled me with excruciating misery. It came over me like a wave, crushing me under heavy exasperation and hopelessness, and stealing my breath away for a moment. It was because of that look on her face - one of melancholy and sorrow that did not seem appropriate for someone so young. I realized if Quill had looked like she had seen enough horrors to equate several lifetimes of suffering, this girl must have seen an eternity of it.
Just what the hell had happened to her that would break her spirits so completely?
As she sat there, this pale young girl with her shoulders slumped and her gaze cast down on in dejection, a protective instinct overcame me, just like when we had been drawn for the trial.
"You know, if you don't eat, you won't feel any better," I said, and brushed a few stray strands of hair from her face.
It was a lie. I knew very well that eating would probably not make anything better either. And the way she looked at me as she raised her head, with a deep and doubtful furrow on her brow, she knew it too. Telling her that lie only added to my feeling of misery.
"Could you at least try to eat a few bites? For me?" I pleaded with her.
I tried my best impression of a begging puppy dog look. After years of Moon giving me that expression, I seemed to have picked up on her trick, because Feather sighed and then nodded.
"Okay. But... this stuff looks really gross," she said and eyed the food warily.
"Yeah, tell me about it..."
I poked one of the cubes with the fork, and it wobbled in response. Under any other circumstances I wouldn't have forced that stuff down if my life depended on it. But it didn't seem to be my life that depended on it.
"Listen, how about we share it?" I suggested, "Let's make this a game... no, how about a competition! For each piece I eat, you must eat one too. Winner is who manages to force down the most."
I switched my demeanor from begging puppy to overenthusiastic adolescent dog. That coaxed a weak smile out of her at least, and more importantly, got her to eat. We ended our competition in a draw after going through two-thirds of the jelly cubes. They tasted better than they looked, at least, faintly of raspberry.
"You know, I'm really happy that you came to visit me. Thank you," Feather said with a smile.
"Of course. Any time. I... just fear I cannot provide you any entertainment like Edge."
"Oh, that's okay. I'm just... glad when I'm not alone." She put down her fork and sighed. "It's silly, isn't it? I tell Bridge and the others to not treat me like a child all the time, yet when it comes down to such things, I guess still am...."
She cast down her gaze, and gripped the blanket on her legs so hard her knuckles turned white.
"Feather, that's not silly," I told her, placing my hand on hers. "It's perfectly normal not to want to be alone. I mean... I like to be alone sometimes, but that's only because I know that I have friends who I can turn to when I'm in need of company. "
Feather raised her head and looked at me, her eyes suddenly wide with surprise.
"Friends? Who are you talking about?"
I bit my tongue. Luckily, Rain wasn't here to witness that blunder.
"I mean... the people here... they will be always there for you, right? Like a family? And I'm here too now, so..." I stammered.
She leaned in and looked deep into my eyes. Her own were hazel colored, almost green, and she was so close now that I thought I could almost see my own reflection in them.
"You really do remember, don't you?" she whispered in amazement.
Her inquisitive gaze bored into me, as if she was trying to peer right into my mind to find the answer she sought. I inched back and looked at her warily.
"I.... can't." It was all I managed to put forth - less due to my fear of Rain, and more due to a feeling of a razor blade being stuck in my throat again.
"Hey, that's okay!" Feather quickly said. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean to upset you. But I have to admit, I'm curious... just about the extent of what you recall."
She leaned back and gave me that curious look again. And for a moment, she looked like a perfectly normal twelve-year-old girl. I would have told her anything to keep that spark of life in her eyes. But the taste of bile covered my tongue now, and it seemed to me that whatever words I would speak next were better chosen very carefully.
"I, ah.... Well... I mostly remember books," I said and shrugged slightly. It was pointless to deny that much at least, because they already knew.
"That's too bad, so you might not find much entertainment in the library I suppose," the girl said.
"It's okay, I don't mind... But, what about you?" I asked her to change the topic. "Do you....?"
She chewed on her lip as she seemed to look for the right words to answer, and I wondered if I had upset her with that question.
"I think... I had a family once," she finally said, her eyes focused on some empty spot in the distance. "A home. I'm not sure... but it doesn't matter, because now this place is my home and these people are my family. And I love them a lot, so I really shouldn't complain."
I wanted to tell her that it did matter, and she should complain, and she should be furious about all of this. But the words got stuck in my throat as she put on the saddest, most heart breaking smile I had ever seen, and I remained silent.
"Occasionally, I see things in my dreams - or daydreams - which seem just... familiar. Like when you think of a word and it seems to be just at the tip of your tongue, the names of the people and places that I see are never quite in reach. Sometimes I am not sure if I remember, or if I imagine things that I wish had happened." She gently picked up a paper butterfly and looked at it pensively. "I saw that place in a dream, you know. The one on the wall."
"A memory?" I asked. She shook her head.
"I don't think it really exists. But I wanted to put it there, to... to make it feel like it was real."
At her words, my gaze was drawn to the lifelike painting at the wall again. In its realism, it made the room appear much larger than it actually was. I doubted such a place existed anywhere in Pharos, and I had never seen a place quite like it in a picture, photograph, movie or sim either. And I wondered how my mind had managed to come up with something so absurdly rich and detailed in a dream. In a strange and irritating way, the painting almost seemed more real than reality itself. At least the reality I knew.
"It looks very real to me," I remarked quietly. "You have a lot of talent."
"Thanks," she just said.
She put down the butterfly, and there was that sad and weary expression on her face again as she blankly stared off into the distance. I swallowed hard as I realized that there was an unspoken second half to her sentence.
But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters.
I recognized that expression all too well. I had seen it countless of times before, but never quite like this. I only knew it from looking in the mirror.
"Feather," I said quietly. "Why do you refuse to eat?"
She turned to meet my gaze, and she didn't even need to say a word for me to know the answer. A heartrending pain tore through my chest at the realization.
Sartre had been right. Hell was other people. And in that moment, she was mine, as she became my mirror, and I saw myself in her, a vision from years ago. The familiarity of her pain made me want to believe that all of this was just a regular dream, that this girl was just a figment of my imagination, a convoluted memory, a distorted reflection of my own past.
But what I saw in her eyes was like that painting on the wall - too complex, too real. And it hit way too close to home.